Secondary Major

Beginning in fall 2022, all Iowa State students may elect to add a secondary major in Interdisciplinary Design to their plan of study as a complement to their first major.

Design plays a crucial role in innovation, imagination and human creativity. The secondary major in Interdisciplinary Design is an asset on any resume. It offers courses for students interested in pursuing careers and futures related to creative leadership, design for social change, disruptive innovation and user experience (UX), and provides the knowledge and skill sets necessary to address complex challenges and contemporary societal problems using key innovation and entrepreneurial concepts.

Interdisciplinary Design explores the central principle of human-centered experiences, and how people — users, customers, markets, audiences — are at the core of all creative activities and endeavors. Interdisciplinary Design dives deeply into the fundamental concepts that explain creative processes, from collaboration to iteration to implementation.

This program provides a strong foundation in creative problem solving, design thinking, strategic design, leadership and project management and new product development. Interdisciplinary Design builds an understanding of the innovation journey through design tools and techniques for ideation, insights forecasting and prototyping with users. This is the place to initiate a project, explore how to take an idea to execution and discover how to turn an insight into a reality.

The Interdisciplinary Design curriculum is built around a set of required innovation and design entrepreneurship-focused interdisciplinary studios and other required and elective courses, with many options for students across all university majors.

How to Add this Major

To add Interdisciplinary Design as a secondary major, contact the academic advisor for your primary major. They will fill out the curriculum change form to add I DES as your second major.