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I am an associate 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), Interaction Design, and Health Informatics. I’m particularly interested in empowering individuals to help them access, understand, and share their health-related data for more effective communication and shared decision-making in their care. To support patient empowerment and activation, my research focuses on vulnerable individuals with low health literacy and a lack of information access and accessible tools and examines their needs and barriers. I also have taken a comprehensive view of patient activation and empowerment in my research, incorporating clinical and non-clinical care settings and including patients’ relationships with care networks beyond the individual.

Prior to my position at UM, I completed my PhD in the Department of Informatics in the Bren School of Information and Computer Science 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 worked in the HCI Institute and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I 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 was selected as one of 46 international members of the inaugural class of the ACM Future Computing Academy (FCA), a selective organization of young researchers with the goal of shaping the future of computing. My research projects have been funded by the University of Michigan Office of Research (UMOR), National Science Foundation (NSF) CRII and CAREER, National Health Institute (NIH), and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).


I am currently working on the following research topics:
  • Enhancing Pediatric Patient-Clinician Communication through Empowering Pediatric Patients as Active Communicators: This research investigates the role that technologies can play in supporting child patients’ expression of their needs, feelings, and emotions around illness and health, and helping clinicians and parents to better understand and communicate the child’s psychosocial condition and well-being.
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  • Collaborative Tracking and Data Sharing to Advance Communication among Pediatric Patient, Caregiver, and Clinicians:   This project aims to obtain an empirical understanding of the current communication and information-sharing practices of pediatric patients and clinicians in diabetes care and to explore opportunities for designing collaborative tracking technologies that support and enhance these practices of managing Type 1 diabetes.
  
  • 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.
 
  • Designing Conversational Agents for Patients in Marginalized Communities:  The project aims to examine the current health management practices of black patients with chronic health conditions in the light of COVID-19 and explore how conversational agents can help them in accessing and obtaining appropriate and necessary information.

Teaching: I teach graduate and undergraduate Human-Computer Interaction courses, including Interaction Design, Methods of Inquiry, and Research Methods.
 
Prospective students:  I am always looking to work with self-motivated, enthusiastic, and creative students who are interested in HCI, CSCW, Design research, and Health! 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 (2021-2022), so please check out the the UMSI admission site or contact me for more information.*
 



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NEWS //
Paper accepted to CSCW 2022!
May  2022
Happy to announce that our collaborative work with Pace University on ED work will be presented at CSCW 2022.
(titled "Characteristics and Challenges of Clinical Documentation in Self-Organized Fast-Paced Medical Work")!
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Papers accepted to CHI 2022!
April  2022
Super excited to announce that two full papers and one Late Break Work paper will be presented at CHI 2022! Here are the titles of each paper:
  • "Transitioning Toward Independence: Enhancing Collaborative Self-Management of Children with Type 1 Diabetes"
  • ​"Designing Chatbots with Black Americans with Chronic Conditions: Overcoming Challenges against COVID-19"​
  • ​"Seeking Trustworthy Information on COVID-19: A Qualitative Study with the African American Community" 

Excited to co-organize two workshops (Human-Centered AI in Healthcare & Patient-Provider Interaction) at ECSCW 2022!
March 2022
Excited to organize two great workshops at ECSCW 2022 with amazing collaborators:
My CSCW 2019 AI-Human Collaboration workshop report is now available on CSCW Medium!
March 2020
I'm pleased to share the result from the workshop on AI- Human Collaboration in Healthcare through the CSCW Medium article!

​Program Committee Service
2019-2021
I will be serving as an Associate Chair on the Program Committees of the ACM CHI 2021, ACM CHI 2020, ACM CHI 2019, ACM GROUP 2020, ACM GROUP 2019, and as a Co-Chair for Doctoral Colloquium at iConference 2019. 





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



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copyright © 2022 Sunyoung Park