Projects
I design and ship experimental prototypes — from social media feeds to streaming TV ads to mobile gacha games — to test how digital platforms shape persuasion, attention, and consumer behavior. I build interactive environments in HTML/JS, instrument them for behavioral logging (clicks, comments, eye-tracking, sentiment), and deploy them in user studies. My work generates actionable insights on advertising effectiveness, platform affordances, and monetization mechanics, with results already published in top communication journals and presented at international conferences.
Research Brief
Social Media Affordance Study
Challenge: Platforms like Instagram shape user–creator
relationships through features such as comments, but it was unclear
how removing these interactions would affect engagement and purchase
intent for sponsored posts.
Prototype: Built a fully functional Instagram-style feed in
HTML/JS with toggleable comments. Participants could scroll,
like, and interact in a naturalistic environment with embedded
sponsored content.
Approach: Logged user actions (comment length, frequency, sentiment) and paired with survey data on parasocial connection and consumer
attitudes.
Key Insight: Parasocial relationships predicted purchase
intent only when comments were enabled. Disabling comments
broke the PSR → purchase link, showing how small design changes can
disrupt creator–follower influence.
Research Brief
Shoppable Advertising Study
Challenge: As brands test shoppable ad formats, it was
unclear whether consumers would see them as useful enhancements or
disruptive interruptions — and whether effectiveness depends on
platform context (social vs. streaming).
Prototype: Built interactive streaming TV and
social media ad experiences in HTML/JS, allowing
direct comparison of shoppable vs. traditional formats.
Approach: Logged user interactions (clicks, overlay opens) and combined with survey measures of attention, attitudes,
and purchase intent, plus open-ended feedback on intrusiveness.
Key Insight: On social media, shoppable ads felt
intrusive and lowered purchase intent. On streaming TV, the
same formats increased purchase intent by creating a lean-forward
shopping moment. Takeaway: platform-fit is critical when
rolling out interactive ad formats.
Research Brief
Social Media Pharmaceutical Advertising
Challenge: Pharmaceutical ads on social media must present
both benefits and risks, but it was unclear how consumers actually
allocate attention, emotion, and memory across these sections — with
implications for health information recall.
Prototype: Created realistic
pharma ad stimuli embedded in a simulated social media feed,
contrasting benefit-focused content (e.g., lifestyle imagery) with
risk disclosures (e.g., scrolling side effects).
Approach: Used eye-tracking and
facial emotion analysis to generate heat maps of attention,
capture real-time affective responses, and measure post-exposure
memory recall.
Key Insight: Participants gave less attention and
showed weaker memory for risk sections compared to benefits,
with more negative emotional reactions during risk exposure.
Findings highlight the challenges of ensuring
risk information is noticed and retained in digital ad
formats.
Gacha Behavioral Economies
Challenge: Mobile games depend on gacha mechanics for
engagement and monetization, but it’s unclear how design variables
(pull odds, banner framing, bonus gems) influence player trust,
spending, and progression.
Prototype: Built a fully functional
gacha battle game in HTML/JS with summon, battle, and
progression systems, allowing precise control over
odds, banner design, animations, endowment bonuses, pricing, and
rarity.
Approach: Logged player behavior and spending via
Apps Script to test how randomized rewards, completion bias,
and value framing drive engagement.
Key Insight: The platform provides a reusable testbed for
behavioral economics and game UX research, enabling
experiments on how design choices in gacha systems shift trust,
spending patterns, and purchase intent.
Game Subscription Break-even
Challenge: Game platforms increasingly trade ownership for
access. What does “buying” mean when players rent
their libraries?
Prototype: Built an interactive microeconomic dashboard in
Python + Gradio that models the break-even point between
subscribing to a game service (e.g., Game Pass) and buying games
outright. Users can toggle subscription price, frictional costs, and
play rate to see where renting stops making sense.
Approach: Visualizes cumulative cost curves and behavioral
thresholds, connecting economic logic to broader questions of
consumer behavior, technofeudalism, and the illusion that buying
equals owning.
Key Insight: Even rational consumers optimize within
infrastructures that redefine property itself.
