PhD Research

As urbanization and technological development reshape city life, everyday experiences can become increasingly human-centered and detached from local ecological systems. This disconnection can weaken urban dwellers’ meaningful relationships with environmental more-than-human beings (e.g., animals, plants, rivers, fungi) and their felt sense of interdependence, reinforcing anthropocentric perspectives. Since 2022, I have worked closely with the Ohlone community, a Native American people of the San Francisco Bay Area, on the Indigenous Science Mixed Reality Exhibits, a co-design project with the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California. These experiences have led me to ask:

Specifically, I ask:

• How can co-designing interactive experiences grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing support Indigenous communities in sharing and sustaining their knowledge practices on their own terms, and strengthen their self-representation in technology-mediated contexts?
• How do urban dwellers engage with and make meaning of more-than-human experiences informed by Indigenous ways of knowing, and how might these experiences shape their understanding of their place and responsibilities within local ecological relationships?
• What design frameworks emerge from the creation, implementation, and evaluation of Indigenous-informed interactive experiences, and how can they inform future more-than-human design research and practice?

My research brings Indigenous ways of knowing into more-than-human design in human–computer interaction (HCI) through embodied interaction and multimodal learning. I aim to make three contributions:

• Conceptual foundations for experience design: Identifying key Indigenous concepts, such as personhood, reciprocity, and kinship, that offer non-anthropocentric ways of understanding human–nature relationships and open new possibilities for experience design.
• Design and empirical insights: Exploring how these concepts can inform embodied, technology-mediated interactive experiences, and examining how such experiences may help urban dwellers engage with environmental more-than-human beings, recognize their place within local ecological relationships, and develop a more relational understanding of their connection to nature.
• Design frameworks: Developing frameworks through the creation, implementation, and evaluation of Indigenous-informed interactive experiences to guide future more-than-human design research and practice.

Broader Research Interests

Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) · More-than-Human Design (MtH Design) · Augmented Reality (AR) · Mixed Reality (MR) · Museum Exhibit, Interaction & Visitor Experience Design · Embodied Interaction & Multimodal Learning · Informal Learning · Community-Based Participatory Research & Design (CBPR) · Co-Design · Digital Cultural Heritage · Citizen Science · Sustainable HCI · Research through Design (RtD) · Qualitative Research

Publications and Presentations

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