In collaboration with a local school district, we created a solution to boost high school students' career readiness. This included an educational guide with 10 design heuristics, empowering educators and designers to drive positive change through learning experience designs.

As a case study following our design guide, we developed a research-backed game that increased motivation for self-improvement in essential interpersonal skills. The game received praise from students, teachers, and school administrators, demonstrating its efficacy in the classroom by facilitating discussions on interpersonal skills and improving career readiness.

Looking for better health amidst pressure? Value self-care, yet face challenges to initiate? Feel isolated on your path to wellness?

Introducing Daily Nudges — a lifestyle, mobile-based medium-term learning experience that helps college students practice wellness activities, stay informed about on-campus wellness events, and contribute to the greater campus community's well-being through taking small daily actions.

UberEats currently delivers food to millions of users all around the world. But for users that are behind the wheel, visually impaired, or simply prefer to multi-task, ordering food online can be a tricky task. How can we introduce a CUI (conversational user interface) assistant into the existing food ordering ecosystem to heighten the ordering experience?

Our answer was Umi, our CUI assistant designed to help users under any circumstances to order from UberEats in an effortless, efficient, and personalized way through visual, sound, and voice. At the same time, Umi also optimizes the order-delivery process for restaurants and resolution of customer issues. We hope through targeting multiple stakeholders and pain points, Umi can truly become part of the food ordering ecosystem.

Values impact our work and drive why we design. However, how do the values we hold as individuals fit in the broader design community? What are the values that motivate others to design?

Using the AIGA 2019 Design Census data, #HUEAREYOU uses HEX codes to visualize the unique values each designer holds in the community. As users enter the site, they are encouraged to see where they fit in the community visualization by taking a quiz that measures their priorities and values, giving them a personalized HEX code.

Do you favor oral tales or stories through words and images? For me, both possess their charm — Oral stories evolve with time, while written ones ensure lasting reach. I always wondered if there is a middle ground between the two forms.

The Morphies creatively separate text and images. The main book showcases illustrations that are open for readers' interpretation, while story cards offer a curated tale from the author. Suitable for individuals and groups, parents can guide children's reading, fostering imagination and adding personal touches, allowing readers' creativity to craft a tale beyond our text.

"Sincerely" is a student-initiated publication from CMU School of Design. We aim to celebrate inspiring designers by conducting interviews and sharing their stories through various mediums, including newsprint, web, and film.

In this first issue, let's meet a renowned calligrapher and a cherished professor, the ambassador of the 26 letters, Myrna Rosen.

Located beside the Design School building, the small nook is now a neglected space design students pass by but rarely use. Our proposal seeks to transform it into an interactive playful corner, uniting the School of Design community through a light-hearted collaging activity.

Nook Talk embodies the diversity within our shared journey at the School of Design, celebrating our individuality in a communal setting.

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an increasingly important role in the user experience (UX) of products and services. Yet, research shows that one challenge many designers face is with understanding what AI can do.

Project UX of AI aims to build a tool that helps designers to work with existing AI capabilities effectively. I worked as a research assistant, focusing on ideating the website's structure and look and creating the site's visual content. This is still an ongoing project @CMU HCII.

Construction Junction (CJ) is a local Pittsburgh business with the mission to promote conservation through the reuse of building materials. This client project helps CJ to optimize its donation—pickup flow and build an eco-friendly online community base with a newly branded mobile-first approach. The resulting mobile app leave materials donors with a hassle-free and rewarding experience accessible from anywhere.

Many designers have their own design heroes that guide their lives and careers. For me, one among them is Dr. Edward Tufte. In this multi-part project, I created a booklet, a short informational video & a multipage website to showcase and celebrate his inspirational book designs, data visualizations, and landscape arts.

The catalyst for this project was inspired by long hours on Zoom, endless days of monotonous conversations, many filled staring blankly at the computer screen. The project allowed me to dive deep into making a beautiful book that tells the story of a simple everyday object, like an Apple in this case.

The end goal was to further my understanding of grids and create a more advanced typographic system, and discover my unique visual voice as a designer.

Texts are taken from Science of the Secondary: Apple, by Atelier Hoko. The prototype book was printed with an inkjet printer & bounded manually.

High-speed connectivity is a necessary form of transportation in the 21st Century. This project aims to help raise awareness and tell the story of Southwestern Pennsylvania's true state of broadband connectivity, helping give a voice to the most vulnerable populations who are unserved or underserved by current connectivity through a video and various social media branding materials.

Utilizing photography, complemented by diagrams and informative text, "The Birth of a New City" is dedicated to showcasing the remarkable transformation of Suzhou. Over a mere three decades, the area has evolved from a humble fishing village into a modern urban center. The publication's goal is to portray Suzhou's rich history, architecture, and culture through the lens of an Urban Designer, inviting the general public to engage.

This bilingual publication is laid out in both English and Chinese, maintaining a consistent equilibrium between the two languages throughout. Each page harmoniously blends visuals and text, achieving a refined balance. .

A heartfelt thank you to professor, Brett Yasko, for his guidance in designing and producing this book and the knowledge and encouragement he has provided me over the years!

Public art, though abundant in large cities, feels indifferent to most passengers. Many public arts fail to invoke viewers’ feelings and are unsuccessful in establishing personal connections. So, we chose to investigate: how might we increase the personal connections between viewers and the art? Through interviews and contextual methods, our research implied that establishing a sense of belonging in a city consists of a four-step process: attraction, information, conversation, and recollection, which we have simplified to AICR. This page is a quick walk-through of the research process and final insights.

This is a project from HCI core course, User-Centered Research and Evaluation (UCRE). I enjoyed working with three wonderful graduate & undergraduate CMU students from mixed majors.

(There are quite a lot of images for this project! Please use the alternate pdf linked below if it's too long to load. ;)

The project orients to make existing activities at Phipps, a well-loved Pittsburgh Plant Conservatory, more relatable and memorable with advanced techs such as Vive gaze tracking and other MR models.

The design aims to help visitors convert abstract mental representations to images and 3d models wherever they are in the browsing process. The interactions are mainly targeted at students, travelers, and parents but have something for everyone owing to a strong sharing feature.

PS: I would say the process behind the sketch video is more valuable than the final video itself. When I was building this site and collecting files for projects, I read through this medium post again. I tried to create a condensed version of it, but every bit of it is so real, memorable, and important that I couldn't get rid of any.

As a senior age, their life can become more isolated. There are many possible causes and effects of this problem. The government and various organizations have attempted to solve this wicked problem.

This map aims to explain the root causes, major effects, and current solutions of the issue, as well as the reasons at different scales. Through visualization of the system of the wicked problem, we, as designers and system thinkers, have come up with a couple of justifiable solutions.

Although there is a plethora of information about menstrual cycles available to us on the internet and in print, this information can be difficult to access for young girls getting their periods for the first time. Oftentimes, this information can also be misleading and does not capture a diverse array of experiences. Our project aims to persuade young girls going through puberty to feel more empowered to have conversations, seek help, and learn more about their menstrual cycles. We also aim to communicate that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the menstrual cycle and other bodily changes. Our audience is focused more on young teens that are experiencing their first period, but we will also provide information and provoke empathy to other gender identities that don’t experience periods.

Logging is still a massive generator of wealth in many countries. The job opportunities created by this industry are the major contributor to provincial GDP. However, the profit created is at the cost of future generations because it is not a sustainable practice.

This short film targets young adults, aims to raise their awareness of the issue, and, most importantly, to persuade them that logging of old-growth trees is not a necessary evil and it is our generation’s responsibility to take action against old-growth forest logging.

Pieces from here and there. I absolutely love to play with graphics, color, and type, still or in motion, big or small. Observing how images reside on products and in environments helps me grow and brings me joy.

Draw something every day ;)