In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design came under new management. 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

Persuasive Technology 2015

June 3-5, 2015
Spertus Institute
610 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605

This year's conference is the 10th annual persuasive technology gathering and builds on the success of previous conferences held in Padua, Sydney, Linköping, Columbus, Copenhagen, Claremont, Oulu, Palo Alto, and Eindhoven. During the past decade, the persuasive research community has conducted science-based inquiries into the roles of various disciplines including design, psychology, sociology, and technology to create persuasive systems that support behavior change through ethical means. The conferences maintain high-quality research presentations by using peer reviews of anonymous submissions.


The conference theme this year is "Personal Empowerment through Persuasive Design." Companies and academic institutions would benefit from exposure to this collection of research. In this era of smartphones, the Internet of Things, and data in “the cloud,” there are many new opportunities for a more effective relationship between people and solutions. Consider how a product and services approach informed by persuasion strategies that support behavior change could be an effective relationship maker and product differentiator for your organization. The leading companies in persuasive technology are focused on self-managed healthcare, education, and sustainable living. For academic researchers, persuasive technology is a rich area for cross-disciplinary research.


Workshops begin June 3 and the conference convenes June 4-5.


For more details visit persuasive2015.org.

Register