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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Weslynne Ashton Named to Thinkers50 Radar Class

List Spotlights Thinkers with Ideas Most Likely to Shape the Future

February 6, 2024

Thinkers50 Radar in partnership with Deloitte

Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability Weslynne Ashton, a sustainable systems scientist with a dual appointment at the Institute of Design and the Stuart School of Business, is one of 30 up-and-coming business thinkers from around the world whose ideas Thinkers50 predict will make an important impact on management thinking.

“
It is a dazzling honor to be named among such an esteemed group of thought leaders from across the globe. Many of the people named on the Thinkers50 Radar are world-renowned for their bold, insightful work on how individuals can function more effectively within organizations, and how organizations can meet society's evolving needs.
—Weslynne Ashton
Weslynne Ashton giving the keynote at the UW-Madison Sustainability Symposium.

Weslynne Ashton giving the keynote at the UW-Madison Sustainability Symposium.

The annual Thinkers50 Radar Class identifies emerging thinkers with the potential to make a significant contribution to management theory and practice.

Co-director of ID’s Food Systems Action Lab, Weslynne was recently the keynote speaker for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s second annual Sustainability Symposium.

She regularly comments about the real-world applications of her research, the move to a circular economy, and the urgent issue of food waste—particularly in Chicago.

Weslynne and her collaborators have been awarded major grants, including from the National Science Foundation, for their promising work with communities to repair and reinvent food systems.

 

“
What if our food system was organized around principles of love, justice and circularity, rather than money, exploitation and consumption?
—Weslynne Ashton

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Food Systems Action Lab Director Weslynne Ashton on Sustainability, Capitals, and Food Waste