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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Diagram Development

Diagram Development

Explores the language of diagrams and similar techniques for increasing communication effectiveness.

Objective & Outcomes

Designers are often challenged with developing and synthesizing complex ideas, whether they are research outputs, design concepts, or system plans. At the same time, the proliferation of easy-to-use graphic and visualization tools facilitates the creation of visual representations that often emphasize aesthetics over communication. Fundamentally, diagrams’ strength lies in their ability to present information at various levels of abstraction, clearly show the inherent structure of information, and summarize what could be lengthy and cumbersome explanations if represented in other forms. This course explores the fundamental attributes of diagrams as a language and how to effectively use this language to understand and communicate.

Upon completing this course, students can apply critical cognitive skills to identify the inherent relational structures of a given content. Students will also be able to create visual representations that reflect that content structure.

Typical Schedule

  • Session 1: Introduction & Principles
  • Session 2: Sequence Diagrams
  • Session 3: Process Diagrams
  • Session 4: Location & Grouping Diagrams
  • Session 5: Connection Diagrams
  • Session 6: Hierarchy Diagrams
  • Session 7: Visual Models in Design Analysis

See all MDes Courses