ABOUT
WORK

Hi! I’m Lena!

I’m a multimedia experience designer, meaning that regardless of if I’m doing UI/UX, product, or service design, my focus is on the interaction between the user, what I’m designing, and the systems/environments that the interaction is taking place in. My design practices are all rooted in extensive user research and testing, because there’s nothing more frustrating to me than a product that only works in theory. 

More generally, I believe that in our modern day world, it’s not enough to think outside of the box. My strength as a person is in my ability to think inside of other shapes entirely; my strength as a designer is in my ability to generate this kind of creativity systematically—over and over again.

Thanks for visiting!

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QUANTUM COOKPUTING
GREY ZONE
WEST 4TH STREET REVIEW
EMAIL | LINKEDIN
 Lena Lin © 2024 | Designed to the soundtrack of Interstellar

QUANTUM COOKPUTING

CONTEXT

Problem Statement: How might we better publicize and educate the public about quantum computing—specifically neutral atom array computing—despite its high conceptual complexity? 

‍Scope: A week-long hackathon called Quantum Creators Con hosted by QuEra Computing Inc. The hackathon grouped STEM students with backgrounds in quantum or related fields with design students to create educational media that makes neutral atom quantum computing more comprehensible to the public. My team consisted of myself, Ian Askie, Abdullah Khan, and Joon Baek.

RESEARCH

Hypothesis: Developed simply from my own experience with learning quantum concepts, our hypotheses to be tested were: 

  1. An effective method to communicate the basics of quantum computing is by making comparisons to classical computing.
  2. Quantum computing is incomprehensible to the average person because they:
    1. lack a basic understanding of classical computing (that can act as a prerequisite to aid in the understanding of quantum computing) 
    2. lack an understanding of the two primary quantum mechanical principles behind quantum computing: superposition and entanglement

‍Methodologies: Our preliminary research consisted of four interviews with industry professionals and a survey with 34 respondents from the general public. We had respondents rate their baseline knowledge of various concepts, select what motives they might have for learning more about quantum computing, etc. Once we received the results, we synthesized them by searching for correlational relationships, patterns in thinking, and general trends. 

A photo of team members Ian and Abdullah synthesizing research, with sticky notes all over a table.

Key Insights: The following data points were correlated: 

  • Higher (in comparison to other respondents) “knowledge of classical computing” rankings and higher “knowledge of quantum computing” rankings.
  • Having a less-than-baseline level understanding of classical computing and having no knowledge of quantum computing.

Which, along with our industry professionals confirming their belief in our hypotheses, was enough to reasonably confirm our hypotheses and move forward. If this project was not limited to the scope of the hackathon, I would have liked to:

  • Test for causation by conducting mini learning experiments with people with no knowledge on quantum computing but varying levels of knowledge on classical computing. 
  • Test our hypothesis 2b: if having prior knowledge on superposition and quantum entanglement affects ease of learning more complicated quantum computing concepts. 

IDEATION

PROCESS

Ideation: We wrote down 30 distinct ideas before narrowing them down to the ones we thought were the most reasonable and interesting:  

A photo of sticky notes with ideas susch as "technical schematic w/ multiple levels" and "cookbook for cooking up quantum computations"

And after consulting industry professionals on which idea would have the most potential, decided on the cookbook. After that, we created moodboards to determine which aesthetic we should go for: 

A screenshot of various Pinterest boards with different book aesthetics

Content & Prototyping:

A photo of sticky notes with various prototypal information, such as a basic table of contents and drawing of a recipe page.
Lowest fidelity prototype
A photo of a notebook page with title "SUPERPOSITION," 2 cookie recipes, and a Venn diagram in the middle.
Low fidelity prototype

‍

A screenshot of a document with prototypal content written to describe superposition through a cookie analogy.
Mid fidelity prototype

User Testing: We conducted a survey that asked people for their basic understanding of superposition before and after reading the above prototype. The results showed a substantial increase in understanding:

A screenshot of Google Forms responses to the question " have a basic understanding of the quantum mechanical principle of superposition," with 61.5% of responses (out of 13) being "Strongly Disagree"
Before
A screenshot of Google Forms responses to the question "I now have a basic understanding of superposition," with 46.2% of responses (out of 13) being "Agree"
After

‍

SOLUTION

OUTCOME

DELIVERABLES

We ultimately presented a 3 minute overview of our process with screenshots from the PDF shown below. 

REFLECTION

This was my first hackathon ever and we ended up getting fourth place out of twelve teams, so I would definitely say that it was a worthwhile experience! My biggest takeaway was that while design thinking methodologies are certainly effective for coming up with creative and effective solutions, there is still a time and place for them. In the context of this hackathon, it was likely too time consuming to be truly worthwhile. We were the only group that did user testing, and while that did impress the judges, we realized afterwards that efficacy was actually not in the judging criteria. 

But either way, the research experience was great because all four of us had different groups to send the surveys to, allowing us to get a huge number of survey participants in an extremely short amount of time. I’ll try to replicate this type of data gathering for my thesis project. 

GREY ZONE

CONTEXT

Problem Statement: How might we foster less antagonistic interactions between the pro-life and pro-choice movements?‍

Scope: In the midst of the 2024 election, my team—consisting of Nayan Sarma, Yilin Wang and myself—was tasked with designing a service that addresses at least two of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We chose “quality education” and “gender equality.” Our goal was to create a project that primarily utilized the resources we already had, such as access to the diverse population of New York City to research a target topic, then create low fidelity prototypes.

RESEARCH

Methodologies: Upon brainstorming (primarily consisting of mind mapping), we consistently found our interest returning to topics surrounding sex education, which ultimately resulted in the topic of political tension surrounding abortion.

Two photos, both of mind maps on a whiteboard. Left mind map is titled "Quality Education" and right mind map is titled "Sex Ed"

Going into the actual research, one of our primary objectives was to maintain an equilibrium in our research demographics due to the fact that New York’s population is heavily left-leaning. We kicked off our research by interviewing 4 people per team member for a total of 12 interviews, evenly split between pro-life and pro-choice interviewees. Interview questions focused on the interviewee’s history with abortion (including their sex education and the environment of their upbringing), how they perceive the opposing side, and why they do or do not want to interact with those with opposing views. 

Key Insights: Upon synthesizing the collected data by grouping similar keywords, phrases, and ideas together, we saw that the overwhelming shared consensus was that while people were often open to talking about abortion—especially with their close friends or family—they (1) did not want to start a debate and (2) sid not feel as though they were in the right environment to hold a proper conversation. 

Post-its and notes organized by "User Needs," "Need Clarity," "HMW," etc., all under "Key Insights"

IDEATION

Frameworks: In response to this key insight and brainstorming solution ideas with a technique similar to Crazy 8’s, we ended up narrowing down solution ideas to three: a standardized sex education/abortion curriculum for schools, a magazine/zine dedicated to sharing art from both sides of the debate over abortion, or a discussion guide with the aim of bringing two friends/family members in disagreement together.

Two photos, both of outlines written on a white board.

However, upon pitching to industry professionals, a far more appealing idea emerged from one of the critics—a physical game that brings people together. 

Process: The card game idea was immediately recognized by the team as the best solution idea to expand upon, with the target audience being those who already have an idea/opinion about abortion, but are open to learning about the opposite views while simultaneously bettering their relationships with those viewholders. 

Over the course of the next 2.5 weeks, the rules and gameplay of “The Grey Zone” were sorted out. By user testing, we iterated several times on, primarily, the following aspects of the game:

  • Which level of difficulty (out of three) a prompt card about abortion should go in
  • “Emotion token” versus “emotion card” design
  • Game instruction clarity and efficacy in creating a safe space for discussion 
Three images. The left image is a screenshot of FigJam post-its. The middle image is a photo of three cardboard prototype tokens with faces on them. The third image is a photo of the tokens being user tested.

PROCESS

SOLUTION

Deliverables: “The Grey Zone” is a simple card game with four main components: a physical or digital invitation to the game, a set of notepad and pencil, prompt cards with questions about abortion sorted into three levels of difficulty, and emotion tokens (small characters with faces that portray 5 primary emotions). First, a player sends an invitation to play, to which recipients can learn about the game and either accept or decline. Second, the pair or group of players get together to play, beginning by writing a contract that states their ground rules, values, and intentions going into the game. Each player gets turns to answer prompt cards, and as players respond, other players can place emotion tokens down, and later talk about their reactions to the players response and the reasoning behind all of their thinking. The game pauses or ends at any time, where the players can then reflect on their experience.

An image of 4 iPhone Figma prototypes. The first 3 images show a series of interactions that invites the user to play the Grey Zone. The fourth image is an iMessage "screenshot" of somebody sending the invite link.
An image consisting of an instruction card for The Grey Zone and three playing cards of varying difficulty.

‍Impact: By playing “The Grey Zone,” players are offered an easy “excuse” to bring up the topic of abortion with loved ones, collaboratively create a safe environment to discuss, and gain a deeper understanding of opposing perspectives and experiences.

OUTCOME

DELIVERABLES

REFLECTION

WEST 4TH STREET REVIEW

CONTEXT

This is a literary magazine for NYU Liberal Studies, a school that houses the LS Core program that I spent my first two years at NYU at. My co-designer Denise Vaque and I worked together as the principal editors and visual designers for two iterations of the magazine.

RESEARCH

IDEATION

PROCESS

SOLUTION

OUTCOME

DELIVERABLES

REFLECTION