SCD Affiliates Across Campus Come Together to Reflect on Human-Centered Design in Experiential Learning

Siebel Center for Design brought together faculty, staff, and campus partners on Tuesday, September 29, 2026 for Research and Reflections: Human-Centered Design in Experiential Learning. The afternoon celebrated educators across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who are using Human-Centered Design (HCD) to make learning by doing more meaningful for students.

Every presenter on the program is an SCD Affiliate, part of an interdisciplinary network of contributors who lead human-centered innovation, education, research, and community work at Illinois and beyond. Affiliates collaborate with SCD on research and teaching, champion Human-Centered Design across their units, and help inform SCD's work.

Together the presenters represent Gies College of Business, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), the College of Fine and Applied Arts (FAA), and the School of Information Sciences (iSchool). Their work shows just how far HCD reaches on campus: into business classrooms and makerspaces, theatres, escape rooms, internship programs, and even AI-powered learning tools.

The event was facilitated by Dawn Bohn, SCD Director of Faculty and Academic Engagement, and Saad Shehab, SCD Senior Associate Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives.

Turning Up the Dials on Experiential Learning

Andrew Allen, Senior Assistant Dean of Experiential Learning and Professional Readiness at Gies College of Business, opened the afternoon with a keynote titled "What Makes Experiential Learning Work? Designing for Real Impact."

Allen began by naming the pressures facing higher education today:

• Public confidence is slipping, with the share of people reporting "very little confidence" in higher ed growing from 10% to nearly one in four.
• Debates over grade inflation are raising the question of what an A really means. Generative AI can now produce credible responses to almost any written assignment.
• The pool of college-age students is shrinking, and roughly 70% of students report struggling with mental health and loneliness. 

Taken together, Allen asked, if grades are in question and AI can do the work, what is college for? He came to the conclusion that “this is experiential learning's moment.” More than 30 years of research connect experiential learning to deeper understanding, stronger critical thinking and creativity, and better workplace readiness. Accreditors now require it, students are asking for it, and universities, Illinois included, feature it prominently. The risk, Allen cautioned, is that institutions focus on "doing and counting" Experiential Learning without asking whether it is actually transforming students.

To help instructors design for real impact, Allen shared a framework of five factors of effective experiential learning:

• Authentic Experience
• Holistic Feedback
• Structured Autonomy
• Relational Connection
• Relevance

Allen described these factors as independent "dials." Instructors can turn up any one of them to strengthen outcomes, whether they are refining an existing Experiential Learning course or adding experiential elements to a traditional one. Using a press release writing class as an example, he showed how a real editorial timeline and a nonprofit partner reviewing student work (authentic experience), topics students personally care about (relevance), feedback from industry professionals (holistic feedback), and peer editorial boards (relational connection) could each raise the experience. This is backed up by his own research, where he found that a course scoring higher on the five factors produced greater student interest, effort, and sense of value, along with stronger growth in communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and leadership.

HCD in Practice Across Campus

A panel followed, hosted by: Yun Huang, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences; Jean Drasgow, Senior Director of Experiential Learning and Director of Career Development in the College of ACES; and Amber Dewey Schultz, Teaching Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies in the College of Fine and Applied Arts.

They described students gaining confidence from tackling real problems, and shifting within a single semester from asking "What do I want to make?" to "What questions do we need to ask?" The panelists spoke candidly about challenges, from assessing student work in the age of AI to scaling Experiential Learning for thousands of students, and pointed to exciting opportunities ahead, including HCD modules embedded across the curriculum and bringing HCD further into the arts.

Research in Action

Three SCD Affiliates then shared fast-paced looks at the research and teaching innovation happening in their corners of campus.

Yun Huang: Designing for the Invisible Work of Experiential Learning

Yun Huang, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences, asked what human learning we should be designing for when AI can automate more cognitive work. Her research finds that generative AI gives students velocity while human interaction gives them direction, so over three semesters she has reshaped her course around the "invisible work" AI cannot do, like team coordination, critical judgment, and uncovering assumptions.

Elissa Thomann Mitchell: Using HCD to Prepare Students for Internships

Elissa Thomann Mitchell, Teaching Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) in the College of ACES, showed how she used HCD to better prepare students for HDFS internships. After surveying former interns, interviewing current ones, and consulting peer programs nationally, she designed and now teaches a new one-credit preparatory course, refined with student-suggested additions like mock interviews and testimonials from former interns. As one student shared, the course "helped me get an internship on my own!"

Aric Rindfleisch: Human-Centered Design Via Making Things

Aric Rindfleisch, John M. Jones Professor of Marketing and Executive Director of the Illinois MakerLab at Gies College of Business, shared how Making Things (BADM 331) turns HCD into hands-on practice. With no lectures or exams, teams of business students spend 15 weeks in the MakerLab identifying a market need, then ideating, prototyping, manufacturing, and marketing a product, and some teams sell their products before the semester even ends. As one student put it, the course "gave me purpose and process."

A Growing Community of Practice

This summit of research and reflection showed how SCD Affiliates are putting Human-Centered Design to work for students across campus. Their research and teaching are helping Illinois move beyond simply offering experiential learning to designing experiences that transform students.

Siebel Center for Design extends a heartfelt thank you to Andrew Allen, Yun Huang, Jean Drasgow, Amber Dewey Schultz, Elissa Thomann Mitchell, and Aric Rindfleisch for sharing their work, and to Dawn Bohn and Saad Shehab for planning and facilitating the event. Thank you as well to everyone who joined the conversation.

Interested in connecting your own teaching or research with Human-Centered Design? Learn more about the SCD Affiliate Program and SCD's assessment and research work at https://designcenter.illinois.edu/aboutscd/scdaffiliateprogram.