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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Past Event

How to Strengthen Product Strategy with Design

April 1, 2026
5:30-8:00pm CST
Institute of Design
3137 S Federal Street
The Delivery Fellowship logo
Co-Hosted by the Delivery Fellowship and the Institute of Design

This Delivery Fellowship session focuses on how design can strengthen product strategy and move from a supporting role to a strategic advantage inside modern organizations.

In many organizations, design is still treated as a service function that executes product tickets rather than helping shape product direction. Yet the companies building the strongest products today are those where design contributes to strategy, influences decisions, and improves measurable business outcomes.

In this session, we’ll explore how organizations can strengthen product strategy through design, identify where design maturity is missing, and understand how stronger design practices can improve product outcomes and reduce operational friction.

Featured Speaker: Twisha Shah-Brandenburg (MDM 2014)

Service Design Leader, Target

  • Product and service design leader with more than 20 years of experience scaling human-centered design inside complex enterprise organizations.
  • Led design initiatives at companies including Target, Venmo, BMW, and Instacart, translating business strategy into systems and experiences that work for both customers and the teams who build them.
  • Teaches at the Institute of Design and writes about design leadership, organizational alignment, and building mature design practices.
Register