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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Entrepreneurship & Finance

TidyTilt

February 20, 2015

Assignment

Students practiced representing products, services, and environmental concepts quickly and effectively at different stages of the design process to understand how an envisioned design could affect user behaviors. By representing concepts through prototyping and visualization, designers advance the development process and inform design decision-making.

Problem

After researching how and where people use and store their headphones, the team discovered several common workarounds that users regularly fall back on: wrapping the headset cord around the iPhone (rendering the touchscreen unusable), coiling the wire around fingers and putting it in a bag or pocket (only to dig it out later fully tangled), or surrendering to the chaos by stuffing the wad of tangled earphone cords somewhere and hoping for the best.

These behaviors aren’t ideal, but neither is carrying an extra doodad with you to wrap headphone cords around. The team thinks TidyTilt untangles the headphone cord predicament whilst also serving as a handy kickstand and magnetic mount for the iPhone.

Proposed User Experience

Tidies

Wrap your earbud cords without skipping a beat. TidyTilt is always at hand, since it lives on the back of your iPhone. When you’re done using your earbuds, simply wrap them over your iPhone, snap TidyTilt closed, and pop your earbuds right off. TidyTilt keeps your cords neat and secure, whether in a bag, pocket, or attached to your iPhone.

Tilts

TidyTilt serves as a stand for iPhone, enabling landscape and portrait orientation at multiple angles—perfect for watching movies, typing, or making video calls. It even does so while simultaneously keeping your earbuds secured. Gaming with a friend? Position Tidytilt at the center of the iPhone for a new seesaw-like head-to-head gaming experience.

Mounts

Thanks to TidyTilt’s strong, strategically-placed magnets, you can tack your earbuds or whole iPhone to any magnetically-responsive surface. Pop iPhone onto your fridge for referencing cooking recipes, stick it to a dry-erase board for brainstorming, or park it on the key-holder by your front door.

Prototype

Our Prototyping Process

We built and tested dozens of prototypes before settling on TidyTilt‘s final design. Using rapid prototyping techniques such as laser cutting, we were able to quickly make modifications and test the impact of our changes.

TidyTilt

Faculty

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Students

Zahra Tashakorinia
Derek Tarnow