The Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering welcomes Cayla Key for a special community lecture. UW students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend.

Talk description:

The need for individuals proficient in critical systemic thinking with a deep understanding of the social, environmental, and political tensions inherent to design and technology has never been greater. Design can be an incredible tool for environmental responsibility, community impact, and for envisioning more generative and inclusive futures. To realize that potential, however, we need practitioners able to understand and navigate the intricate ethical issues entangled with technology design. During this talk, I will discuss working with Queer, Feminist, and Indigenous perspectives as ethical touchstones within my work as an educator and researcher. I will bring forward examples from within and alongside the classroom which illustrate my passion for ethics as an iterative process of listening sincerely to the differences of others, attuning to obligations and reciprocities, and responding with care. I will share my philosophical and practical approaches to design and education which support material, theoretical, and methodological explorations and rich inquiries. Lastly, I will showcase these explorations as well-crafted, highly polished physical, digital, and visual designs and design stories.
 

Cayla Key (Cayla/they/them) is a creative educator and researcher working at the intersection of design, technology, and ethics. Drawing on Queer, Feminist, and Indigenous perspectives, Cayla develops teaching and research agendas that center ethics, sustainability, and marginalized perspectives as critical starting points for design thinking. Viewing design not only as a catalyst for environmental stewardship and community engagement but also as a conduit for exploration and intellectual inquiry, Cayla encourages students to challenge conventional design paradigms and embrace innovative approaches.

Cayla currently serves as an Interaction Design Lecturer at the University of Washington's School of Art + Art History + Design. Cayla is a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow and a Mozilla Research Fellow with diverse design experiences ranging from graphic to soft-goods industrial design. They are a Ph.D. candidate in Human-Computer Interaction from Northumbria University and hold a B.S in Interaction Design from the University of Washington. Cayla’s work had been awarded a Best Paper Awards and 4 Best Paper Honorable Mention Awards at the ACM conferences Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) and Designing Interactive Systems (DIS). Their work has been funded by the European Commission and Mozilla Foundation.