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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Heather Snyder Quinn

Associate Professor of Design & Design Futurist | DePaul University & The Parallel Futures Design Lab

Heather Snyder Quinn is an Associate Professor of Design and Civics Fellow at DePaul University, and a 2024 Illinois Science and Tech Coalition Researcher to Know. Her work uses design fiction to empower communities to imagine possible futures and understand technology’s impact on human freedoms. The World Economic Forum, MIT Press, Yale Law School, The Washington Post, and Hyperallergic have recognized her work.

Heather Snyder Quinn was a session presenter for the Design as Activism Symposium in 2024 where she ran a workshop titled Matriarchal Design Futures: A Collective Work in Progress. 

Find Heather Snyder Quinn on LinkedIn.