About
DesignX activates the power of design for transformational change, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Grounded in experiential learning, exploration, and the joy of making, we empower changemakers aspiring to shape the future with their forward-thinking solutions driving positive impact across industries, society, and our planet.
Venture Design Method
Stakeholder engagement is at the heart of design innovation. To create meaningful solutions, we must involve key stakeholders—human and non-human—not just as sources of data, but as active participants who shape the process.
Design with people not for people
By co-creating with stakeholders, we gain a deeper understanding of their needs, behaviors, and goals. This direct involvement de-risks the innovation process, ensuring that solutions are more desirable, feasible, and impactful. Stakeholder expertise also grounds us in context, constraints, and emerging challenges, enabling us to anticipate the unexpected. Alongside this engagement, we integrate qualitative and quantitative research and data analysis to map broader variables and trends. Merging evidence with co-creation fosters continuous learning and iteration, making our solutions more resilient, adaptable, and responsive to future change.
The DesignX core curriculum is elastic by design. It includes four phases that together form a complete program with 16 modules. Each phase, however, is also designed to stand alone—delivered as a course, workshop, hackathon, challenge, or masterclass. This flexibility allows us to adapt the material to different contexts and audiences.
The four phases are: Understand, Solve, Envision, and Deploy.
Each includes integrated modules that participants can apply, whether they are an inquisitive student, a startup founder, a corporate intrapreneur, or a government leader. These modules guide brainstorming, idea and product development, stakeholder engagement, decision-making, and strategic planning.
Understand
Needs Analysis
Market Segmentation
Stakeholder Mapping
Value Proposition
UNDERSTAND introduces the importance of a design-based approach to problem solving, showing how design methods and tools can be applied to complex challenges. In this phase, participants learn to properly identify a problem or need, determine its scope and impact, and frame (and reframe) the issue within its broader context.
The phase emphasizes analyzing both functional and emotional
needs, tracing problems back to their root causes, and mapping the stakeholders who influence or are affected by them. It also involves assessing the scope and urgency of a challenge and testing early assumptions and observations. By the end of this phase, participants will have established a clear and evidence-based problem statement, supported by insights into markets, communities, and stakeholders. This foundation enables informed decisions about the necessity and feasibility of pursuing a new solution.
Solve
Problem Solution Fit
User Journey
Prototyping Functions
Prototyping UI/UX
Building on the discovery process above, the SOLVE phase draws on deep understanding of users, customers, and context developed in the first phase. Here, the focus shifts to exploring, designing, and defining potential solutions while ensuring a strong problem–solution fit.
The Solve phase highlights that design is iterative and nonlinear: new discoveries can reshape specifications and even redefine needs. Participants learn to craft solutions that align urgent stakeholder needs with the overall function and specific solution features of their concept designs. They map and test the user journey by identifying critical touchpoints and functions. Prototyping—whether physical or digital—plays a central role in testing desirability and feasibility, refining ideas, and proving the potential of proposed solutions. By the end of this phase, participants have built and tested multiple prototypes and continue iterating to develop a strong problem-solution fit.
Envision
Vision Design
Business Modeling
Go-to-Market Strategy
Team Development
The ENVISION phase shifts from designing a solution to designing the venture or mechanism that will deploy the solution. Participants articulate their intended impact, formulate vision and mission statements, and design business models to support sustainable ventures or organizations.
Different models of organizational design are introduced, enabling participants to align structure and culture with their go-to-market strategy. Before moving to the final phase, assumptions and decisions are revisited, recalibrated, and refined based on insights gained in the Solve and Envision stages. By the end of this phase, participants have designed and tested different business models and go-to-market strategies.
Deploy
Action Plan
Financial Plan
Fundraising Strategy
Storytelling
DEPLOY, the final phase, focuses on launching and scaling a venture or solution. Participants develop tactical action plans, financial models, and funding strategies, and identify and prioritize actions required for user acquisition, operational alignment, team coordination, and strategic partnerships.
A crucial element of this phase is storytelling: developing the ability to communicate a compelling vision and value proposition to customers, partners, investors, and other stakeholders. Principles of storytelling and pitch design are introduced, culminating in presentations and pitch decks that showcase solutions and prepare ventures for success beyond the program. By the end of this phase, participants have developed a detailed launch plan, initial financial and funding plans, and a strong concept pitch.
Designing the X
Shaping an Unknown Future
No model or mathematical formula alone can capture the complexity of our world with all its emotional, cultural, and human variables that are impossible to measure. Hence, we must design. The book Designing the X makes a compelling case for design as an essential partner to science and technology: integrative, inventive, and profoundly human.
Team DesignX
Affiliated Faculty
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Terry Knight
William and Emma Rogers Professor of Design and Computation, Department of Architecture
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Mentors
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Alex Klatskin
General Partner, Forsgate Industrial Partners
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Angie UyHam
Co-designer, Cambridge Educators Design Lab/CPS
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Kathleen Kennedy
Executive Director, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
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Dan Arons
Principal, Perkins Eastman
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Advisory Board
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John Ochsendorf
Director, MIT Morningside Academy for Design
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Kent Larson
Director of City Science, MIT Media Lab
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Sigurdur Thorsteinsson
Partner, Design Group Italia
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Become a Supporter
DesignX supporters include businesses and individuals, alumni, and foundations. Our programs and student founders rely on forward-thinkers like you who are interested in supporting creative optimism and accelerating the unique skills and imagination found in entrepreneurs at MIT.
Engage with DesignX
Engage with DesignX as a mentor or Entrepreneur in Residence and work with students, guide ventures and help bring new ideas to life. Collaborate with our global network advancing new solutions, systems, and ventures.
