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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PhD Courses

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phd Courses

The coursework component of our PhD program is minimal. This provides a useful contextual perspective on the field of design, while allowing students to focus on a robust research effort.

The research component of the program grows as the student progresses. Resulting dissertations create substantial and original contributions to design knowledge.

Coursework

Principles and Methods of Design Research
Philosophical Context of User Research
Research Seminar

Research & Thesis

PhD Research and Thesis