I’m pleased to share that my class project, “Learning Through Play: Designing Hypothetical Interactive Digital Experiences for Zoo Visitors,” has been accepted to the 2026 SEGD Academic Summit.
Developed within a studio course for the UXD minor, this project brought together 9 students across two teams—4 from Graphic Design and 5 from Industrial Design. Through this interdisciplinary collaboration, students explored how play-driven interaction design can enrich educational experiences in informal learning environments such as zoos.
Engaging with speculative design and digital storytelling, each team envisioned interactive systems that foster curiosity, engagement, and learning—particularly for younger audiences.
I’m especially proud of the students for their thoughtful, collaborative, and imaginative work throughout the studio. Congratulations to both teams on this wonderful achievement.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to ongoing conversations around experiential design, design education, and public engagement.
I look forward to sharing this project at the SEGD Academic Summit this summer.
Hewants Design
Share
Assistant Professor in the Department of Graphic Design at Iowa State University. Art director at hewants design studio, Korea.
I’m happy to share that two of my recent research projects have been accepted to the poster session at HCII 2026.
“Enhancing Workplace Wellness Evaluation through UX: A Usability Test of a Web-Based Assessment Tool”
(Co-authored with Huiwon Lim, Yongyeon Cho, Hye Jeong Park)
“Design and Usability Evaluation of a Circular Keyboard Optimized for Gaze-Input Systems”
(Co-authored with JoongSup Lee, Jingyeong Hong, Huiwon Lim)
Grateful to collaborate with such thoughtful researchers, and looking forward to sharing this work at the conference. More updates to come.
Typographic Constellations is an interactive web piece that turns text into star constellations. Type your name or a short message in Korean, Arabic, or English, and the system translates each script's unique spatial properties—Hangul's 2D syllable blocks, Arabic's rasm groups and dots, the Latin alphabet's ascender-descender rhythm—into star coordinates on a shared digital night sky. Over the course of the exhibition, individual constellations build into a collective cosmos, and an algorithm finds "constellation neighbors": names from different scripts that produce surprisingly similar star patterns. Built through vibe coding with Claude Code and Antigravity, the work reveals the hidden geometries within the world's writing systems through the visual metaphor of constellations.
--
Typographic Constellations는 텍스트를 별자리로 바꾸는 인터랙티브 웹 작품입니다. 한글, 아랍어, 영어로 이름이나 짧은 메시지를 입력하면, 각 문자 체계의 고유한 공간적 특성—한글의 2차원 음절 블록, 아랍어의 라슴 그룹과 점, 라틴 알파벳의 어센더-디센더 리듬—이 밤하늘 위 별 좌표로 변환됩니다. 전시 기간 동안 별자리들이 하나씩 쌓이며 하나의 우주를 이루고, 알고리즘이 서로 다른 문자 체계에서 비슷한 별 패턴을 만들어낸 '별자리 이웃'을 찾아줍니다. Claude Code와 Antigravity를 활용한 바이브 코딩으로 만든 이 작품은 세계 문자 속에 숨겨진 기하학적 구조를 별자리라는 메타포로 보여줍니다.
http://hewantsdesign.com/pages/typographic-constellations.html
I will serve as Co-Chair (with Hye Yeon Nam, New Jersey Institute of Technology) for the session at the College Art Association 2026 Annual Conference:
“New Contemporary Visual Narratives for the Sacred Texts”
🗓 February 19, 2026 | 11:00 AM–12:30 PM
📍 Hilton Chicago – 3rd Floor – Private Dining Room 2 (Hybrid)
This panel examines how contemporary graphic and digital practices reinterpret sacred texts—particularly the Old and New Testaments—within the framework of secular higher education in the United States. Despite their profound influence on Western visual and literary traditions, biblical narratives remain largely absent from contemporary academic art discourse.
Presenters include:
Leslie Atzmon (Eastern Michigan University), The Women’s Torah Project: Torah as an Experimental Book
Alma Hoffmann (University of South Alabama), Choosing Words to Express Worship with Well-Chosen Letters
Emily Kim (Sam Houston State University), The Invisible Made Visible: Microscopic Discoveries and Sacred Narratives
Hye Yeon Nam (New Jersey Institute of Technology), Living Typography, Ec(h)o
The session addresses experimental book forms, typographic activism, immersive VR/AR interpretations of Psalm 23, ecological and robotic generative systems, and AI-driven visual production.
This session offers a timely opportunity to reconsider how sacred texts may inform contemporary visual research and pedagogy.
If you will be participating in CAA 2026, I hope you will consider attending and contributing to the discussion.
02/03/2026
Just published!
A collaborative class project I co-taught with Phil Choo at Penn State has been featured in the 2025 SEGD Communication + Place collection.
Working with Penn State Sustainability Institute and the Borough of State College, our students explored experiential graphic design strategies for the Fraser Street Parking Garage—rethinking it as a more accessible, engaging, and community-focused space.
So proud to see our students' creativity and care recognized in this way.
💛 Big thanks to everyone who made this collaboration so meaningful!
We’ve just launched our new website — designed entirely through AI-driven vibe coding.
He Wants Design | Creative Portfolio Portfolio of a creative designer.
Alive: The Rhythm of Recovery
고요한 정적 속에서 흐르는 생명의 신호. 심전도(EKG)의 날카로운 펄스가 유기적인 라인으로 변하며 'Alive'라는 메시지를 남기고 다시 어둠 속으로 사라지는 효과를 표현하려 했습니다.
5초의 순환을 통해 멈추지 않는 생명의 리듬, 그리고 다시 일어서는 에너지를 표현해봤습니다.
A signal of life flowing through the silence of stillness. I sought to capture the moment where the sharp pulses of an EKG transform into organic lines, etching the word 'Alive' before fading back into the shadows.
Through this 5-second cycle, I wanted to express the unceasing rhythm of life and the resilient energy of rising once again.
#미디어아트 #모션타이포그래피 #네온아트 #심전도
[Day 2] 빛의 조각들과의 교감
화면을 가득 채운 작은 빛의 조각들에 ‘탄성’이라는 생명력을 불어넣었습니다.
마우스를 꾹 누르면 자석처럼 한곳으로 응축되고, 손을 떼는 순간 사방으로 튕겨 나가는 입자들의 역동적인 에너지를 표현하고 싶었습니다. 고정된 색이 아닌, 스페이스바를 누를 때의 마우스 좌표에 따라 입자들이 스스로 새로운 빛깔을 찾아가는 과정이 흥미롭네요.
연습 2일차, 아직 인터페이스가 낯설지만 내가 상상한 움직임을 하나하나 코드로 구현해가는 재미가 쏠쏠합니다.
Tools: Gemini x Antigravity
Concept: Elasticity & Light Interaction
_
[Day 2] Communion with Shards of Light
Added "elasticity" to tiny shards of light filling the screen.
I wanted to capture the dynamic energy of particles that cluster like magnets when the mouse is held, then explode in every direction the moment it's released. It's fascinating to see them find new colors based on the mouse's (X, Y) coordinates every time the spacebar is pressed—no fixed colors, just real-time interaction.
It's only Day 2 of my practice. The interface still feels a bit unfamiliar, but there's a unique joy in bringing my imagination to life, step by step.
Tools: Gemini x Antigravity
Concept: Elasticity & Light Interaction
#디자이너 #미디어아트 #연습기록
My first motion piece using vibe coding!
I’ve been telling myself to try this for a long time, and finally decided to dive in—thanks to the incredible inspiration from so many amazing projects out there. I realized it was time to stop hesitating and just start.
This piece uses data from my CV to identify my expert areas, then visualizes their connections to past presentations and publications. The thicker the line, the stronger the connection. All the text orbits in motion, with random changes in size. The largest text appears in red, while the rest are shown as outlines.
It’s still very early—just a baby step—but I’m planning to create something small every day. With steady practice, I hope this can someday grow into a full-scale class project.
11/04/2025
Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.
Location
Category
Website
Address
715 Bissell Road
Ames, IA
50011