Design as Inquiry
About Me
I’m Daniela Rosner. As a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington, I co-direct the Tactile and Tactical Design (TAT) Lab and the HCDE Masters Program. I hold adjunct appointments in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS), the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXArts), and the Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). I also serve as an associate member of the Einstein Center for Digital Futures in Berlin, Germany.
Research
My work uses a range of design and artistic interventions to examine sites of innovation historically absented within technology cultures. Lying at the intersection of science and technology studies and design, my scholarship focuses on entanglements between craft and technoculture—nodes and needles; fiber optics and fiber arts. My book Critical Fabulations engages Saidiya Hartman’s methodology of archival absence and encounter to investigate new ways of thinking about design’s past to rework future relationships between technology and social responsibility (MIT Press, 2018).
Teaching
My teaching looks across varied works—essays, exhibition catalogs, patents, zines, and book excerpts—that put approaches, practices, and performances from design and artistic traditions in conversation with critical data studies, algorithmic developments, and science and technology inquiries.