Duration
14 week
Deliverables
User Interviews
Cultural Research
Affinity Mapping
Emotional IA
Content Strategy Wireframing
Prototyping
My Role
Project Manager
UX Lead
UI Designer
Service Design
Concept Direction
Project Overview
In collaboration with the Cedars-Sinai Center for Health Equity, my team worked to address the rising need for visibility within South Bay’s API LGBTQ+ communities.
Inclusive Web System
Building community and fostering connection among LGBTQ+ API
What
is the problem I'm trying to slove？
Stories are an important part of human education and cultural communication. but, I felt that there were no stories created for me and my community in this world. The Asian LGBT experience and how we are considered to be the “quiet ones,” not as seen in the LGBTQ+ community.
How
did I slove it？
I defined the campaign’s strategic through direct engagement with community leaders and in-depth interviews based on lived experiences，developed a narrative advocacy platform that helps LGBTQ+ API individuals tell their stories and contribute to local policy change—bridging personal experience and political action.
User Research
Community Leaders Interviews
Find pain points
Identify the causes
Ide
I had an hour of interview with 3 community leaders and realized the powerlessness that Asian Americans feel within the LGBTQ community.
Interview highlights excerpt
Identify the causes
Ide
The roots of this powerlessness and the turning of scattered experiences into insights.
User Research
Affinity Mapping | Cultural Research | Emotional IA
Synthesize insights
Find patterns
To understand the underlying causes of this sense of disempowerment among Asian LGBTQ+ individuals, I conduct a few secondary research .
Research Insights
Insight 1
Culture Tradition
Insight 2
Under Representation
Insight 3
Invisibility
The clash between individual desires and familial traditions can create internal conflict.
Mainstream media and cultural narratives in many Western societies often center around white, hetero normative experiences.
Model minority myth obscures the real struggles and challenges faced by many individuals.
UX Strategy Framework
Based on the insights gained from research, I addressed each structural issue step by step when it came to design directions.
Tradition
Seeing one’s own represented in history
Representation
Influence real world structures
Invisibility
Seeing oneself appear in stories
Telling one’s own story
Comparative Market Research
Research LGBTQ websites and storytelling websites on the market.
Competitive Benchmarking
Experience Gap Analysis
Existing platforms treat storytelling as a single act of declaration, but for most users — especially those from underrepresented or bicultural backgrounds — storytelling is a process that requires structure, emotional safety, and pacing.
Campaign Design
Branding | Website | Advocate
Branding
By wonderful Graphic Designer —— Karlo
Logo
Poster
Postcard
Advocate Letter
Website
User Flow
Website
Visual System
Website
Feature -1
Storytelling Guidence Tamplate
A guided storytelling tool that breaks complex memories into gentle sections, and pairs them with resonant visuals.
Website
Feature -2
Storybook | Postcard
Generate
Encourage LGBTQ individuals to share their stories and experiences.
Website
Feature -3
History Gallery
Designed to remind users that their identity isn’t a betrayal of culture, but part of its ongoing story.
Website
Feature -4
Story Gallery
A shared story gallery where users can see their narratives live alongside others. building a collective archive of LGBTQ+ AANHPI immersion experience.
Advocate
Feature -4
The interplay between politics, design, and daily life
At first glance, the outcome of our platform seems purely cultural: members of the API LGBTQ+ community share their personal stories, which are turned into illustrated postcards and digital zines.
These circulate within the community—among friends, on social media—strengthening connection and fostering a more inclusive local environment.
But the same stories also become the raw material for policy advocacy. Through our platform, narratives can be distilled into policy briefs and sent directly to local courts and government offices in support of new smoke-free legislation.
In California’s local governance system, personal testimonies—especially when collected at scale and framed within community context—can carry significant weight in shaping policies that reflect public sentiment.
