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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Empowering Latinx Technologists

By Aabha A. Kale | Gayoung (Kate) Nam | Dennis Siegert

May 10, 2024

Boosting leadership emergence and increasing strategic participation in tech culture

We conducted primary research with Latinx leaders, technologists, recruiters, and others to understand their experiences and challenges. Using tools such as era maps and stakeholder maps, we re-framed the problem and identified reasons for the high dropout rate and leadership issues among technologists. We then developed strategies to build confidence and address imposter syndrome in emerging tech leaders, testing these strategies through prototype solutions.

View the full presentation here.