Professor of Practice, Design Fellow of Marguerite Fairchild Centennial Professorship
Kate Canales is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Design in the School of Design and Creative Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2018. She is a founding leader of the school and previously served as Department Chair, overseeing strategy, operations, curriculum, and faculty governance for the department’s undergraduate and graduate programs (B.A., B.F.A., M.A. and M.F.A.), as well as the Center for Integrated Design, which provides design education to hundreds of non-design majors each year.
During her tenure as chair, Canales led the creation and renewal of multiple degree programs and systems, with a focus on expanding access to design education and broadening the department’s definition of design practice. Her leadership included the elimination of the undergraduate portfolio requirement in admissions, the launch of the interdisciplinary M.A. in Design focused on Health in partnership with Dell Medical School, and the reimagining of the M.F.A. in Design as a collaborative, cross-disciplinary thesis experience embedded within the larger university context. In 2024, she stepped back from administrative leadership to return full-time to teaching and to deepen her design research and professional practice.
Canales’s creative practice and teaching explore the intersections of design and human behavior, with particular attention to how everyday systems shape—and are shaped by—human action. Her work emphasizes design research, ethnography, prototyping, collaboration, and experience design, often centered on what she describes as “mundane design systems,” such as healthcare encounters, transportation, domestic routines, and other ordinary experiences influenced by design decisions. At UT Austin, she teaches courses in design research and ethnography, prototyping, collaboration, and experience design across undergraduate and graduate levels.
Alongside her academic work, Canales maintains an active design consulting practice and is a co-founder of the firm TWOxTWO, where projects are structured as collaborative learning environments that mirror studio-based pedagogy. Her approach to education and practice is informed by her early career as a professional product designer and creative director at IDEO and frog, internationally recognized design and innovation consultancies.
Kate Canales is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Design in the School of Design and Creative Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2018. She is a founding leader of the school and previously served as Department Chair, overseeing strategy, operations, curriculum, and faculty governance for the department’s undergraduate and graduate programs (B.A., B.F.A., M.A. and M.F.A.), as well as the Center for Integrated Design, which provides design education to hundreds of non-design majors each year.
During her tenure as chair, Canales led the creation and renewal of multiple degree programs and systems, with a focus on expanding access to design education and broadening the department’s definition of design practice. Her leadership included the elimination of the undergraduate portfolio requirement in admissions, the launch of the interdisciplinary M.A. in Design focused on Health in partnership with Dell Medical School, and the reimagining of the M.F.A. in Design as a collaborative, cross-disciplinary thesis experience embedded within the larger university context. In 2024, she stepped back from administrative leadership to return full-time to teaching and to deepen her design research and professional practice.
Canales’s creative practice and teaching explore the intersections of design and human behavior, with particular attention to how everyday systems shape—and are shaped by—human action. Her work emphasizes design research, ethnography, prototyping, collaboration, and experience design, often centered on what she describes as “mundane design systems,” such as healthcare encounters, transportation, domestic routines, and other ordinary experiences influenced by design decisions. At UT Austin, she teaches courses in design research and ethnography, prototyping, collaboration, and experience design across undergraduate and graduate levels.
Alongside her academic work, Canales maintains an active design consulting practice and is a co-founder of the firm TWOxTWO, where projects are structured as collaborative learning environments that mirror studio-based pedagogy. Her approach to education and practice is informed by her early career as a professional product designer and creative director at IDEO and frog, internationally recognized design and innovation consultancies.
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kcanales@
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