Designer, Researcher, and Artist
for Healthcare and Social Justice
Hello! I am Soyon (pronounced SO-YAWN), design researcher at the Healthcare Robotics Lab and founding artist of Little Beanie Studio, with interests in mental health advocacy and social justice.
Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation (CARMEN)
CARMEN is a small, tabletop robot designed to help people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) learn skills to improve memory, attention, and executive functioning at home.
Hospitals of the Future: Robotic Systems for Resilient Emergency Departments
We co-created future technology prototypes contextualized within the Emergency Department that can modify the built environment to support resilience, which we then used to co-create a Design Catalog.
Mood Cube
Mood Cube aims to support emotional well-being in media consumption through a mood-aware movie recommendation system.
EmpatHear
EmpatHear is a telephone booth where you listen to a stranger reflecting on their day. Your level of empathy towards the stranger, measured and visualized on a computer screen in real-time using their biofeedback of brain signals and skin conductance, shapes their monologue.
HugMe
HugMe is a plushie robot that senses your hug and chats with you about your day and feelings. Give this little guy a hug if and when you want that extra companionship!
Spasm Bot
Spasm Bot aims to relieve the pain from blood-pooling for long-term wheelchair users. It is the resulting product of the collaboration with a man with quadriplegia, A, and his wife and caregiver, B.
Sizzling Egg Sunhat
The Sizzling Egg Sunhat is a felted fried-egg-shaped sunhat that makes a sizzling frying sound whose volume varies by the brightness of surroundings.
Femme Tech
I sketched project ideas, ranging from fashion to robots and apps, boosting the privacy, safety, and empowerment of femme-identifying individuals
