Research & Design Portfolio · Ja Eun Yu, Ph.D.

HCI research that makes
digital systems work for
the people who need them most.

I'm an HCI researcher with a Ph.D. from UIC. My work spans accessible mobile interfaces, voice assistants, LLM-supported navigation, and health information systems.

Dissertation Research Thread
01

ASSETS 2020

How Older Adults Struggle with Mobile Maps

17 older adults · 172 interaction problems · The core issue is discoverability, not motor skill

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02

ASSETS 2020 · CHI 2023

A Voice Assistant for Mobile Navigation

Query taxonomy · WoZ study · 88% used it · 77% recovered immediately

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03

CHI 2024

Closing the Age Gap with Visual Cues

n=56 · 4 cue types · Highlight with context & weighted zoom eliminate the age gap

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04

CHI 2024

Nav Nudge: Working Android Prototype

GPT-3 + Assist API · Platform-level · Works across any app · 95% accuracy

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Other Projects
Health · LLM · UX

MammaMe

An LLM-powered food safety information system for expectant mothers. Built from problem statement to deployment — crawling, reliability scoring, agentic AI augmentation, and full UX design lifecycle.

IoT · Mobile · Sensing

myCityMeter & whatIbreathe

Personal air pollution monitoring for older adults — tracking PM2.5 and ambient noise linked to cognitive impairment, combining a wearable sensing module with Chicago's city-wide sensor network.

AR · HMD · Android

Blurry (Sticky) Finger

AR interaction technique for optical see-through displays — aim at distant real-world objects with an intentionally unfocused finger, using proprioception and ocular dominance.