Story

(In the form of some fairly long rambles)

Six years ago, I was a psychologist-wanna-be and was working at a research lab examining the intersection between health behavior, mental health, and addiction. I would spend an entire afternoon sitting with people from all walks of life, hearing their medical history, addiction problems, and their life stories sometimes. Then I had them go through experimental sessions, answer survey questions, and eventually, turned everything into a clean dataset. Some days, thoughts about participants who came into the lab kept me awake at night; It saddens me to think about the woman who got stuck in an abusive relationship and the abyss of addiction, and it saddens me even more, knowing our connection will just be reduced into a data point in a paper possibly published two years from then. Is she gonna get help? What would be a better system to help people like her?

Those two years of working in the lab taught me two things about myself: 1. I am much more drawn to making creative interventions to solve problems for people rather than running statistics models to look for patterns. 2. I care deeply about people and want to do works that empower people's life. And this will always be part of me.

To understand people -- the desire that led me to study psychology in the first place made me drift away from academia and delve into the field of design. I pursued my Master's Degree in Interactive Telecommunication Program at NYU Tisch, where I learned not only to design, code, collaborate, and solve problems, but also to think critically about technology's role in society, the ethical responsibilities that result, and to understand Athe broader political and economic forces that shape the work we do.

Since then, I designed a wearable system that outlines the possibility of empathetic-computing products while raises awareness on ethical questions they might brought; I designed interactive exhibitions at the American Natural History Museum, striving to make knowledge more accessible and engaging; I created Evolution of Covid-19, with attempts to make news information more digestible while mitigating news polarization... I had the privilege to work with and learn from incredible people from diverse backgrounds, and found myself thrive in dynamic, collaboration-driven environments.

I believe technology is always a two-sided sword and it is partially our designers' responsibility to shape it in a way that empowers people's lives, not the opposite. And I feel commited to this goal. I am grateful to have the chance of working as a designer in the past two years and continuously learning to be a better thinker, creator, problem-solver, and hopefully, a better human being. I am now looking for new opportunities to work on products and projects that promote wellness, education, journalism, and social justice.

Chen Huiyi ︎

Chen Huiyi ︎

Story