Curriculum for the Information Design & Strategy Program, Northwestern University School of Professional Studies - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

The User-Centered Design course gives students hands-on experience with the latest design frameworks and methodologies that focus on the end user. Students will learn how a user focused design process can be used to solve the most challenging problems facing businesses and organizations today. Students will be introduced to the latest trends in design thinking, the importance of iterative design frameworks, researching user needs, prototyping, collaboration and critical feedback.

View IDS 401-DL Sections

When we add ourselves to the professional world—as a writer, an artist, or a technician (or myriad other professions), we find ourselves deep in the culture of organizations. We have to learn how to communicate in these environments and with people who often communicate quite differently than we do. In order to be efficient in our communication, we must be aware of our own communication strengths and weaknesses. We consciously and unconsciously are determining the audience we are communicating with, in order to tailor our message for effectiveness. In this day and age, digital communication plays an important and necessary role, as well. In this course, we will review and evaluate the above ideas so that students will learn how to communicate their fundamental ideas productively—from developing to writing to delivering specifications, reports, and presentations. We will examine collaboration, rhetoric, and storytelling in a professional context to assist in meeting our course goals.

View IDS 403-DL Sections

Students will learn how to conduct quantitative and qualitative research of user behavior to inform the design, development, and ongoing maintenance of digital assets. The course will give students hands-on experience with the key tools of usability testing, including prototyping, interviewing, site surveys, and site analytics.

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This course will explore how to plan and consistently execute content that supports an organization’s goals. Students will learn how to develop a content strategy, conduct a qualitative content audit, develop controlled vocabularies and lexicons, and choose the right medium (text, image, video, social interaction) for their message.

View IDS 407-DL Sections

In this course, students will explore the foundational pillars for the Information Design and Strategy program. The course will coalesce techniques for using data to inform design & strategy within the business or professional setting. Through hands-on assignments and activities, students will gain best practices and walkway with a toolbox of knowledge to succeed in the real world. This course is highly recommended to be taken as a first or early course in the MS IDS program.

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Students will explore how to effectively design, organize, retrieve, and use information. Our goal will be to create structures that support the organization’s content strategy and facilitate user understanding and navigation. Topics will include semantic analysis, content hierarchy, metadata, and search engine optimization. Students will also learn how to analyze, design, and implement service oriented architecture (SOA) solutions.

View IDS 411-DL Sections

Digital media rely on imagery and layout to communicate important and complex messages to its users. In this course, students will learn how cognitive science, cartography, human-computer interactions, design, and typography affect the ways that we perceive and interpret visual messages. Students will also learn techniques for identifying good visual design.

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This course will explore fundamental leadership behaviors coupled with business strategies that enable people to excel in their field, in order to help student-professionals apply these behaviors to careers in IDS. The course will examine leadership styles, the role of vision, integrity and ethics, as well as how to lead organizational change and solve problems, using effective teamwork and organizational strategies.

View IDS 481-DL Sections                 

This course will introduce students to the appropriate uses of analytics and its limitations and define how to approach the various stakeholders within an organization with analytic information. Included will be a review of the ethical, regulatory, and compliance issues related to a given business problem and/or solution. Time will be spent interpreting performance-based organizational issues while concurrently identifying solutions for these same performance-based organizational issues. In addition, time will be spent identifying best practices to plan for engaging, implementing, and sustaining organizational change.

Prerequisites: Students should have a basic understanding of Microsoft Excel.

Students learn to apply statistical techniques to the processing and interpretation of data from various industries and disciplines. This course introduces statistical models as they are used in predictive analytics. It addresses issues of statistical model specification and model selection, as well as best practices in developing models for management.

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This course entails learning by doing—working with data and text, utilizing models of text and data, working within an open-source programming environment, and building interactive visualizations for the web. It reviews the psychology of human perception and cognition and best practices in visualization and web design. Assignments involve reviewing and developing interactive visualizations of text, time series, networks, and maps. This is a project-based course with individual and team assignments.

View IDS 455-DL Sections

In this graduate advanced writing workshop, students of information design and strategy will explore the use of hybrid and technical craft in writing to communicate their sensory, emotional, and practical know how through the use of experimental creative writing assignments and information design writing projects that will prepare them for the marketplace. Students will also study comprehensive texts in hybrid writing and storytelling, and engage in collective discussions of weekly reading topics while producing assignments that evolve from visual and informational experiences which are related to the field. At its heart, this course requires readings, instructions, and practice that give graduate students insight into storytelling and technical writing methods to help awaken present-day content creation and management processes.

View IDS 432-DL Sections

This course will help professional writers effectively implement a social media strategy. It provides a detailed overview of each of the major social networking websites and how consumers and businesses use them. Students will also learn how to effectively identify, select, and share the best and most relevant online content for their audience.

Acts of persuasion influence us in all aspects of our lives. This course will examine the different ways in which we observe and use persuasion in the communication we have with our families and friends, our workplace, and the general public. How effective are we? How are we affected by persuasion? We will explore how we use communication strategically to facilitate persuasion, both in thought and in action. We will look at the foundations and ethics of persuasion, including how we process persuasion, as well as how digital media affects the use of persuasion. In addition, we will explore various mediums and modes of persuasion through a variety of written and creative projects. The course will culminate in an overall assessment of how persuasion impacts us, as individuals and as a society, in a project that reflects influence in the workplace. Students should identify and apply their professional and personal life experiences to the course materials, as well as have a working understanding of communication and writing.

Effective instructional design begins with an understanding of the learning process. In this course, students will learn behaviorist, cognitive, constructivist, and social learning theories, and their relationship to instructional practices and course design. Factors that influence learning, such as learning styles, motivation, and engagement, are also explored.

View IDS 422-DL Sections

Students learn the foundational principles and elements of instructional systems, from analysis through evaluation. They will explore commonly-used instructional design models and learn how to apply them in an education or training environment. Students will practice incorporating sound instructional strategies into the design and development of prototypes in real-world instructional settings.

This course is an introduction to the ideas, principles, and techniques used in educational media or systems, focusing on both the theoretical and practical aspects of design. The process of design will be guided by various design frameworks, and informed by current research on the design and study of learning environments. Students will learn how to assess interactive learning models and solutions. They will also learn how various technologies can affect the behavioral, cognitive, and social dimensions of learning.

View IDS 425-DL Sections

This course is an overview of the field of educational technology: highlighting current issues and the use of technology to meet goals in educational settings, workplace needs, and/or professional development goals.  Students will identify and synthesize research of an educational technology tool; students will showcase current and emerging educational technologies.

Experience Design is a quickly-evolving field where skilled information designers can make a huge impact. By understanding the people and contexts involved, Experience Designers craft pathways to user-success that also achieve business goals. Students in this course will learn theories and methodologies for designing or improving digital and hybrid experiences. They will map complex experiences in visual and narrative formats and learn to evaluate and refine the individual interactions that comprise them. The course provides flexible, human-centered, techniques that are applicable to the design and evaluation of web, mobile, desktop, physical, and XR experiences across industries. 

Prerequisites: IDS 401-DL and IDS 405-DL

Digital interfaces can be found just about everywhere in our world today, and they play crucial roles across business, government, industry, and beyond. Interface Designers apply visual design, information design, information architecture, human psychology, and artistic flair to create digital interfaces that are safe, enjoyable and, most of all, effective. By understanding the places interfaces are used and the people who use them, designers make pivotal choices that impact the effectiveness of systems. This course explores tools and techniques for the design and evaluation of digital interfaces across industries. Students are exposed to a variety of design tools, though the course focuses more on theory and strategy than software-mastery.  

Prerequisites: IDS 401-DL and IDS 405-DL.

Design-thinking isn’t just effective for creating delightful products and services. Design teams themselves can be optimized for performance, quality, and scalability through the application of design systems and operations frameworks. The course explores case studies of how innovative organizations and design teams across industries have successfully scaled their operations while maintaining creativity, innovation, and output. Various design systems are explored and evaluated as students gain the strategic mindset necessary to lead design teams to success in a wide range of fluid and complex organizational settings.

Prerequisites: IDS 401-DL and IDS 405-DL

The capstone project course is the culmination of the IDS program and demonstrates to faculty a student's mastery of the curriculum and core competencies in the information design and strategy field. Working individually, students complete a comprehensive project chosen in conjunction with their instructors. Students are individually assessed and graded throughout the duration of class. Students should retain all course material from previous classes in the program, including textbooks, to successfully complete assignments.

Students may choose this course or registration in the 590 individual thesis research to fulfill their capstone requirement.

 Students may take one other course simultaneously with IDS498-DL. All core course requirements must have been completed prior to the commencement of this course.

This final project is meant to represent the culmination of students’ experience in the program and must demonstrate mastery of the curriculum and ability to conduct sustained independent research and analysis. The project may be applied or may be a traditional scholarly paper; in both cases a write-up following the paper’s program-specific guidelines is required. Students must submit a proposal and secure a first reader in order to register; for further details students are advised to review the student handbook and contact their academic adviser.