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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Designing Futures

Designing Futures

Explores issues in design and contemporary culture through speculative and experiential engagements with questions at the intersection of digital technologies, ethics, and society.

This course is not available for the upcoming semester. Consult with your advisor for similar options.
“
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
—Arundhati Roy, Writer

Objective & Outcomes

This course will equip students with a deeper understanding of various methodologies and approaches to engage in narratives about possible futures, including speculative and critical design, science fiction, design fiction, and speculative fabulation.

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to evaluate the implications of design from various critical lenses–ethical, cultural, environmental, political, and economic– as well as creatively and generatively design for complex socio-technical systems.

Typical Schedule

  • Session 1: Introduction
  • Session 2: History of Designing Futures
  • Session 3: Speculative Design + Science Fiction
  • Session 4: Experiential Design
  • Session 5: Feminism + Futurism
  • Session 6: Mid-Term Presentation + Critique
  • Session 7: Mid-Term Presentation + Critique
  • Session 8: Future of Work
  • Session 9: Post-Capitalist Future & Multi-Species Design
  • Session 10: Race + Afro-Futurism
  • Session 11: Crip Futures
  • Session 12: Decolonized Futures
  • Session 13: Final Project Presentation
  • Session 14: Final Project Presentation

See all MDes Courses