Selected Exhibitions & Installations

  • MobilityTown — with Motomichi Nakamura

  • Sonified Cranbrook — with Skooby Laposky

  • Medusa — robotic installation, Detroit

  • Lickestra — with Emilie Baltz

Residencies

  • Museum of Arts and Design, New York

  • Museum of Fine Arts Houston Dora Maar House

  • Good Hart Artist Residency, Michigan

Writing

  • My Robot Gets Me (Harvard Business Review Press)

  • LEO the Maker Prince (Maker Media)

  • Writing in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Popular Science

Awards & Innovation

  • Knight New Work grant — John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

  • Co-inventor of the ClikBrik metronome for drummers (U.S. Patent)

  • Work featured on covers of Popular Science, MIT Technology Review, and The New York Times Sunday Review

Carla Diana is a designer, author, and educator whose work explores how intelligence takes physical form through robots, objects, and interactive systems. Through studio experiments, installations, and product design, she investigates how behavior, motion, and sound shape the way people experience and relate to emerging technologies.

She is Associate Professor and Director of Product Design at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan, where she leads students in exploring the intersection of emerging technology, physical form, and human experience. In addition to her academic work and studio practice, she serves as Design Advisor and former Head of Design for Diligent Robotics, where advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning manifest in robot assistants designed to support healthcare workers.

Earlier in her career Carla worked at the innovation design firms Smart Design and frog, contributing to projects ranging from robotics to connected home appliances. Through both consultancy and collaborative work she has contributed to numerous patented products and is co-inventor of the ClikBrik metronome for drummers, a modular rhythm tool designed for musicians.

Carla writes and lectures frequently on the social impact of robotics and emerging technology. She is the author of My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021), a guide to designing emotionally intelligent technology. She is also the creator of LEO the Maker Prince: Journeys in 3D Printing (Maker Media, 2014), the first children’s book about 3D printing, and previously co-hosted the Robopsych Podcast, which explored the psychological and design dimensions of human-robot interaction.

Her studio practice includes interactive installations and experimental design projects that invite public engagement with emerging technologies. Works such as MobilityTown, developed with projection-mapping artist Motomichi Nakamura, Sonified Cranbrook with artist Skooby Laposky, the Medusa robotic installation in Detroit, and Lickestra, a multisensory musical installation created with Emilie Baltz, explore how physical systems, sound, and artificial intelligence shape shared experiences of technology.

Carla has participated in numerous artist residencies including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France, and the Good Hart Artist Residency in Michigan.

From 2018 to 2025 she founded and led the Interaction (4D) Design program at Cranbrook Academy of Art, a graduate program focused on creative technology where students explored the intersection of code, form, and electronics through installations and interactive objects. Earlier in her academic career she developed some of the first university courses focused on designing smart objects at institutions including Parsons School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania’s Integrated Product Design program, the School of Visual Arts, and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Carla holds an MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BE in Mechanical Engineering from The Cooper Union.