In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design was folded into Illinois Tech's School of Design & Society.
This website is an archive of the impactful and inspirational work produced by the ID community before that transition.

László Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, treating design as a discipline that was teachable, testable, and consequential. Nine decades on, its scope had widened from the things people use to the systems they depend on: hospitals, government agencies, classrooms, supply chains, digital platforms. Along the way, ID community members developed the published research, methods, and frameworks that designers rely on every day.

Chief among them is human-centered design: close attention to how people actually live, and advocacy for what that research reveals. It shaped designers who are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity: curious, rigorous, inclusive, and stubbornly optimistic about design's ability to change the systems that shape our lives.

To every one of them, who taught, studied, built, critiqued, and stayed late in the studio: thank you, and keep designing.

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Agile for Design Outcomes

Agile for Design Outcomes

Understanding key principles, values, culture/behaviors, and methods of Agile in design practice.

This course is not available for the upcoming semester. Consult with your advisor for similar options.

Objective & Outcomes

The Institute of Design instills in its students to think strategically about a situation and reframe it by using specific design methods to deliver user-centered & business value. The challenge is in transitioning from qualitative reframing of problems to actually creating a solution that is ready for market. This gap will be addressed by linking human centered methods with using agile practices to create deeper greater specificity of a solution that can actually be released to market.

Upon completion of this course students will be able to create a focused point-of-view and reframe a problem, decompose a strategy statement into “who, what, wow“ statements, generate a service blueprint, map to specific features and functions and a backlog of prioritized work – that can trace back to the strategic statement in a virtuous cycle.

Typical Schedule

  • Module 1: Exploring & Reframing a Problem
  • Module 2: Defining a Minimum Viable Solution & Roadmap
  • Module 3: Creating a Prioritized Backlog of Work
  • Module 4: Developing a Minimum Viable Prototype

See all MDes Courses