SUN YOUNG PARK

I am an assistant professor at the University of Michigan in the Stamps School of Art and Design and the School of Information. As a design researcher and interaction designer, I’m interested in complex systems, services, and environments that shape people’s needs, behaviors, and cultures/practices. My research interests lie at the intersection of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Health Informatics, and I’m particularly interested in examining the social, technical, contextual and cultural dimensions of social computing systems. My work focuses on designing and evaluating interactive information technology use in highly reliable, dynamic environments, such as healthcare settings. My dissertation is titled "Learning from Users' Adaptation Experience: Outlining the Design Space for Health IT Systems."

Prior to my position at UM, I completed my PhD in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. During my graduate studies, I was a member of the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction (LUCI) at UCI Irvine, and completed a very enriching internship in UX team at Bloomberg L.P. in New York City. I previously earned a M.Des. in Interaction Design at Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.S. in Industrial Design (major) and Multi-media Design (minor) at Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, Korea.

I am currently working on the following research topics:

Enhancing Pediatric Patient-Clinician Communication through Empowering Pediatric Patients as Active Communicators: This project aims to obtain an empirical understanding of the current communication and information-sharing practices of pediatric patients and clinicians in oncology care and to explore opportunities for designing technologies that support and enhance these practices.

Supporting College Students’ Mental Wellness: We are designing an easily accessible online support group in which college students can exchange support and perform creative, therapeutic activities that improve mental health.

Designing for Supporting Patient Information Needs and Awareness during Emergency Care Visits: This project examines patient information needs and patient-clinician communication during emergency care stays, when information is often scarce for patients. The goal of the study is to enrich current understandings of patient-centered care practices in hospital settings and inform extended designs of health IT systems to support patient information needs and awareness.

Teaching: I teach graduate and undergraduate Human-Computer Interaction courses at Stamps, including Interaction Design and Research Methods.

Prospective students: I am always looking to work with self-motivated, enthusiastic, and creative students who are interested in HCI, CSCW, and Design research! I generally expect students to commit to at least two semesters of research if they want to join my research projects. If you are already a student at UM and are interested in working with me, please check out “here” to learn more. *I am looking to have one PhD student next year (2019-2020), so please check out the the SI admission site or contact me for more information.*

NEWS //
I was awarded a NSF CAREER grant!
April 2020
I'm so thrilled that my proposal was awarded for the NSF CAREER (title: Advancing Pediatric Patient-Provider Communication through Collaborative Tracking and Data Sharing). (more info)

Excited to organize a workshop on Conversational Agents for Health and Wellbeing at CHI 2020!
January 2020
We're very excited to organize a workshop on CA for Health and Wellbeing. For more info: http://casforhealth.org

Paper accepted to CHI 2020!
January 2020
My work on pediatric patients will be presented at CHI 2020 (titled "Learning from Positive Adaptations of Pediatric Cancer Patients to Design Health Technologies")!

I'm organizing a workshop on AI and Human Collaboration in Healthcare at CSCW 2019!
September 2019
Super excited to organize a workshop, "Identifying Challenges and Opportunities in Human-AI Collaboration in Healthcare" with amazing collaborators from both academia and industry! For more info: https://aihealth.wixsite.com/cscw2019

Paper accepted to CSCW 2019!
September 2019
My work on pediatric patients will be presented at CSCW 2019 (titled "Balancing Tensions between Caregiving and Parenting Responsibilities in Pediatric Patient Care")!

I'm organizing a workshop at the ECSCW 2019, sponsored by ACM-FCA!
April 2019
Excited to organize a workshop that aims to explore the concept of care networks in CSCW and to devise a plan for future research on healthcare technologies and systems. This is also sponsored by the ACM Future of Computing Academy I'm part of. For more info: http://bit.ly/CareNetworksWS

Program Committee Service
2019-2020
I will be serving as an Associate Chair on the Program Committees of the ACM CHI 2020, ACM CHI 2019, ACM GROUP 2020, ACM GROUP 2019, and as a Co-Chair for Doctoral Colloquium at iConference 2019.

Travel //
November 9, 2019: CSCW 2019, Austin, TX
June 17, 2019: ACM-FCA annual meeting, Boston
June 8-12, 2019: ECSCW 2019, Salzburg, Austria