About SCD
We disrupt education with
Inspiration + Exploration + Action
Bring your ideas. Your energy. Your personality. And your humor. Come ready for cross-collaboration and industry disruption. Get ready to think analytically - but also to get your hands dirty. We have the physical tools you need to build what you want. We also have the knowledge and resources to help you connect and learn what it is you don’t know yet.
Hot off the Presses!
The 2023 SCD Annual Report is here - in print or digital - with all the best stories from our biggest year yet. Grab a copy at SCD, or flip through the digital version below.
“Our vision for Siebel Center for Design is that it be deeply and truly transformational–accelerating unimaginable and breakthrough ideation and innovation at the intersection of science, engineering, fine arts, humanities, and the performing arts.”
Thomas Siebel
Benefactor
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
alumnus(BA–History; MBA & MS–Computer Science)
Our Mission:
To practice, model, and teach design thinking, using human-centered design, in collaboration with others, to re-imagine our campus, community, and collective world.
What is Human-Centered Design?
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a problem-solving approach that uses design thinking to identify the unmet needs of a population in order to collaboratively and iteratively develop solutions. We believe that HCD is a flexible approach that allows anyone to solve problems in creative and innovative ways, using processes such as empathizing with people, brainstorming ideas, and prototyping solutions.
HCD relies on a
"double arrow"
Human-centered design practice should be evidence-based, taking advantage of rigorous research. In all of our work, we want everyone's strengths and insights to flow in both directions. Both research outcomes and practical design success drive us, inform our work, and create good outcomes in the world.
We work with educators, researchers, and students
To share how human-centered design can be applied to any challenge and field.Our team is focused on evidence-based assessment of when HCD works, why it works, and how to improve it, and are building frameworks and tools that share those insights and best practices with everyone.
By inviting all members of the campus community and community-at-large to our building on South Campus - and by getting to know every college, school, institute, and department really well - SCD will continue to create optimum conditions for interdisciplinary collaboration and learn alongside our campus, community, and the collective world how to best use human-centered design to solve problems, using creativity and empathy.
Be part of the SCD Team
From student positions to full-time gigs, we post all openings on our Jobs page.