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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Keiichi Sato

Professor Emeritus

Keiichi Sato

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Keiichi Sato is the Charles Owen Professor at the IIT Institute of Design. He teaches graduate courses in design theory and methodology, product and system architecture, human-centered system integration, and interactive systems design.

His research focuses on the creation of theories, methods, and tools that facilitate the development of interactive products, systems, and services with convivial qualities as well as effective performance. His current research interests are general design theory and methodology, design knowledge representation and management, and human system integration for incorporating meaning for users. His recent projects include advanced technology application to health care and elderly care environments, next-generation automotive systems, and distributed healthcare systems.

He has published over 70 papers and articles as well as several book sections and chapters. He has received many awards for his academic and professional work including Best Paper Award at ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Best Paper Award at IEEE International Workshop on Robotics and Human Interactive Communications, Design Innovationen at Haus Industrieform Essen, and Best Paper Award at ACM-IEEE Design Automation Conference. His students’ design projects also have won many awards. He is a editorial board member for the Design Studies and the International Journal of Design.

Kei is a fellow of Design Research Society (UK) and a member of IEEE, ACM, ASME, Design Society, and Japanese Society for Science of Design. Currently he in engaging in collaborative research in healthcare systems research at University of Tromso and Norwegian Center for Integrated Care and Telemedicine and developing a research alliance with research groups at Guangdong University of Technology and other institutions. He has also taught at the department of architecture and design of Kyoto Institute of Technology and the department of management engineering of Osaka Institute of Technology. Kei holds an MS in product design and a BS and MS in engineering.

PhD Advising Research Statement

My research focuses on design theories, methodologies, and tools that facilitate the development of interactive systems, and products and services with convivial qualities and effective performance. I am investigating general design theory and methodology, the development of design methods, tools, and frameworks, and the application research for specific system development. After long time multi-disciplinary experience in developing new areas and enhancing the quality of design research, I have interest in developing research initiatives in new interdisciplinary areas as well as enhancing core areas of design theory and methodology.

My recently funded projects involve robotics and information technology application to health/elderly care environments, systems concepts for future automotive systems, and context-sensitive service systems.

Featured work

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Celebrating the Life of Zhabiz Shafieyoun