Sui Wang

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 Design Research Paper

Charting In-betweenness Through Sensory
Imaginaries, Linguistic Musings, and Critical Design 

Method: workshop, rapid prototyping, participatory design, design probe



The concept of in-betweenness, a state of being intermediate, transitional, or liminal between two points or stages, entails navigating a spectrum of cultural, linguistic, and identity-related dimensions. This interstitial offers a rich tapestry of experiences that are often underexplored traditional design practices. This paper introduces a novel workshop format designed for individuals who navigate the complexity of inbetweenness, offering tools for them to express, exchange, and creatively channel their experiential liminality into tangible output. The workshop is carefully crafted to create an open space that invites agential storytelling and empathetic cross-reading among participants. Methodologically inspired by sensory anthropology, sociolinguistics, information science, and design justice, this project seeks to harness the intangible, fluid, and often dishonored in-between experiences and celebrate its creative potential and hermeneutical richness.


                              

HCI Research #1    

The Warmth of the Other – Designing for More-than-Human Interactions by Expressing Organism Well-being Through Thermal Feedback


Method:  focus group/workshop, expert interview,  Research-through-Design






In this Research-through-Design study, we explore the potential of thermal feedback to express the conditions of organisms used in bio-design, such as fungi, bacteria, and algae. We interviewed bio-design researchers, collected sensor data reflecting the wellbeing of a microbial culture, and developed a prototype that expresses this biodata through thermal feedback. We present three tensions that designers should negotiate when expressing biodata through thermal feedback (I) explicitness of data representation (II) temporality of thermal feedback, and (III) human versus organism perspectives. Moreover, we outline six thermal parameters to navigate these tensions. We contribute to Bio-HCI and more-than-human design by exploring thermal experiences to communicate biodata and discussing opportunities and challenges of such approaches to data expression.
Physical Prototyping  

“Bioluminal Pulse”, 2024


Method:  prototyping, art-making, participatory workshop, creative coding




Prototyped and designed a glowing lamp using seaweed material and microcontroller for a workshop at UROBOROS festival in Vartiosaari, Helsinki.






Academic Essay

Ephemeral Platforms, Enduring Memories: Errors and Digital Afterlife

Published on International Journal of Communication (2025)Taking death as an empirical site of sociotechnical errors, this article explores how the end of life highlights the disjunction between individual mortality and platform ephemerality. Inadequate platform policies often render digital legacy inheritance logistically challenging, leaving the personal data of the deceased unattended and lingering as digital phantoms in cyberspace. Online memorialization poses a design glitch for social media platforms by transforming deceased user profiles into unfenced memorial spaces. Real-life instances such as RIP trolling and grief tourism demonstrate how platform algorithms exploit the emotional value of posthumous data, inadvertently shaping the grieving process and imposing an emotional toll on the bereaved. The "death glitch" lays bare the precarity and complexity of digital infrastructures, which grieving individuals are illequipped to navigate. In this essay, I outline two common types of sociotechnical errors engendered by death, highlighting the complexity of making the death glitches legible to platforms designed for fleeting interactions and algorithms aimed at scalability.