HugMatch
Chloe Koo
Chloe Koo is an Interaction Designer who is based in New York. As a designer, she desires to design things that are emotionally rich and grounded in meaning. She loves to devise new designs that involve both new technologies and innovations.
Hyunwoo Kim
Hyeonwoo Kim is a Unity programmer who likes to play and make games. He hopes games will bring more people together regardless of race, color, or gender. So, he uses the latest technologies to create an even more cool and meaningful HugMatch app.
Olivia Kim
Olivia is a current graduate student at Teachers College studying art education. As an aspiring educator and an education specialist at HugMatch, she hopes to learn how visual language can share all kinds of stories and serve as an alternative tool to overcome challenges in language processing, understanding meaning, and emotions.
Gabriel Lee
Gabriel’s role at HugMatch is to build investor relations and manage all external communications as the head of Public Affairs. His greatest desire is to see HugMatch touch the lives of children worldwide and change perceptions on the words ‘disability’ and ‘handicap.’ To him, these words mean brilliant, special, and unique.
Deborah Yun
While working in the fashion industry, Deborah studies UI/UX design with a fully committed interest. Deborah’s vision is to help the world solve problems and help the users of products and technology discover happiness in their experiences. She sees the designs in HugMatch as the hope, change, and innovation for children.
Hanah Choi
Hanah Choi is a User Experience Design leader who brings over a decade of experience in the field. Guided by her passion and craft, she is a strong advocate for user needs.
Yuna Oh
Yuna is a game developer who enjoys learning about game development technology trends. She believes that immersive gaming experiences can bring happiness to many people. So, she hopes to create the HugMatch app, allowing children to enjoy games without any barriers.
More Event Info
More Project Info
http://hugmatch.net/
What inspired you to make this project?
I (Chloe) grew up around an uncle who has a disability and have also volunteered to help disabled people throughout my life. My interactions with my uncle and others who I met while volunteering inspired me to create a project that could benefit them. When it came time to work on my thesis at the Parsons School of Design, I knew that I wanted to create an interactive product with both a hardware and software component that improved the lives of individuals living with disabilities.
What are some of the challenges you have encountered and how did you address them?
The biggest challenge part of this project was understanding the user and finding the right user. We wanted to create a toy and app that would focus on the things visually impaired children usually lack, such as the understanding of an object, communication skills, and social interaction with peers. we still keep pushing our limit to develop the prototype.