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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Students

Teacher calling on a grade school student

Transforming Educational Decision-Making

African American male youth seated in lab situation with gloves, working with specimen

Northstar: Young Black Students Explore Career Pathways with Adaptive Technology

Collective Pantry website wallpaper

Collective Pantry: Seeding System Change Through Storytelling

Meal on an airplane tray

Reducing Meal Waste for More Sustainable Travel

Embedded Finance for a Cashless Society

Institute of Design / Mur Mur Ring Immersion

ID Students Envision Civic Possibilities in Chicago Immersion

Students Lead Summer Shareout

Showcasing Talent and Building Connections with recruitID

ID students take a photo in Kaplan

Capturing the Spirit of ID

Photo of Mark Jones, Associate Professor of User Research and Service Design at Institute of Design, Chicago.

Design Addresses Urgent Organizational Challenges in Age of AI, According to New Report

Core77 Design Awards

Core77 Recognizes ID’s Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Project

ID Students Take On Quiet Quitting—And Win the 2024 Rotman Design Challenge

A diverse group of students outside PoliMi Graduate School of Management.

ID Students Use AI to Design for Human Wellbeing in Milan

2024 student speaker Jorge Martínez Arana (MDes + MBA 2023) addresses the audience from a podium.

Jorge Martínez Arana: A Taste for Problems

Moxi

Black and white photograph of Jay Doblin, middle-aged white man with white beard, standing at the front of a room behind a projector. To the left, a suit jacket is draped on the back of a chair.

Maybe We Are Not Geniuses

Cheryl Dahle, ID adjunct professor, and CEO of Flip Labs

Narrative as a Tool for Systems Change

Join us for ID’s End of Year Events, May 10–11

WhimsicalKitchen_UseCase

Rediscovering Sensory Engagement: The Whimsical Kitchen

PillPal Medication Distribution System

Simplifying Medication Adherence with Thoughtful Design