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

Talk description:

Community-based participatory research and design involve working closely with community members throughout the entire research and design process to address health, social, structural, and environmental disparities. These approaches empower community members by recognizing their valuable knowledge and expertise, striving for greater equity and inclusivity. By actively involving community members in this way, it increases the likelihood of implementing effective and sustainable policies, research programs, and technological interventions.

Despite their potential benefits, participatory design and community engagement have not been adequately explored in educational settings. In this talk, Dr. Aflatoony will discuss how these methodologies can enrich the learning experiences of design and engineering students. She will present examples from her recent projects working with minority and culturally diverse groups, including African American, Latino American, and disability communities in Atlanta. Additionally, she will explore how this collaboration can be extended and integrated into the classroom to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, allowing university students to develop human-centered design interventions that prioritize and address the needs of individuals through collaborative research and community-oriented design methodologies.

Dr. Leila Aflatoony is an assistant professor in the School of Industrial Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she specializes in interdisciplinary research and education, focusing on participatory approaches and collaborating with minority communities. Her goal is to co-design community-driven technological interventions that improve the health and living conditions of individuals with disabilities or health issues.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Dr. Aflatoony was a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Computer Science department at the University of British Columbia, where she developed and evaluated an interdisciplinary graduate training program in the human-centered design of interactive technologies for Designing for People (DfP), a multidisciplinary human-centered research and graduate training program.

Dr. Aflatoony has over a decade of experience teaching diverse undergraduate and graduate courses, advising graduate students, and covering topics related to the human-centered design of products and technologies. She earned her Ph.D. in Interaction Design from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University.  Dr. Aflatoony's commitment to excellence in education has been recognized at Georgia Tech through multiple awards and honors, including being named as a candidate for the 2023 Teacher of the Year award and receiving the 2023 Distinguished Recognition of Excellence in Teaching award.