Amy O'Keefe

Amy O'Keefe serves as Clinical Associate Professor and Director of Northwestern University's Master of Science in Engineering Design Innovation (EDI) program, leading the Human-Centered Service Design Studio. She partners with healthcare organizations and industry leaders including Procter & Gamble, Northwestern Medicine, and Penn Medicine to solve complex medical and service challenges through human-centered design methodologies.

Her educational background includes:

• MS in Product Design and Development Management from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
• BA in English from Davidson College, Davidson, NC

O'Keefe specializes in translating design theory into real-world applications across healthcare and consumer sectors. Her work integrates service design principles with medical innovation, evidenced by projects like Tide Spin (Procter & Gamble), pediatric allergy research presented at ACAAI, and postoperative delirium management protocols developed with Penn Medicine. She emphasizes cross-disciplinary collaboration between engineering, medicine, and business domains to create systemic service solutions.

As founding member of the Integrated Design Innovation consortium (IDI), she collaborates with MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania to advance design engineering education. Her studio-based teaching model immerses students in client-driven projects with Fortune 50 companies and healthcare systems, preparing innovators through hands-on experience in service prototyping and user research.