Success by Design
His students have helped create a disposable
insulin injector, a system to prevent vials of
blood drawn from one patient from being mis-
labeled with the name of another patient, and
a baby stroller that can be steered with one
hand. “Design thinking,” explains Patrick
Whitney, “can offer greater, deeper, and
faster insight into users’ lives to help busi-
nesses know what to make in the first place.”
Whitney is the director of the Illinois
Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design
(ID), the largest graduate school of design in
the United States. Once an aspiring artist,
Whitney joined the faculty at the ID twenty
years ago when he became intrigued with the
way design can enhance everyday lives.
“Designers understand patterns of daily
life, look at things in a systematic way, and
create innovations that make sense to com-
panies and that can be sustained both envi-
ronmentally and from the business point of
view,” explains Whitney. He says the key lies
in observation. “Sometimes when you look at
things carefully, you recognize that things are
different from what they seem.”
Whitney’s students at the ID study the
physical, cognitive, social, and cultural factors
involved in peoples’ interactions with prod-
ucts, systems, organizations, and messages.
In their quest to develop “human-centered
design,” students examine users’ physical
capabilities and cognitive functions, along
with cultural backgrounds and social situa-
tions at the time when they use the product
or service. Methods of study include obser-
vation, videotaping, and even distributing
inexpensive disposable cameras to both stu-
dents and subjects so they can accurately
record behaviors and environments.
Graduates of the ID have found employ-
ment at innovation-focused companies such
as IDEO, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!,
under job titles like Design Strategist and
Manager of User Interaction Design. The
robust job market for ID grads is hardly sur-
prising because, as alumna Kathleen
Brandenburg points out, “It’s difficult to pick
up any business publication today without
reading an article about the power of design
as a strategic advantage and/or as a means
to innovation.”
While earning her master’s degree in
Design at the ID, Brandenburg worked with
Motorola’s Research and Engineering Group
and also with the Doblin Group, consultants
who specialize in applying innovative design.
After graduating in 1998 she co-founded IA
Collaborative, a firm that works on product
planning, graphic and interface design, and
branding for clients such as 3Com,
Accenture, and the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra. A project her firm recently com-
pleted for Nike illustrates the way design can
interact with business. When the sports gear
manufacturer needed a new product manual,
Brandenburg’s company implemented a
“design process [which] led to a new user-
centered poster and diagram format, which
not only made the product far easier to use,
but ultimately saved millions of dollars in
paper cost, not to mention translation, and
distribution costs.”
Bridging this kind of ”innovation gap” with
a groundbreaking product design is exactly
what Patrick Whitney has been teaching for
twenty years. He and his students don’t sim-
ply create things that are more pleasing to
look at; Whitney insists that business-orient-
ed designers like him and his ID students
“help markets create more values.”
SOURCE:Adapted from Robert Berner, “Design
Visionary: Patrick Whitney Is Out to Bridge the Chasm
Between the Cultures of Business and Design,” Business
Week, June 2006: 12; http://www.id.iit.eduand
http://www.bcainc.org/programs.html.PERSONAL PROFILE 10
Intrapreneurship and Corporate Venturing 383