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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WBEZ Radio Browser

December 1, 2012

Assignment

In this hybrid research/project workshop, students explored the intersection of diagrams and data visualization, where data visualization is becoming a viable visible language and applied learnings to a client project.

Synopsis

This project explores on line opportunities for WBEZ—Chicago’s premiere public radio station—by creating visualizations that will allow their audiences to interact with their rich digital content in a more compelling and effective manner.

Final Results

The Broadcast Browser
A multi-modal view of the on-air listening experience that visualizes radio content across time

The WBEZ Explorer
A browser that engages, enables and affects users to sustain and strengthen WBEZ’s web presence.

WBEZ Flow
Mobile listening experience that blends seamlessly into a user’s daily rhythm.

Broadcast Browser: Visualizing radio content across time

Faculty

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Students

Lauren Braun
Helen Wills
Boris Geissler
Atsuko Mori
Theodore Pollari