Bringing Human Centered Design & Engineering to Washington 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.

Taylor Bradshaw, a junior in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE), has spent much of her school year helping develop activities, guiding student teams, and introducing younger students to concepts like accessibility, prototyping, creativity, and human-centered problem solving.

This spring, Bradshaw served as a student coordinator for HCDE’s Engineering Discovery Days activities, helping organize exhibits for thousands of K–12 students visiting the UW campus. She also spent her spring break teaching middle school students in northeastern Washington through HCDE’s Alternative Spring Break program, guiding them through brainstorming, prototyping, and collaborative design activities. Next year, Bradshaw will continue building on those outreach and mentorship experiences as a First-year Interest Group (FIG) Leader for incoming engineering students. Along the way, she found herself increasingly drawn to the collaborative and people-centered approach to engineering that first led her to HCDE.

Discovering HCDE

Bradshaw originally came to UW expecting to pursue environmental engineering. But as she explored engineering student groups and reflected on the kinds of projects she enjoyed most, she realized she was looking for something broader and more people-focused.

In high school, she had participated in STEM clubs and national technology competitions, including a project focused on designing a more accessible ice cream scooper for people with hand mobility challenges. Looking back, she now sees clear connections between those experiences and the human-centered mindset she found in HCDE.

“At first, HCDE was hard to understand because it’s so broad,” Bradshaw said. “But once I got into the classes, I realized it aligned with a lot of the things I already felt passionate about.”

Alternative Spring Break

This spring, Bradshaw brought that mindset to northeastern Washington through HCDE’s Alternative Spring Break program. Alongside three other HCDE students, she spent a week at Curlew School teaching 6th–8th grade students about human-centered design, prototyping, brainstorming, interviewing, and giving constructive feedback.

The experience challenged the HCDE students to think carefully about how to teach design concepts to younger students. “We were all kind of worried at first,” Bradshaw said. “We weren’t teaching them how to build a robot or do a circuit board. We were teaching them how to design, how to prototype, and why it’s important to understand someone’s experiences before building something.”

HCDE’s Alternative Spring Break team of Taylor Bradshaw, Cayla Callisto, Gahui Yun, and Maria Thu Anh Nguyen spent spring break at Curlew School in northeastern Washington, teaching middle school students about human-centered design and engineering.

By the end of the week, students were creating imaginative prototypes and confidently presenting their ideas, including robots with detachable cleaning arms and built-in emergency stop buttons. Bradshaw said one of the most memorable parts of the trip was seeing how naturally middle school students thought outside of the box. “They didn’t care what was realistic,” she said. “They were just thinking of whatever they wanted to create. Their imagination was so big, and it was really refreshing to see. They had great ideas.”

Before traveling to Curlew, the HCDE outreach students also practiced adapting lessons for different learning needs, including working with multilingual students at Seattle World School using translated handouts, visuals, and picture-based instruction.

Bringing HCDE to Engineering Discovery Days

This year, Bradshaw also helped coordinate HCDE’s Engineering Discovery Days activities, working with student teams to develop exhibits that introduce younger students to concepts like accessibility, creativity, prototyping, and human-centered problem solving.

HCDE’s exhibits included accessibility-focused redesign challenges, tactile maps, sustainability activities, AI and creativity demonstrations, and interactive fidget toy design stations.

HCDE's exhibits and volunteers at the 2026 Engineering Discovery Days.

As a student coordinator, Bradshaw found herself thinking carefully about how to make activities engaging and accessible for younger audiences. “It's made me think about things from a kid’s mindset,” she said. “Would a kid enjoy this? Would this make them excited?”

Looking ahead

Next year, Bradshaw will continue building on those experiences as an Engineering First-year Interest Group (FIG) Leader, mentoring incoming engineering students during their transition to UW. The role feels especially meaningful because of the support she received from her own FIG leader as a first-year student navigating engineering pathways and trying to understand where she belonged.

She hopes her experiences can encourage other students, especially those who may feel hesitant about getting involved. For much of her early time at UW, Bradshaw focused almost entirely on coursework and worried she was “behind” compared to students already participating in clubs, research, or outreach programs.

But joining HCDE activities during her junior year changed that perspective. “It’s honestly never too late,” she said. “I thought these things would take time away from school, m  but they actually helped me in school. They’ve made my experience at UW a lot more meaningful.”

For Bradshaw, the experiences have reinforced one of the central ideas she’s learned in HCDE: good design starts with understanding people. And now, whether she’s teaching middle school students in Curlew, helping run Engineering Discovery Days, or mentoring future engineers at UW, she’s helping others discover that too.