Introduction
I work within civic technology, using approaches informed by a background in psychology, graphic design, and education. My work tends towards the intersections between fields, an interest that is influenced by the boundaries I've balanced in life: living in California and Colorado, growing up Chinese and American, working in STEM and humanities. I love big ideas:
- By studying how memories are organized in the human brain, we can inform how we organize information on the Internet, and vice versa.
- By using what we know about attention and vision, we can design more intuitive and accessible user interfaces.
- By distilling research from thousands of sources, we can develop actionable policies for education workforce development, welfare interventions, and more.
Underneath all this, I am always working towards community. My experiences in work, research, and life have recently begun to converge on one guiding principle: cooperation. Often research and activism is duplicative, ignores history and institutional knowledge, mistakenly believes that new is always better, and prevents successful collaboration by siloing and splintering. These concepts have been variously termed "participatory action research", "design justice", and "collective impact" as they apply to various different fields. What is so-called progress without the people you're working to benefit? Can we bring community into knowledge management?
Currently pursuing a master's in computer science and public policy at the University of Chicago.
Please reach out if you're interested in any of the above topics. I'm always looking for mentors, mentees, and like-minded friends.
Projects
The following are some of my favorite projects (other than this website), other than those bound by confidentiality agreements. Click on any box to check out the finished product.
With the exception of starred projects, I was the sole designer/developer.
*On the machine learning class project, I was one of two group members responsible for planning and execution.
Life outside of work
music
Genres I've been into lately: Ann Arbor indie, habibi funk, Afrobeats, Chinese-American jazz, Taiwanese and Hong Kong indie, Latin indie folk, Japanese city pop, women of classical, piano trios, alternative R&B. Check out the songs I'm currently listening to below, updated every 1-2 weeks.
Speak to the manager of this site
Whether you have a project you think I'd be interested in joining, have a question or comment about this site, or just want to meet someone who likes the same things you do, you can reach me anytime at notkarenyi@gmail.com.
So...am I Karen Yi or not?? Actually, WNYC Karen Yi got there first. Sadly, we are not related.