A Gentle Introduction to Contextual Engineering
- Event Type
- Seminar/Symposium
- Sponsor
- Water Resources Science and Engineering - CEE
- Location
- 1017 Civil and Environmental Engineering Building (Hydrosystems)
- Date
- Nov 21, 2025 12:00 pm
- Speaker
- Dr. Ann Perry-Witmer - Teaching Associate Professor - Carle Illinois College of Medicine - Agricultural & Biological Engineering - University of Illinois
- Contact
- Jennifer Bishop
- jbishop4@illinois.edu
- Views
- 17
- Originating Calendar
- Water Resources Engineering and Science Seminars
Abstract
Humanitarian engineers spends billions of dollars on technology that fails to improve humanity’s conditions, and the failure most often occurs because the technology doesn’t match the needs, capabilities, values, and limitations of the people for whom it’s created. Contextual Engineering tries to address this failure by refocusing design on the users, making them an integral part of the process to solve the world’s greatest physical needs.Bio
Dr. Witmer is a teaching associate professor in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and Ag and Bio Department at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and the originator of Contextual Engineering, which applies the societal conditions to technical design processes. She has worked with communities on five continents, exploring place-based knowledge and applying it to engineering solutions that best address user needs.