Education
- M.Sc. Product Service Systems Design (PSSD), Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
- Bachelor of Industrial Design, National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan
Courses Taught
- Systemic Design
- Service Design
- Design, Technology and Society
- UX Design
- Research in Design
- Designing Sustainable Artefacts
- TransDisciplinary Design Practicum
- Design Thinking (graduate course)
- Introduction to Design Thinking
- Designing for the Environment
- Islamic Art & Architecture
Awards & Recognitions
- Distinction- MSc. Product Service System Design (PSSD), Politecnico di Milano, 2024 (Italy)
- Recipient of the Politecnico di Milano Merit Scholarship, 2022-2024 (Italy)
- Inaugural Dean’s Fellow at Habib University, 2020-2022 (Pakistan)
- Inaugural Teaching Excellence Award for a course in School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) for the course Transdisciplinary Design Practicum, Habib University, 2021 (Pakistan)
- Best Project Award in the category Design for Social Change. National Design Awards, UX Pakistan Conference, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), 2018 (Pakistan)
- High Achiever’s Award for undergraduate thesis project ‘Aura’. National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), 2018 (Pakistan)
- President’s Gold Medal for First Position in Academics and High Achiever’s Award. National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), 2017 (Pakistan)
Biography
Manahil Huda is a service designer, systemic design practitioner, and educator whose work sits at the intersection of design, public policy, and social change. With a decade of work experience spanning Pakistan, Italy, Morocco, Turkey, and Canada, she brings a deeply cross-cultural perspective to how design can address complex, systemic challenges.
Manahil’s professional practice spans the public and private sectors, from reimagining pediatric healthcare in Pakistan to improving municipal investor services in Ontario, Canada, and researching student housing in Milan. Within Pakistan, she has worked with some of the well-known names in the corporate and startup sectors in Pakistan in the fields of fintech, healthtech, agritech, mobility, co-working and edtech. She co-designed and co-taught the first service design undergraduate course ever offered at a Pakistani institution, and has since built and taught design curricula at universities in Pakistan and Morocco.
She has also interned as a researcher and designer at one of the world’s foremost Design Research Labs: DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab at Politecnico di Milano, where she worked under the tutelage of Dr. Daniela Sangiorgi and Dr. Stefana Broadbent. There, she contributed to international research on the future of service design practice and pedagogy, and co-authored work on how systemic and speculative design approaches are reshaping the service design field.
At Habib University, Manahil currently leads the Institute of Design, Entrepreneurship and Leadership (IDEAL), where she is shaping a transdisciplinary ecosystem that brings human-centered design, systems thinking, entrepreneurship and ethical leadership to students, faculty, and industry professionals alike through trainings, masterclasses, workshops, panel discussions and praxis projects.
Research Interests
- Design for democracy
- Design for policy
- Public sector service design
- Design research from an intersectional lens
Selected Publications
- Villari, B., Torta, R., Lin, Z., Celi, M., Schon, V. R., Sangiorgi, D., & Huda, M. (2024). Systemic and Futures-Oriented Service Design: Emerging design patterns for complex and uncertain transformations. RSD13- Rivers of Conversations.
- Huda, M. (2024). The vote that matters: The application of service design on the voting process in Pakistan [Poster Presentation]. Cumulus Conference Proceedings Budapest- P/References of Design. Cumulus.
- Huda, M. (2022). Applying Service Design to Academic Processes. Touchpoint, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.30819/touchpoint.13-1
