📢 I'm a prospective PhD student planning
to apply this fall (2026 cycle)
Hello,
I'm Sungmin
I am a research intern at the Data Interaction Design Lab @KAIST, under the supervision of Prof. Hwajung Hong.
My research interests are rooted in human-computer interaction, education, and participatory design. As a qualitative researcher, I am particularly focused on exploring ways to ensure emerging technologies are inclusive for children in marginalized communities, especially within educational contexts.
My research also spans exploring how technologies can be utilized to address social issues affecting children. Currently,
I am focusing on leveraging these technologies to support cyberbullying education in elementary schools.
News
Apr 2025 🌸 Attending my first in-person CHI @Yokohama, Japan!
Oct 2024 ✨ Joined Data Interaction Design Lab @KAIST as a research intern!
Oct 2023 📄 Our paper "Conducting online participatory design from the United States with children in South Korea with a focus on cultural awareness" was published in Behaviour & Information Technology!
Oct 2023 🍒 Attended my first in-person CSCW @Minneapolis, USA, served as an SV, and successfully
presented our poster, "Toward value scenario generation through large language models"!
Aug 2023 📄 Happy to share that my FIRST first-authored paper, "SUV: Students’ Understanding Visualizer to
Support Instructors in Synchronous Online Lectures" has been published in IEEE Access!
Research Projects
Supporting Interaction Between Learners and Instructors in Synchronous Online Classes
As the COVID-19 pandemic began, many educational systems rapidly shifted classes online to ensure everyone’s safety.
In online classes, the interaction between learners and instructors is crucial for building an effective learning environment. Yet, lots of learners and instructors still struggle with interacting with each other in remote classrooms. Thus, we aim to create and evaluate a technology to support interaction between the two stakeholders, especially in synchronous online classes.
Paper: IEEE Access, IJLTER’21
KidsTeam UW
Working with kids aged 7 to 11, KidsTeam at the University of Washington runs different projects using participatory design methods. One of the projects I participated in was exploring the design insights associated with technology tradeoffs, dilemmas, tensions, and risks that a co-design technique called “Would You Rather (WYR)” can give. As I participated in the sessions involving WYR and later coded the session transcripts, I sought to understand how the kids engaged with WYR when designing.
Paper: IDC’21
KidsTeam Online
This project explores co-designing with children in an online space. Moreover, the project seeks to find how children build relationships with peers and adults and their interactions in an online environment. In this research project, I co-designed with the children in several sessions through Zoom while observing how the children engage in synchronous participatory design sessions online. Also, I annotated and coded the transcripts of online session videos to analyze various factors "a researcher
can take into consideration when moving co-design to an online space."
Publications
Lee K., Na, S., Wang H., Park H., Jo M., Cho Y., Jung Y., Park G., Lee J., and Yip J. “Conducting Online Participatory Design from the United States with Children in South Korea with a Focus on Cultural Awareness”. In Behaviour & Information Technology, October 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2023.2272194
Jung H., Seo W., Song S., and Na, S. “Toward Value Scenario Generation Through Large Language Models”. In Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’23 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 212–220. October 2023. https://doi.org/10.1145/3584931.3606960 [poster]
Na, S., Park, S., Jun, J., Jeong, H., Yoo, T., Chun, M., Lee, H., Lee, H.G. and Jung, H. “SUV: Students’ Understanding Visualizer to Support Instructors in Synchronous Online Lectures”. In IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 88929-88945. August 2023. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10210371
Seo, W., Jun, J., Chun, M., Jeong, H., Na, S., Cho, W., Kim, S., & Jung, H. "Toward an AI-assisted Assessment Tool to Support Online Art Therapy Practices: A Pilot Study". In Proceedings of 20th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET). June 2022. https://dl.eusset.eu/handle/20.500.12015/4378
Na, S., & Jung, H. "Exploring University Instructors’ Challenges in Online Teaching and Design Opportunities during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review". International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 20(9). October 2021. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.20.9.18
Simko, L., Chin, B., Na, S., Saluja, H.K., Zhu, T.Q., Kohno, T., Hiniker, A., Yip, J.C., & Cobb, C. "Would You Rather: A Focus Group Method for Eliciting and Discussing Formative Design Insights with Children". In Interaction Design and Children (pp. 131-146). June 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3459990.3460708
Lee, K.J., Roldan, W., Zhu, T.Q., Saluja, H.K., Na, S., Chin, B., Zeng, Y., Lee, J.H., & Yip, J.C. "The Show Must Go On: A Conceptual Model of Conducting Synchronous Participatory Design With Children Online". In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-16). May 2021.
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