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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Service Systems Workshop

Service Systems Workshop

Explores how to design services with multiple stakeholders, elements, and delivery channels.

Objective & Outcomes

This course will equip students with the knowledge and skills to assess service methods and identify the challenges to delivering a quality service experience. Students will become familiar with methods and tools that address designing systems with multiple stakeholders, designed elements, and delivery channels. Students will also get experience applying the tools and process of service prototyping, delivery, and producing recommendations for service enhancements.

Upon completing this course, students can generate new service opportunity landscapes illustrated by high-level concepts.

Typical Schedule

  • Session 1: Service Fundamentals
  • Session 2: Primary Research with Stakeholders
  • Session 3: Secondary Research
  • Session 4: Stakeholder Landscape
  • Session 5: Value Propositions
  • Session 6: Value Exchange & Stakeholder Engagement
  • Session 7: Visualize Concepts at a High Level
  • Session 8: Service Modeling
  • Session 9: Experiment Design
  • Session 10: Experiments Round 1
  • Session 11: Experiments Round 2
  • Session 12: Service Blueprints
  • Session 13: Package Work to Communicate Recommendation
  • Session 14: Package Work to Communicate Recommendation

See all MDes Courses