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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ID Professor Tom MacTavish Part of Team Recognized with IEEE Milestone Award

Celebrating the invention of WaveLAN, the precursor to Wi-Fi

By Kristin Gecan

November 11, 2019

Tom MacTavish recognized with IEEE Milestone Award

In 1987, ID assistant professor Tom MacTavish flew with his family to the Netherlands to begin a role as director of engineering at NCR’s Systems Engineering facility in Utrecht. Three years later, his team produced NCR Wavelan, a wireless local area network that was recognized on October 29, 2019 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as the precursor to Wi-Fi. 

The event was held in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands and brought together key members of the original team that created the 802.11 standard and subsequent Wi-Fi products.

“
This was a formative experience that taught me the power of innovation, strategy, and persistence. I learned that it was imperative to conduct thorough design research, use design processes like rapid prototyping, and adapt to changing user needs and market conditions.
—Tom MacTavish

Tom has used these principles throughout his career in industry research labs at NCR and Motorola. Today, they continue to inform his approach to teaching interaction design at ID.

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