☺ Hi, I'm Vivi Nguyen

I'm a UX designer and artist studying at Carnegie Mellon University. I love visual development, creating fun transformative experiences, and making digital products more inclusive and accessible.

✿ Design

✦ Art

✿ BroodX Emerging CD single

Fall 2021
Graphic design, Illustration, Screenprinting

When I lived and studied in Pittsburgh, I was surprised by how loud the cicadas were. Since these cicadas come out every 17 years, I imagined that they are a boyband making a comeback after a long hiatus. I designed and screen printed 10 CD albums and over 200 cicada photocards.

CD booklet

A four-layer screen print.

Cicada photocards

A four-layer screen print. The photocards are packaged in a plastic sleeve and can be decorated with stickers.

Exhibit

I displayed the photocards in a group exhibit where visitors decorated and kept their own cicada cards. It was a very joyful activity, and I chatted with some actual avid cicada fans.

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✿ Two Wins to Win

Spring 2021
Roles: UI design, Game Design
Team Members : Daniel Noh, Ham Siripanichgon, Amanda Piccolini, Haley Carter

Two Wins to Win is a two-player cooperative/competition board-based card game, where players figure out how to apply negotiation strategies to achieve their interests and maximize their benefits. Our game was chosen as a finalist for the GEE! awards.

Our game is designed to aid players in learning and practicing negotiation strategies and terminology. The two players roleplay as a recruiter and recruit, trying to achieve an offer fit to their best interests while maintaining a win-win situation. Our target demographic is current college students, recent graduates, or any job seekers. In this prototype, there is one set of personas, a HoverCraft Designer, and a job recruiter from HOVER, Inc.©, a hovercraft company.

The Problem

From our research and conversation with peers, we found that there was discomfort when it came to negotiating job benefits. When we mapped the process from interview to accepting the offer, we identified some problems that our target audience could face.

Our Solution

We created learning objectives and experience goals in order to address the problems. We wanted to create a low-risk game environment where players would be able to comfortably practice negotiation skills.

Learning Objectives

Experience Goals

Initial Prototype

We brainstormed negotiation strategies and potential card mechanics. Our initial prototype included:

The gameplay in the initial prototype featured a back and forth of “Modifier Cards” (e.g. add $10k salary, increase/decrease PTO by 10 days, etc.) in an attempt to come to an agreement on a final offer package. We made our prototype in playingcards.io.

Playtesting

We conducted playtests with those who fall into our target audience: individuals who are or will be searching for employment and are likely to find themselves in the position to negotiate a job offer.

From our first playtest we noticed a fair amount of issues that we needed to tackle to create a remotely playable game. We came up with the following solutions:

Revised Prototype

We integrated playtesting feedback into our revised learning goals, experience goals, and prototypes. The biggest changes we made to the initial prototype were:

We made a revised prototype on Figma before we integrated it into playingcards.io.

Final Prototype

We finalized the final design and point system. I worked on iterating and finalizing the card design.

Board

The two players draw 5 tip cards and 3 interest cards. The offer cards in the middle allow players to keep track of the current offer. There is a slider for both players to move when they change their offers. There are extra benefits around the board that players can offer in order to gain points.

Tip Cards

Players draw 5 tip cards. Whenever they want to modify the offer, they must place down a tip card and negotiate. This allows us to introduce roleplaying and humor since players can improvise how they choose to read out the cards.

Interest Cards

Players draw 3 interest cards that are hidden from the other player. This mimics how the interests of negotiation parties are not disclosed in the beginning. Players choose one card as their top priority and keep the rest hidden in their hands. If they achieve their top priority they gain extra points.

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✿ Flowerstory

Fall 2021
Graphic design, Game Design
Team Members : Chelsea Liu, Yinru Sun, Nadia Susanto

Flowerstory is a trading card game to help players connect with others by sharing photos and stories related to flower languages. Our goal is to help people at game conventions meet someone unexpected. We focused the game mechanics on how to jumpstart a conversation and create personal bonds through sharing stories.

Initial Prototype

In our first prototype, we focused on the verb "exchange". Each player has a unique set of flower petals with ice breaker questions on them. In order to exchange petals, players must answer the icebreaker question on the petal. The goal was for players to end up with different colored petals to represent the different people they spoke to.

User Testing

Regarding this prototype, we received insightful feedback from our professor.

Revised Iteration

One of our most important design decisions was to use flowers as a prompt rather than a prop to hold questions. Flower language is rich and intricate and can spark interesting conversations. In our revised prototype, we still kept our main verb of "exchange". Players start with 10 of the same flower cards with the name of the flower. The goal is for players to trade flower cards with other players by exchanging a story and image that relates to the flower language on their card.

User Testing

We did playtesting in class with this prototype and received a lot of great feedback and suggestions.

Player Experiences

Advice

Final Prototype

Based on our playtest feedback, we made changes to address issues players encountered. We changed the context of the game to occur throughout the entire game conference to allow players to have better, meaningful conversations. Players start with three different cards for more variety. We changed the player's goal to connecting with many people and sharing stories. We added a closing ritual where players can share contacts in the end. I designed and printed the final cards with a risograph.

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✿ Family Care

Spring 2020
UX, UI design
Team Members : Virginia Qian, Kristy Tsai

Family Care is an app prototype that helps coordinate caregiving within a family, including health-related responsibilities as well as general family tasks.

While most existing apps focus on Caregiver responsibilities, our app allows the Care Receiver to have more agency in taking care of themselves. In addition, our app will make it easier for Caregivers to manage multiple groups and Care Receivers. This will foster better coordination among family groups.

Research

We conducted online interviews through phone calls and Zoom. In addition, we did a competetive analysis.
These were are main takeaways from our interviews and competetive anaylsis:

Wireframing

We started with three main sections: home, calendar, and chat. The homepage has two screens: the dashboard and the profiles.

Features

User Testing

We gave tasks for users to complete. and instructed users to think aloud about their process while they navigated our prototype.

Color Prototype

After the first user testing, we implemented design changes for our color prototype.

We redefined three targeted users in the family group.

Revised Features

Final Screens

Care Reciever Screens

Care Reciever can update Health Trackers and view their Achievements. Care Reciever can respond to mood trackers set by the Caregiver and earn daily rewards

CareGiver Screens

Care Recievers and Caregivers can switch between and manage different groups. Caregivers can see updates and requests from their Care Reciever and other group members.

CareGiver Screens

Caregiver can view and manage events from all group members.

CareGiver Screens

Caregiver can view and update group member's profiles. They can manage health trackers and view achievements.

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✦ Animation Demo Reel 2021

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✦ Shuffle (work in progress)

Fall 2021 - now
Scripting, storyboarding, visual development

This is a work in progress of a short animated film. I focused on creating a visual style that utilizes light and color to express emotion. Emi, a tired worker, dances and listens to music to stay awake to finish a project. She eventually falls into sleep paralysis and is frozen while her surroundings are magnifying and overwhelming.

Plot Summary

Character art

Style guide

Color script

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✦ On a Walk

Fall 2020
Storyboarding, Visual development, 2D Animation

This was my 2020 Fall animation project. It follows a character living in a space who finds a sparkly item that grows plants. My main goal for this project was to develop a style that matches the themes of the narrative. I kept the lineart simple and reductive because wanted to explore how much I can convey with fewer lines. The use of empty space expresses the character's feeling of living alone.

Concept Art

Storyboard

First storyboard

Revised storyboard

Animatic

I worked with Michael Wong on sound design and music. I noted the timing of the sound cues.

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✦ Illustration

Screenprint and Risograph

Character Drawings