Care is an area where human physical and emotional labor makes it difficult for even advanced technologies to replace. My work is not about replacing care, but about exploring how technology can meaningfully support it. With a background in UX design, I employ mixed-methods research to uncover the often-invisible challenges faced by caregivers and care workers, understand their needs, and propose design directions that meaningfully support care work in practice. Extending this perspective, I also examine how technology can support predicting patients’ hospital length of stay, bridging everyday caregiving practices with broader healthcare management.
I love animals. To take care of my dog with cancer, I devoted a significant amount of my resources — two years, $40,000, and a great deal of emotional energy. This experience taught me just how taxing caregiving can be, and how deeply it affects the well-being of both caregivers and care recipients. Although I’m still grieving her loss, her life and passing have profoundly shaped my research focus on care.
I’m grateful for the small hardships in my life that made me stronger. I grew up in a low-income family with parents who didn’t hold college degrees, but that taught me how to study independently and helped me enter Seoul National University 🎓. To pursue my dream of studying in Japan, I taught myself Japanese, worked part-time at a Japanese hotel, and spent six meaningful months in Tokyo 🇯🇵. My husband and I endured eight years of long-distance between Korea 🇰🇷 and the U.S. 🇺🇸, which gave me time to focus on work, study English, and build self-resilience skills through yoga 🧘 and swimming 🏊. These experiences taught me to stand up again after failure and follow my life motto: “All things are difficult before they are easy.” (Thomas Fuller)
I love traveling around the U.S. I enjoy road trips 🚙, camping 🏕️, cruising 🛳️, and shopping at the theme parks 🎇. While I’m spending a lot of money on fun, my husband and I try to improve our financial literacy by learning about stocks 📈 and real estate 🏡. We’re also doing our best to continue weight training for our health 💪! Can’t wait to enjoy it all with you!
