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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Equitable Healthcare Action Lab Director Kim Erwin featured on DBBD from Design Observer

The Design of Business | The Business of Design podcast focuses on design and healthcare

January 11, 2023

Kim Erwin on the Design of Business | The Business of Design

Kevin Bethune and Dana Arnett interview Associate Professor of Healthcare Design and Design Methods Kim Erwin on Design Observer‘s The Design of Business | The Business of Design podcast.

Kim is Director of ID’s Equitable Healthcare Action Lab, which has partnerships with UChicago Medicine and Rush University, among others.

In the podcast episode, Kim discusses her path, from philosophy to design, and into healthcare. Later, she contextualizes how design itself has evolved, and the role it plays today:

“
Now we have design switching to being more of a purpose-driven field. There's this whole other level of training that is the generalist tool set of design that is about solving some of the larger problems that humanity faces. And I think that this is very attractive to people. It's an opportunity to make a difference.
—Kim Erwin

Kim gets specific on how design can be of service to healthcare, and she shares the particular challenge of innovating in the healthcare space:

“
Anything that you create that's outside the system by design is of no interest in the system. These are the limitations of traditional innovation methods applied to healthcare.
—Kim Erwin

Listen to the full episode or read the transcript at Design Observer to learn more about Kim’s pioneering design work in healthcare.

More from Kim and others soon on our own With Intent podcast.

Kim Erwin and Tomoko Ichikawa Work with National Academy of Medicine

Kim Erwin appointed Visiting Scholar at UChicago Medicine

Bridging the Communication Gap: Healthcare Service Design for Asthma Patients