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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Fat-Inclusive Research Practices

By Angela Kujava

May 10, 2024

A tool kit to foster fat-inclusivity in design research

This project explores how designers can intervene in bias, oppression, and inequity by helping to create anti-oppressive solutions at the local, institutional, and/or societal level. Promoting fat research practices addressed by feminist theory challenges the dominant paradigm, especially through reflexivity and dexterity. The driving question was: “How might we most directly improve the experiences of individuals of larger size who participate in design?” As such, this project focuses on circumstances in which the designer has direct interaction with participants in the design process through research and facilitation. 

Click to view the workbook 

Project Details

  • Class: Politics of Design
  • Instructor: Jessica Meharry
Angela Kujava

Angela Kujava

Angela Kujava

MDM 2023