Assistant Teaching Professor
Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE)
 

• cayla@uw.edu
• 317 Sieg Building

Biography

Dr. Cayla Key (Cayla/they/them) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. Cayla is a creative educator and researcher working at the intersection of design, technology, and ethics. Drawing on Queer and Feminist epistemologies, Cayla develops teaching and research agendas that center ethics, sustainability, and diverse 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.

Before joining HCDE, Cayla was 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 Mozilla Research Fellow with design experiences ranging from graphic design to soft-goods industrial design to UX/UI design.

Cayla holds a PhD in Communication Design from Northumbria University and a BA 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.

Education

PhD, Communication Design, School of Design, Northumbria University
BA, Interaction Design, School of Art + Art History + Design, University of Washington