Podcast · Arts & Books
by IIT Institute of Design · English · Arts & Books
With Intent is a podcast from ID where we talk to a range of people—writers, designers, business strategists, policymakers, doctors, community organizers. The common thread? Whether they self-identify as designers or not, they're using design in their work.
30 Sep 2025 · 55 min
The first episode of the new season of Design As, from our partners at Design Observer. Recorded at our Shapeshift Summit last May, this roundtable conversation explores a key tension in AI development: moving fast vs slowing down.
S3 · 16 Sep 2025 · 4 min
A preview of the new season of Design As, from our partners at Design Observer. Their new season was recorded at our Shapeshift Summit last May.
S3 · 5 Aug 2025 · 36 min
In this episode from ID's Shapeshift conference, we hear from two New Zealand design leaders on how intentionally designed AI can address challenges to democracy. Terry Williams-Willcock, Chief Customer Officer at RUSH Digital, and Chelsea Pratt, Design Lead & Strategist at Thoughtfull, discuss how they're making civic participation more accessible with AI.
S3 · 29 Jul 2025 · 28 min
In this bonus episode, we hear from Anamitra Deb, Senior Vice President of Programs and Policy at Omidyar Network. His talk explores how we might create a responsible future where access to AI’s benefits are shared by all humans.
S3 · 22 Jul 2025 · 34 min
This bonus episode features Ryan Powell, Head of UX at Waymo and ID graduate, exploring how human-centered design builds trust in autonomous vehicles at individual, community, and city levels.
S3 · 15 Jul 2025 · 12 min
The first bonus episode in a new series of ID live events features Patrick Whitney, the school's longest-serving dean who introduced the world to human-centered design.
S3 · E6 · 12 Nov 2024 · 34 min
The season finale of the With Intent podcast explores the design of the Clear RX prescription packaging system by designer Deborah Adler. Hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum discuss how Adler's thoughtful design thinking (inspired by a medication mix-up between her own grandparents) transformed medication dispensing.
S3 · E5 · 5 Nov 2024 · 25 min
This episode of With Intent explores the creation of the OXO Good Grips Peeler, a reimagined kitchen tool designed for accessibility and universal usability. Inspired by Sam Farber’s desire to help his arthritic wife, the design revolutionized product design and established OXO as a leader in inclusive design. Join the Season 3 hosts, Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum, in a discussion about this popular peeler.
S3 · E4 · 29 Oct 2024 · 33 min
This episode of With Intent highlights how Zipline uses autonomous drones to improve healthcare delivery, especially in underserved rural areas. Join your Season 3 hosts, Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum, in a discussion emphasizing Zipline's practical, cost-effective approach and strategic partnerships to scale operations.
S3 · E3 · 22 Oct 2024 · 38 min
This episode of the With Intent podcast explores the creation of Raspberry Pi, a $35 computer that revolutionized tech education and empowered global innovation. Joined by Sheryl Cababa, hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum discuss stakeholder-centered design, avoiding techno-determinism, and designing for marginalized communities.
S3 · E2 · 15 Oct 2024 · 28 min
Hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum explore the story of LifeStraw, a groundbreaking water filtration device that's changing lives globally. Dive into LifeStraw's origins, innovative technology, and unique business model that balances profit with purpose.
S3 · E1 · 7 Oct 2024 · 45 min
In the season premiere of Institute of Design's podcast, With Intent, explore Massimo Vignelli's 1972 NYC Subway Map. The design itself was a modernist milestone critiqued for practical flaws. Hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum discuss balancing aesthetic innovation with functionality, offering lessons in user-centered design and its impact on systems and society.
S3 · 1 Oct 2024 · 4 min
In this introductory trailer to With Intent Season 3, hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum introduce themselves as this year’s Latham Fellows at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech. They share their excitement about co-hosting the podcast and reflect on their 15-year professional partnership, including their collaborative work on a broad range of design projects and their previous podcast, The Design Vault. Their longstanding relationship sets the stage for insightful discussions on design and its impact on society. The hosts outline the themes and focus for the upcoming season, which…
S2 · E6 · 22 Mar 2023 · 38 min
In the final episode of our second season of With Intent, Jarrett Fuller asks ID Dean Anijo Mathew, Where Must Design Go Next?Anijo discusses ID’s pioneering history and where it’s headed next—summarizing ID’s four eras, defining what he calls Design Plus, and contextualizing the three forces acting on design today and where they will lead us.
S2 · E5 · 15 Mar 2023 · 43 min
In the fifth episode of our second season of With Intent, Jarrett Fuller asks ID Associate Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability Weslynne Ashton and Associate Professor of Design for Technology and Society John Payne, How Can Design Make the Biggest Impact? “In the business world and in the government space, people often look around the world for ideas to select and decide on—as opposed to create. The mindset of the designer is that we are going to get together and create something. —John Payne Weslynne and John discuss working in the private versus the public sector,…
S2 · E4 · 8 Mar 2023 · 40 min
In the fourth episode of our second season of With Intent, Jarret Fuller asks ID Associate Professor of Healthcare Design and Design Methods Kim Erwin and Associate Professor of Civic and Community Design Maura Shea, Why Is Design Always Talking About Complexity? Kim and Maura discuss making change in large communities and systems through asset-based community development, the value of modeling complex systems, and what a designer’s creative output looks like today. Jarrett Fuller, host of Scratching the Surface, is the 2022–23 Latham fellow at the Institute of Design and hosts With Intent…
S2 · E3 · 1 Mar 2023 · 41 min
In the third episode of our second season of With Intent, Jarrett Fuller asks ID Associate Professor of Behavioral Design Ruth Schmidt and Charles L. Owen Professor of Systems Design Carlos Teixeira, What If Human-Centered Design Isn’t Enough? Ruth and Carlos discuss the capabilities and limits of human-centered design, the concept of humanity-centered design, and how the evolving role design plays in our organizations and corporations will shape our collective future.
S2 · E2 · 22 Feb 2023 · 37 min
The second episode of our second season of With Intent asks ID Associate Dean Matt Mayfield and Assistant Professor Zach Pino, How Do You Teach Design for Tomorrow? Matt and Zach discuss ID’s ever-evolving curriculum, the relationship of design to art, how students learn about technology at ID, the recent “seismic shift” in students’ goals, and challenges and opportunities of a field in flux. Jarrett Fuller, host of Scratching the Surface, is the 2022–23 Latham fellow at the Institute of Design and the hosts With Intent this season. Tune into With Intent to discover where ID is taking design…
S2 · E1 · 15 Feb 2023 · 33 min
Jarrett Fuller asks, How does someone become a designer? in the first episode of Season Two of With Intent. This episode features Tomoko Ichikawa, Associate Professor of Visual Communication, and Marty Thaler, Associate Professor of Product Design. Tomoko and Marty discuss ID's Foundation sequence—possibly the strongest tie that ID has today with its history as The New Bauhaus. (Foundation at ID makes it possible for nondesigners to enter our graduate school.)
S1 · E10 · 30 Nov 2021 · 50 min
Mushon Zer-Aviv is an activist, artist, and designer. He's currently at work on devising new ways of understanding change and the future—ways that account for the limits of forecasting and consider the "darkness" of the future as a place for hope and possibility. He also discusses systemic bias, the value of small talk, his appreciation for Rebecca Solnit, Naomi Klein, and Milton Friedman, and how his work brings provocation and action together.
S1 · E9 · 23 Nov 2021 · 45 min
Marina Gorbis is executive director of the Institute for the Future, a place where business executives, policymakers, nonprofits, and others use foresight and futuring techniques to make better long-term decisions. For example, you might work with the Institute for the Future to anticipate and be able to plan for a worldwide pandemic. In fact, Marina worked on just such a project years before COVID hit. Now that the pandemic is real, interest in futuring has spiked. Marina talks about what futuring is and the trends she's seeing—in particular, how our relationship with work is changing. She…
S1 · E8 · 16 Nov 2021 · 35 min
Jon Veal is co-founder of alt_, an organization that focuses on the power of community. The alt_ market is the organization's flagship program. Their first market transformed an abandoned space into a communal free market, encouraging community members to give, take, and take care of one another. Jon talks about how serving his community and making art come together for him, the importance of faith in his work, and the planning he and his co-founder, Jordan Campbell, have done to help secure their organization's longevity.
S1 · E7 · 9 Nov 2021 · 39 min
Kenneth Bailey, co-founder of the Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI), and co-author of Ideas, Arrangements, Effects, talks about his approach to building a better possible world. Talking about specific projects like Public Kitchen, as well as the thinking and pragmatism shared in his book, Kenneth presents an approach to building that new world. As he sees it, one must go beyond the problems we see and experience every day to understand the systems, infrastructures, or "arrangements" that underpin them.
S1 · E6 · 2 Nov 2021 · 48 min
Michela Magas has had a nonlinear career path driven by a focus on bringing people together to make deliberate decisions that enable long-term creativity and innovation. Those decisions may reside in the realm of intellectual property, as in the Industry Commons, or music technology, as in the case of MTF (Music Tech Fest). Michela talks about how to foster innovation by bringing people from disparate fields together, why nonlinear career paths are the way forward, and the kind of skills people need for navigating our changing world.
S1 · E5 · 26 Oct 2021 · 30 min
Episode 5 of With Intent is available now. Ruth Reichstein is part of the European Commission’s Presidential Advisory Board on the New European Bauhaus, or NEB, which was developed to help the EU achieve the goals set forth in its Europe Green Deal. The NEB aims to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. We at IIT Institute of Design (The New Bauhaus) announced our partnership with the New European Bauhaus earlier this year.
S1 · E4 · 19 Oct 2021 · 34 min
Supporting Black informal workers
S1 · E3 · 12 Oct 2021 · 31 min
Last week we talked about technology as medicine. This week: food as medicine. Rita Nguyen, Assistant Health Officer at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and founder of the Food as Medicine Collaborative, explains why doctors should be able to prescribe food—and why the healthcare system should pay for it.
S1 · E2 · 5 Oct 2021 · 28 min
Health, happiness, and the corporate employee.
S1 · E1 · 28 Sep 2021 · 45 min
Morgan Ames is the author of The Charisma Machine, which dives into One Laptop Per Child—a hugely ambitious, or as she defines it, charismatic—project with good intentions: to bring a laptop to every child in the developing world. In this episode, we talk about how important the central tenets of design are when building internationally-driven, and in some ways utopic projects
S1 · 28 Sep 2021 · 1 min
With Intent is a podcast from ID where we talk to a range of people—writers, designers, business strategists, policymakers, doctors, community organizers. The common thread? Whether they self-identify as designers or not, they're using design in their work.
With Intent is a English arts & books podcast from IIT Institute of Design. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
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