TiD Society at EDRA57

Join us as we celebrate the unofficial start of summer at the

Environmental Design Research Association

Conference in Amherst, Massachusetts!

We'll be looking to share, learn, and build community with others

who share our passion for safeguarding and promoting healing through thoughtfully created spaces.

In addition, we'll be presenting two engaging sessions:

• We'll start by living up to our commitment to PLAY, as our Strategic Consultant, Alina Osnaga, leads an interactive world game workshop exploring how trauma-informed design can transform the spaces where students learn, grow, and heal.

  
  

• Then on Saturday, Janet Roche and Dr. Davis Harte will share the story behind the development of our credentialing program and the lessons learned along the way.

More details on each are below. If you're going to be at EDRA, you won't want to miss either!

Playing the Future of Learning Environments

A Trauma-Informed, Systems-Based World Game Using the Trauma- informed Design Framework

Strategic Consultant Alina Osnaga

Saturday, May 30th at 8:00 a.m.

Evidence suggests that TiD can help students remain within their emotional window of tolerance and improve health outcomes. Student learning spaces can communicate safety and promote supportive relationships, or can symbolize lack of dignity and agency, facilitating re-traumatization. Using evidence-based TiD approaches, schools can create environments that support positive long-term health and opportunity outcomes for students and staff alike. Design elements can foster dignity, respect, and personal autonomy, which support students’ self-regulation and healing.

This workshop introduces an adaptation of the International Futures Forum (IFF) World Game, which integrates game design principles with system thinking, and allows participants to assume roles like safety, comfort, movement, play, equity, and community. Participants will map relationships and interactions between the 11 TiD domains that serve as the game’s “design nodes.” By engaging participants in systems-level thinking and the combination of multiple ideas, interventions, or strategies, this exercise is designed to generate powerful solutions that might not otherwise be conceived.

Participants will move through three rounds of collaborative play. In round one, "Mapping Challenges", participant groups will identify current spatial and behavioral challenges in K–12 or higher-education environments through the lens of their assigned TiD domain. Round two, "Generating Responses" will invite participants to propose strategies that support student well-being and enhance their domain while considering interdependencies with others. In the third round, the moderator will introduce short prompts representing disruptions (e.g., increased student anxiety, climate stressors, social conflict) and opportunities (e.g., community partnerships, new policies, flexible learning models). These scenarios encourage rapid adaptation of strategies and demonstrate how the TiD Framework domains strengthen students' resilience.

The core purpose of this session is twofold:

1. To build participant literacy in the Trauma-informed Design Framework; and

2. To understand how practitioners conceptualize, prioritize, or adapt TiD principles.

Reflection cards and mapping exercises will provide preliminary data on domain familiarity and perceived applicability of TiD domains to both K-12 and university settings. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of the Trauma-informed Design Framework, a systems-based method for applying them, and collaboratively generated design strategies that align with EDRA57’s theme.

Professionalizing the Trauma-Informed Design Framework

Insights from the Trauma informed Design Society’s Credentialing and CEUs Programs

Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer Janet Roche

Cofounder and Vice President of Education and Senior Researcher Dr. J. Davis Harte

Saturday, May 30th at 8:00 a.m.

As trauma-informed approaches gain traction across education, healthcare, housing, justice settings, and community development, design professionals face growing responsibility to understand the relationship between trauma, perception, and the built environment. Yet architects and designers have historically lacked an evidence-based educational pathway to develop the competencies required to practice TiD ethically and effectively. The TiD Society has responded to this gap by creating the first formal credentialing program and a suite of CEUs dedicated specifically to TiD. This presentation provides an in-depth look at how the TiD Society’s credentialing program was developed, the scientific and ethical foundations that inform it, and why its existence represents a critical milestone for environmental design research and professional practice.

Participants will gain insight into:

1. A method for translating research into structured design frameworks;

2. How practice-based knowledge and lived experience were used to refine or challenge existing knowledge; and

3. Strategies for creating a credentialing program and case-study assessments in ways that strengthen accountability and advance the reliability of TiD.

The session will provide a scalable model for creating similar training opportunities, based on the TiD Society's method of integrating trauma-informed care into the built environment and creating more equitable, health-promoting spaces.

Come join us for connection, friendship, and learning!