Human Centered Design & Engineering

Outstanding Alumni Aleenah Ansari

HCDE has named writer, creative strategist, and entrepreneur Aleenah Ansari (BS '19) the recipient of the 2026 Outstanding Alumni Award in recognition of her work elevating voices and building community through storytelling.

Bringing HCDE to WA students

From teaching middle school students in northeastern Washington to coordinating Engineering Discovery Days activities at UW, Human Centered Design & Engineering student Taylor Bradshaw is helping inspire the next generation of engineers through outreach and mentorship.

Spring 2026 Course Showcases

HCDE invites the community to a week of student showcases (June 2–8) featuring interactive demos, prototypes, presentations, and capstone projects from across HCDE courses.

Distinguished Lecture with Laura Forlano

Dr. Laura Forlano delivered HCDE's 2026 Distinguished Lecture, Designing Consequences: On Living Well with Machines. Drawing on her own “disabled cyborg” life and nearly two decades of research spanning design, critical disability studies, critical computing, and critical pedagogy, Forlano explored the social consequences of technology design and posed a broader provocation about who gets to decide what it means to be human — and who we will become as a species.