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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Introduction to Systems Theory

Introduction to Systems Theory

An introduction to defining, framing, and understanding systems—for the purpose of changing them. 

“
[It] introduced me to a variety of new perspectives on systems thinking, assignments served to reinforce these contrasting points of view and help me apply them in my own work.
—Alumni

Objective & Outcomes

Systems thinking describes a way of seeing the world in which systems are constructs with defined goals, clear boundaries, rules, and interacting parts. Systems range from simple to complicated, complex, and adaptive. This course introduces students to different types of social, ecological, and technological systems in which humans are embedded. The course will teach students how to use various systems thinking tools to identify commonly observed problems and patterns; explore systems goals, rules, power dynamics, functions and dysfunctions; identify leverage points; and design for achieving systems change. They will develop a greater understanding of how systems shape their own lives and personal experiences.

Upon completing this course, students will demonstrate how to identify systems characteristics to define and propose change.

Typical Schedule

  • Session 1: Course Overview: Types of systems & worldviews
  • Session 2: Family Systems & Trauma Informed Design
  • Session 3: Systems Thinking Tools & Archetypes
  • Session 4: Goals, Power Dynamics & Root Causes
  • Session 5: Leverage Points & Design Interventions
  • Session 6: Social, Ecological & Technological Systems
  • Session 7: Course Wrap-Up: Working in systems design

See all MDes Courses