Leah Pistorius
June 24, 2025
Camryn Soo, graduating this year with a BS in Human Centered Design & Engineering, has spent the past two years researching the department’s origins, tracing its evolution through decades of growth and change. Her project—spanning research groups, classes, and interviews—examines HCDE’s dynamic history and the many threads that have shaped its identity.
Camryn Soo, HCDE 2025 Bachelor of Science graduate
Camryn Soo was first introduced to HCDE through the Washington State Academic RedShirt (STARS) program when she was searching for a major with impact. “STARS had us look into different majors and the kinds of work faculty were doing,” Soo says. “That’s when I learned about HCDE, and I saw it was connected to things like accessibility, misinformation, design, and research. It wasn’t just about how technology works—it was about who it impacts.”
Even after finding her major, Soo often struggled to explain to family and friends what exactly HCDE was. That challenge sparked a curiosity: What exactly is HCDE, and where did it come from?
Over the following quarters, Soo began tracing the department’s development from its earliest days as the Humanistic Social Studies Group in the College of Engineering to past initiatives like the Technical Japanese Program.
A journey through the archives
Soo's exploration began in a Directed Research Group (DRG) led by PhD students Os Keyes and Kyra Arnett, which introduced students to the University of Washington’s University Archives. “We each came to the group with a research question, and mine was: What is HCDE?,” Soo recalls. “I figured this was a great chance to learn about where HCDE came from so it could help me explain it better."
That question led her to the basement of Suzzallo Library, where she sifted through archival boxes filled with handwritten notes, memos, and correspondence—some from as far back as the 1940s. “It felt like being an investigator solving a mystery,” she says. “You never knew what you were going to find. Sometimes it was a formal letter, sometimes a sticky note with messy handwriting, and you just had to try to piece it together.”
As her research progressed, Soo expanded her investigation to digital archives, using tools like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. “It was like adding layers to the story,” she says. “Each week I was learning something new, and I had to start laying it all out visually just to make sense of it.”
She began sketching her notes and identifying recurring themes, trying to capture not only the internal evolution of the department but how external cultural and institutional shifts shaped its direction. “I wanted to understand the big picture—what was happening outside of the department that shaped what was happening inside.”
Uncovering HCDE’s earliest roots
One surprising discovery Soo made was the department's origin in the Humanistic Social Studies (HSS) Group, formed in 1947. “The people behind that were trying to bring more humanities and writing into engineering education—something we take for granted now, but it was new at the time," Soo explains. "That whole effort came out of a post-World War II shift in thinking about what engineers needed to understand.”
The HSS initiative would lay the groundwork for the Technical Communication Program, and later, what is now HCDE. For Soo, that effort to “rethink engineering” remains a powerful throughline in the department’s identity.
She also worked to understand HCDE’s connections within the field of Human-Computer Interactions in Professor Kate Starbird’s Survey of Concepts in HCI class. “We were learning about how all these different fields kind of merged together to form HCI, based on broader shifts in technology and research, and I could see from my research that HCDE's roots trace to the same place," Soo said.
Rediscovering the Technical Japanese Program
Soo’s research took a turn in a later DRG led by Professor David Ribes, titled Tech Policy Wonk: What is Research Security? While the group focused on research policy, Ribes encouraged Soo to examine a previously offered program within HCDE: the Technical Japanese Program.
“Professor Ribes really pushed me to look into it more deeply, and once I started, everything kind of shifted,” Soo says. “It became clear that this program was doing something really unique—training engineers to navigate not just technical challenges, but linguistic and cultural ones too.”
To bring this history to life, Soo created an interactive timeline that traces the formation and legacy of the program.
Making history personal
In addition to working with archival records, Soo interviewed past and current faculty, including Professor Michio Tsutsui of the Technical Japanese Program, Professor Mark Haselkorn from HCDE, as well as Judith Clark, daughter of Professor Myron White, co-founder of the Technical Communication Program.
“Talking with them gave me a kind of insight you can’t get from the boxes," she says. "You start to hear the stories, the emotions, and the institutional politics behind what happened.”
One story that stuck with her came from Professor Haselkorn: a tale of how the department may have been formalized, at least in part, because a faculty member wanted an office with a window. “They went to the dean about the window, and it revealed a management issue—there wasn’t a chairperson to represent faculty needs to the dean,” Soo recounts. “So the college decided to create a department. It sounds like lore, but it just shows how human history can be," Soo said.
The experience has changed how she sees her place in HCDE.
“This project made me realize that we’re all part of something much bigger,” she says. “It’s not just a class or a degree, it’s a program with decades of people thinking about how technology should serve society.”
Embracing the undefinable
For Soo, one theme that kept resurfacing throughout her research is the ongoing struggle—and strength—in being hard to define.
"Throughout all the history, I kept finding this debate about what we do," she said. “All these different programs that built up into what HCDE is now were always asking: Are we engineers? Are we supporting engineers?"
That identity question has followed the department through decades of curricular shifts, institutional change, and evolving research agendas. “Even me, with all this research, I still struggle to explain HCDE in one sentence,” Soo says. “But now I see it as a privilege. Being part of something that doesn’t fit neatly into a category means you’re part of something new.”
Soo sees this ambiguity as a reflection of the department’s ambition. “There are so many different things happening across HCDE,” she says. “Each person, each project, throughout the history of the department, has been doing work that’s so new or so different that we don’t always have the words for it yet. And I think not being able to be boxed in—that’s something that should be celebrated.”
She hopes her research encourages others to take pride in HCDE’s unconventional path. "It might feel frustrating that you can't explain the major in a sentence,” she says. “But once you understand where it comes from, you see how powerful it is to be part of something that's always pushing boundaries."