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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Kim Erwin appointed Visiting Scholar at UChicago Medicine

Applies Human-centered Design to Healthcare’s Frontline Problems

February 24, 2022

UChicago Medicine

UChicago Medicine has appointed ID Associate Research Professor Kim Erwin (MDes 1993) as inaugural Visiting Scholar at its Center for Healthcare Delivery Science and Innovation (HDSI), which is focused on transforming healthcare delivery. A research center fully embedded in the UChicago Medicine health system, HDSI is uniquely positioned to gather ideas from the front lines of care delivery and draw on resources from across the University of Chicago.

Erwin will engage in accelerating the understanding of human-centered healthcare design; mentoring UChicago Medicine staff, trainees and faculty; and building capacity in the application of human-centered design (HCD) and design methods to improve health system operations, patient safety, patient outcomes, and patient care delivery.

Institute of Design students will also be incorporated into the engagement.

“
Erwin brings a wealth of experience and new perspectives to high-priority health system projects.
—Stephen Weber, MD, Chief Medical Officer, UChicago Medicine

Kim was trained as a design strategist at ID, and she has since built her expertise at the intersection of design and healthcare. She has over eight years of funded healthcare research. In addition to running ID’s Equitable Healthcare Initiative, Kim is the only designer to be a standing member of a scientific review panel for the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and is working with the National Academy of Medicine to develop a new model for measuring community engagement.

On March 23, 2022 at 5:30pm, alumni are invited to hear Kim’s perspective on how human-centered design and medicine can work together to improve care.

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