Graph

Portraits

Sisa Journal

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What excites me:

• Improvised interactivity and incidental augmentation of reality
• How people constrain their behaviors based on the minute properties of an object and environment
• Punctuating everyday situations with semantic, revealing or pleasant sensory experiences
• Peoplesourced and crowdsourced research, development and marketing
• Blending research, social media, marketing and political campaigns
• Intense teamwork powered by individualistic meritocracy

I have been living in the US from age 20 and have lived in the following cities: New Haven, Pittsburgh, Austin, New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Cambridge. I am currently based in Cambridge where the MIT Media Lab is located, and in San Francisco where my husband Michael Shilman is cranking out pattern recognition applications for a Bay Area startup.

A native of Seoul, Korea, I became interested in design in my 5th grade when I saw the cover of “Sisa Journal” (a progressive weekly news magazine) about the intense political protests happening in Korea at that time.

My definition of design changed when I moved to Carnegie Mellon and discovered interaction design: Now I could affect people’s lives in their everyday circumstances, including the way we learn, listen to music, buy, sell, take a trip, sleep, talk, or not talk.

I attempted at making a difference through design by co-founding a design studio in 2001 that specialized in environmental graphics based on diligent contextual research, iterative design process and holistic experience design approach. Our first project was a roller coaster signage that was featured in I.D. magazine, competed in iF Hannover, and exhibited at AIGA Pittsburgh.

Starting in 2002, I worked at Microsoft’s Office division on two versions of world’s most used software product besides Windows. The small improvements in design I made in the product literally affected millions of people. I delivered a best-practices case study talk to an auditorium audience at Microsoft’s annual UX Day 2005 as the youngest speaker of the event. After three years at Microsoft, I moved to IDEO to expand my horizon beyond desktop software and reclaim my passion of social innovation through design innovation.

My portfolio from 2005 is still online here. If you are curious what kind of portfolio you might get after 3-4 years of experience as an interaction designer—including how little work you can legally show—this might be a good reference point.

Two years at IDEO was an eye-opening experience: I worked on branding, space design, cultural liason, business development, embedded interfaces, mobile services, business plans and toy brainstorms, all empowered and value-added through lateral thinking. Two twists that happened at IDEO:

1. I discovered that I enjoy learning the business side of things and message crafting;
2. I became interested in physical computing and branching beyond screen interfaces into hardware and material component.

Now my journey continues at the MIT Media Lab. It’s time that these life experiences come together to prodice something coooool!!