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

Why Are We Making This?

March 23, 2021
12:00-1:00pm CST
Online
A Zoom conversation with design leaders and academics Morgan Ames, Tope Sadiku, and Evan Sharp about what gets made, for whom, and why.

In this annual event series, ID Associate Professor Ruth Schmidt will moderate a conversation with corporate design leaders and academics about what gets made, for whom, and why. Latham panelists Morgan Ames, author of The Charisma Machine; Tope Sadiku, Global Head of Digital Employee Experience for the Kraft Heinz Company; and Evan Sharp, co-founder of Pinterest, will discuss how designed solutions are conceived and greenlit—financially, conceptually, and tactically—and how this affects the roles we play as producers and consumers. Panelists will consider how our assumptions about innovation shape what “good” looks like in new products, experiences, and platforms, and the evolving role of technology in defining what is valued and accessible.

Panelists:

  • Morgan Ames — Assistant Adjunct Professor for School of Information & Associate Director of CSTMS, University of California, Berkeley; author, The Charisma Machine
  • Tope Sadiku — Global Head of Digital Employee Experience, The Kraft Heinz Company
  • Evan Sharp — Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer, Pinterest

More about the Latham series.

About IIT Institute of Design (ID)

IIT Institute of Design (ID) builds responsible, cooperative, intelligent futures. Founded by László Moholy-Nagy as The New Bauhaus in 1937, ID is known for pioneering human-centered design and systems design. Today ID is home to the only US design school devoted completely to graduate students. But ID is more than a graduate school. ID is an international community of learners and practitioners who are addressing the biggest issues of our time by eliciting a power unique to humans: creativity. Learn more about ID at id.iit.edu.

Register