A new way of incorporating QFT principles into H 1 -control design techniques for solving the two-degrees of freedom feedback problem with highly uncertain plants is developed. The proposed practical design approach consists of two stages. In the ®rst stage, the robustness problem, due to plant uncertainties, is solved by H 1 -norm optimization. In this stage, the controller inside the loop (the ®rst degree of freedom) is designed, with the ultimate goal of minimizing the cost of feedback. Minimization of the sensor white noise ampli®cation at the input to the plant is also performed using QFT principles. In the second stage of the design, the pre®lter outside the loop (the second degree of freedom), is used to achieve the tracking speci®cations by conventional classical control theory, as practiced by the QFT design procedure. The combined QFT=H 1 design procedure for single input±single output (SISO) feedback systems is directly applicable to multi input±multi output (MIMO) feedback uncertain systems. The e ciency of the proposed technique is demonstrated with SISO and MIMO design examples for higly uncertain plants.