Nabil Rouissi is a Strategic Service Designer and artist based in Chicago — twenty years of practice, three years of military service, and one persistent question: how do systems actually work for the people inside them?
Design came first. The practice started in 2007 — visual systems, interaction design, communication. Then came the Army: three years as an Air Defense specialist in Germany, 2018 to 2021. That wasn't a detour. It was an education in how institutions operate at scale, and specifically in the distance between what a system is designed to do and what it actually does to people.
Coming back to civilian practice after service changed the work. Commercial UX stopped making sense. What made sense was design applied to civic infrastructure — government services, policy implementation, the delivery systems that touch people who don't have the option of switching platforms. Not better apps. Better institutions.
Alongside that: a sustained art practice — graphic, photographic, digital, experimental — that exists on its own terms, not as portfolio decoration. The two practices inform each other without merging. Design is for systems. Art is for the rest.
Currently pursuing an MDes + MPA dual degree at IIT, Mies Campus, Fall 2026. The MDes builds rigorous design research. The MPA builds policy literacy. Together they're the academic framework for work that operates where design decisions and governance decisions happen in the same room.
Areas of Practice
Design for public institutions, government services, and policy implementation at city and national scale.
End-to-end service blueprinting, stakeholder mapping, and multi-channel experience design.
Design systems, frameworks, and scalable infrastructure that outlast the project.
Swiss-Bauhaus typographic tradition, editorial precision, Origin v2 design system.