The Department of Design at IIT Delhi will offer a new four-year undergraduate programme ‘BTech in Design’ from 2025–26. Admission to the BTech in Design programme will be based on the ranks obtained by students in the JEE (Advanced) exam. However, aspirants will also have to qualify in the design aptitude test, UCEED (Undergraduate Common Entrance Examination for Design).
The curriculum of this programme has been uniquely crafted especially for empathetic and creative minds intent on understanding socio-technical systems around them and designing solutions for the wicked problems in these systems.
Students pursuing BTech in Design will learn about prevalent technologies, systematic design thinking processes, research methods for analyzing socio-technical systems, communication and presentation skills and teamwork.
According to the institute, this will be a transdisciplinary programme combining the strengths of technology and design. It promotes a unique combination of learning processes namely systematic discovery and understanding as engineering education does and exploration of individualistic and creative leaps as design education does.
IIT Delhi has a large number of departments/centers/schools specializing in science, engineering, management, humanities, social sciences, and policy. Being a part of this larger ecosystem, this programme in Design and its curricula is expected to harness the existing strengths of the Institute as well.
The programme would offer courses, with about half of the courses belonging to the core discipline of design and the rest coming from other departments, centers, and schools (similar to the other B.Tech. programmes). The programme curricula will pave the way for easy collaboration and partnerships between the design department and other departments/centers/schools.
The B.Tech. in Design programme at IIT Delhi will have a strong focus on product design. The aim is to prepare the students in such a way that at the end of the programme they are confident in using design as a vehicle to address problems in industry and society.
“Our expectation is that after graduating from IIT Delhi with a B.Tech. in Design degree, the students will take up, in the long run, leadership positions in industry, academia, government, consulting, and entrepreneurship. The program offers enough choices and freedom for the students to exercise diverse career paths,” said Prof. Jyoti Kumar, HoD, Department of Design.
“As the proposed curriculum is geared to prepare students for leadership positions, it is broad-based and analogous to the existing programmes at IIT Delhi. The approach of the Institute would be to create new leaders in design who can see the big picture as generalists and have the ability to go into details as a design specialist does,” Prof. Kumar added.