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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CPPS – Chronic Pain Prevention Study

By Palak Shah

May 11, 2023

Healthcare grant proposal for primary school teacher's chronic pain

Chronic pain is one of the most important issues in both medicine and public health. Low back pain (LBP) is the most prevalent musculoskeletal disorder among teachers. The current care models are more focused on reducing opioids instead of managing pain strategically across the system. In a fragmented care system, there is a dire need for prevention especially for a high-risk teacher.
This project seeks to develop a healthcare grant proposal that targets the prevention of chronic pain in primary school teachers, utilizing design to affect the delivery of care. The outcome of this research has identified that there are multiple, often imperceptible aspects that make up the intricate web of forces at play in our healthcare system and that it is essential to acknowledge this to create successful solutions. Consequently, the project seeks to implement a human-centered design and a system-aware approach to tackling this public health issue.

Project Details

  • Class: Healthcare Systems Design
  • Instructor: Kim Erwin