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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ID Grad School

Designed to expand your career opportunities.

We offer a range of rigorous graduate programs that expand the tenets and applications of human-centered design, systems-based design, and holistic design—so you can identify and build new ways forward in any industry or role, even in the most challenging times.

ID Academy

Designed to help your organization see more possibilities.

Through education and trainings based on groundbreaking research, we can offer your organization the unique perspectives necessary to see the opportunities and obstacles ahead, no matter your goals.

Apples on a conveyor belt
ID Action Labs

Designed to unlock fresh knowledge.

Through our Action Labs and other initiatives, we show groups how design can help them find novel approaches to the world’s most pressing issues and transform the systems that underpin them—from cities, education, and finance to food, healthcare, and technology.

People walking across Kaplan

Where learners become leaders. And vice versa.

From graduate students to the C-Suite, we help professionals use design as a lens to anticipate the speed, scale, and complexity of change in our lives. Our design process will help you seek out a diversity of perspectives, ask deeper questions, and resist easy answers. Along the way, you’ll challenge tired assumptions, expose issues embedded in the systems that drive daily life, and ultimately, reveal the larger opportunities that will make a difference.

Which is useful, whether your job is learning or leading.