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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Core77 Recognizes ID’s Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Project

Introducing Capital Design—A Pioneering Approach For Influencing Public and Private Investment

June 18, 2024

Core77 Design Awards

Core77 has announced the honorees of its annual Design Awards. Among them is ID’s project, “Future Archetypes of EV Charging,” which was recognized both in the Consumer Technology and Transportation categories as a Runner-Up and Notable project.

Graduate students Jie An, Deaa Bataineh, Jerick Evans, Isaac Jang, Mitchell Kunichoff, Jordan Ostapchuk, Keval Parekh, Pranjal Shah, and Ayaka Uriu, led by ID Professor Carlos Teixeira, considered that as adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) accelerates, obstacles like charging infrastructure, slow charging times, and the high cost of batteries have to be addressed.

By focusing on Capital Design, the idea that design can influence investment from public and private markets, and the decision-making processes that drive innovation, the students examined how strategic choice-making through design can influence and shape communities for the better.

The future of sustainable transportation is what we consider a 'complex space of innovation,' where many forces and interests, public and private, intersect. It's fertile ground for systems thinking and the kind of pioneering work that happens at ID.
—Anijo Mathew, Dean, Institute of Design
Repeated image of cars charging

Instead of asking, “How can we replicate the concept of gas stations for EVs?” ID students participating in Carlos Teixeira’s Sustainable Solutions Workshop asked, “What can we electrify to meet the demand?”

Making EV charging easy and omnipresent not only helps us move away from fossil fuels and fight climate change but also gets us closer to a cleaner, smarter, and more just world for everyone.

Through rounds of prototyping and design, the ID team identified features and archetypes that enable a future where EV infrastructure and its many benefits are available to anyone—wherever they live or choose to travel.

The values guiding the project—transparency, resiliency, and a focus on decarbonization, decentralization, and digitization—underscore its unique approach to EV charging.
—Carlos Teixeira, Charles L. Owen Professor of Design

Archetypes

Energy Exchange

This archetype was explored through the lens of high-level goals, the impacts driving towards those goals, the features that generate the impacts, and what those features afford.

Through leveraging the strategic role of design against capital investment tools, we created a solution that could guide significant investment in sustainable infrastructures.
—Deaa Bataineh, PhD Researcher

The Core77 Design Awards celebrate the richness of the design profession as well as the insight and perseverance of its practitioners. Dedicated to excellence and inclusivity, the program offers both students and professionals the opportunity to promote their best work on a global scale.

Find more information about this project online and in the students’ final report.