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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Metrics that Matter

Metrics that Matter

An exploration of how to measure activities and outcomes in design.

Objective & Outcomes

Products and solutions tend to grow in the direction we measure. Yet designers rarely specify those measures. This is largely because we have not invested in measurement strategies that create the data and evidence that industry, health and social sectors increasingly demand. As a result, design is measured on sector-level outcomes — sales, usage, community health — that are driven by many factors, not just the quality of a designed solution. 

In this course, students  explore how designers can develop their own interim measurement strategies that are more sensitive to design’s influence, thereby building data and evidence for their adoption and success. Students will emerge familiar with core terms and concepts in measurement and practice using a conceptual model to identify design-sensitive metrics. The course prepares students to advocate for metrics that matter in their professional practice and understand how to partner with professionals who have numeric expertise.

Typical Schedule

  • Session 1: Introduction & Product Metrics
  • Session 2: Implementation Metrics
  • Session 3: Organizational Metrics
  • Session 4: Social Sector Metrics
  • Session 5: Process Metrics
  • Session 6: Final Project Coaching
  • Session 7: Final Presentations

See all MDes Courses