In this episode, Patrick Whitney shares his path from reluctantly accepting Jay Doblin's invitation to teach a single course to discovering his passion for helping students grow. He reflects on the challenges of teaching design, particularly to eager freshmen students, and how that experience shaped his understanding of design education.

Key Topics

• The fundamental tension between business's focus on financial prediction and design's human-centered approach
• Why traditional business metrics fail to capture design's true value
• How design value is measured in human moments: laughter, social interaction, and improved daily experiences
• Patrick's prediction of a crisis in prediction-based business model and the shift from "economy of scale" to "economy of choice" in modern business
• Why businesses must demonstrate value rather than simply predict it 
• How designers can generate richer arrays of strategic options

Additional Resources

ID Honors Design Visionary Patrick Whitney

ID Events

Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking.

Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.