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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Entrepreneurship & Finance

Extra Hand on Demand

September 15, 2015

Assignment

Form a team of four, find an unmet or poorly met need, verify and explore the need through research, conceive of a new product/service to better meet the need, design and prototype the product/service, and create a presentation summarizing your product/service.

Synopsis

The team spoke with 12 parents about their traveling experience and learned about their trouble maneuvering through the airport, dealing with missing items and being slaves to their kids schedules.

The team set out to design a service to help parents when traveling and created a solution that can help make traveling easier for everyone.

Problem

The team spoke with parents to find out what their most common pain points about traveling were and found out how quickly one could be come overwhelmed.

Their hands are full: Think about all the stuff you carry to the airport, computer bag, carry on, purse, Parents carry all of this along with an arsenal of child distraction tools, a child seat and enough food to feed a small army.

They forgot that one thing: Most parents, especially new parents are masters of planning and organization, however no one can prepare for the unknown. One forgotten blanket or lost binky and the entire system comes crashing down.

Parents are on their child’s schedule: Children crave routine, this includes when they eat, sleep, play relax, ect. A delayed flight could spell disaster for an unprepared parent.

Proposed User Experience

Extra Hand on Demand is an in-airport delivery system for parents traveling with young children. Controlled by an easy to use (sometimes parents only have one spare hand) digital website parents can order packages containing child and baby needs, food and tech accessories.

Each airport terminal has two runners who can interact with the user through a mobile platform getting them their delivery in just a few minutes. Payment is taken care of at the time of delivery by card so the runner can go off to save the next parent in need.

Faculty

  • April Starr

Tags:

Students

Chaemin Ahn
Aaron Cook
Gordon Grado
Sara Tashakorinia

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