CHCI welcomes new faculty member Yoon Jung Choi

Yoon Jung Choi is an assistant professor of Industrial Design at the School of Design at Virginia Tech. Her research interests focus on the application of design to social, environmental, and humanitarian innovation in creating products, interactions, and systems and sustainable innovation through impactful industry/public collaboration. Yoon completed her PhD at the Royal College of Art in London. Her thesis focused on designing for owner–object detachment through care practice for object longevity and environmental benefit. Yoon has an MA in Communication Design from Kingston University in London. She has ten years of experience in the industry as a senior/middle-level designer at various brand design consultancies in London and then as an independent designer at Samsung Design Europe, Lewis Moberly, and SiebertHead for clients such as Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Cussons, GSK, Carlsberg, McDonald’s, Werther’s Original, and Sainsbury’s. She has previously taught at Central Saint Martins, the University of the Arts London, and the Royal College of Art. 

Yoon describes her interest in CHCI: “My enthusiasm for HCI is rooted in my focus on discovering new meanings of interaction, aiming to explore novel methods of communication between humans and machines for a sustainable future. The way information is presented and designed significantly influences human decision-making, highlighting the potential to lead us toward sustainability. Through my previous experiments, I have delved into various fields, such as interaction design, human behavior, HCI, user experience design, and communication systems, to foster sustainable behavior. As my work has increasingly adopted a multidisciplinary approach, the interplay between neuroscience, HCI, and design has particularly intrigued me. I believe it holds the key to crafting sustainable living environments through multidisciplinary collaboration. Joining the HCI community would greatly benefit my work, allowing me to explore these areas more deeply and contribute to our collective goal of a sustainable future.”