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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Jennifer deWinter

Dean of the Lewis College of Science & Letters and Professor of Rhetoric

Jennifer deWinter

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Jennifer deWinter is a Professor of Rhetoric and Dean of the Lewis College of Science and Letters. Her early research into Japanese media has led to a career in media development, specifically in virtual and augmented reality, app development, and game development, which she applies broadly into entertainment, mental health, simulation of complex systems such as transportation, robotics, and more recently the metaverse. She works closely with collaborators in Japan for both research and teaching, often taking students to Japan (in partnership with Osaka University and Ritsumeikan University) to do immersive media development. She was the founding director of the Intentional Design Studio in Massachusetts, and has worked as an immersive digital media development consultant for a number of companies and government organizations.

Recent Work

Books

Jim Bowman and Jennifer deWinter. Civic Engagement in Global Contexts: International Education, Community Partnerships, and Higher Education. Logan, UT: (Utah State University Press, 2021).

Jennifer deWinter and Ryan Moeller. Computer Games and Technical Communication: Critical Methods & Applications at the Intersection. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Series in Technical Communication, 2014).

Jennifer deWinter. Shigeru Miyamoto: Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

Jennifer deWinter and Steven Conway. Video Game Policy: Production, Circulation, and Consumption. (New York: Routledge, 2015).