In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design came under new management. 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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Past Event

Design for Everything: IoT complications and opportunities

December 4, 2014
6:00-8:00pm CST
Blue 35
35 Oakes Street Southwest
Grand Rapids, MI 49503

A panel discussion on the business implications of the Internet of Things


The era of the internet of things has led to the emergence of new business models that take advantage of technological affordances while escaping previous limitations related to production and ownership. Unprecedented connectedness and access to ever increasing volume of information also creates overload that can lead to aimlessness. How do established organizations decide which new technologies are worth investing in? How can innovators sift through everything to create a meaningful something?


A design-driven process can offer both insight into new opportunity areas, as well as the tools and steps to mitigate risk associate with development in untested domains. IIT Institute of Design professor Anijo Mathew will present a new understanding of space and place in the age of embedded information. Dave Sonders, associate partner at gravitytank will share the Scout Alarm design story, a startup smart home security system company developed with the support of gravitytank user-centered research.


Anijo Mathew
Anijo is an associate professor at IIT Institute of Design. His research looks at evaluating new semantic appropriations of place as enabled by technology and media convergence. He also works with companies to adapt and change to the information economy through the use of design methodology and theory.


Dave Sonders
Dave helps organizations turn ideas into breakthrough products and services. He leads high-profile innovation efforts across diverse industries. As senior leader of gravitytank’s Startup Domain, Dave has been spearheading gravitytank's effort to blend startup methods with corporate innovation efforts.

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