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Yvette Shen is an Associate Professor of Design at The Ohio State University. She was born and raised in Shanghai, China, and studied fashion design in China, followed by computer science and visual communication design in the United States. Before entering academia, she worked as an interactive designer, collaborating with clients across healthcare, media, retail, technology, automotive, and cultural sectors, including Lenox Hill, HGTV, ESPN, Saucony, Abbott, Novartis, Comcast, and art galleries and artists in New York City. Her professional experience shaped her ability to move fluidly between visual expression, communication strategy, and human-centered problem solving.

Her research and teaching examine how design can help people make sense of complex information, technologies, and systems. She is especially interested in information design, data visualization, user experience, design pedagogy, and emerging AI-supported creative practices. Her current research investigates data, interfaces, and design tools as situated and interpretive systems rather than neutral channels of information. Through self-collected data, material data instruments, co-design activities, UX methods, and AI-supported visualization processes, she explores how designers and students make meaning through choices of collection, structure, interaction, representation, and interpretation.

Her work currently focuses on two connected areas:

Critical data visualization, user experience, and design pedagogy
Exploring how design education can help students understand data and interfaces as constructed through tools, bodies, contexts, environments, and social relations. This work includes self-tracking, quantified and qualified data, material data practices, UX research methods, and visual approaches for insight discovery and collaboration.

AI, agency, and visual reasoning in design practice
Investigating how emerging AI tools reshape creative process, authorship, judgment, interaction, and designerly agency. Her work examines how designers can use AI critically while maintaining visual reasoning, ethical awareness, and interpretive responsibility.

Selected Publications

• 01.2026 Shen, Y.  Designing Participatory Data Physicalization as Cultural Connectors for a Quantified Us In Information Design Journal. https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/idj.25011.she
• 01.2026 Boster, J., Pitt, K. & Shen, Y. Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Just-in-Time Design for Children with Cortical Visual Impairment: A Call for Development and Dialogue In Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention (TEBC). https://doi.org/10.1080/17489539.2025.2608341
• 12.2025 Kang B., Shen, Y. Brand Identity Design with Generative AI: Between Automation and Authorship In: IASDR2025 Taipei, Taiwan: Design Next. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.1219
• 11.2025 Shen, Y. Representational Affordances: A Cross-Media Approach to Teaching Data Visualization. In 2025 IEEE VIS Workshop on Visualization Education, Literacy, and Activities (EduVIS). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11298745
• 06.2025 Shen, Y., Kang, B., Münch, F. Human-Centered AI in Design: Examining Educational Paradigms for Creativity and Responsibility. In: Schrepp, M. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability. HCII 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15799. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-93236-6_5
• 05. 2025 Shen, Y. & Scott, D. Tangible Patterns in Material-based Data Visualizations for the Quantified-Self in Karyda, M., Çay, D., Bakk, Á. K., Dezső, R., Hemmings, J. (eds.), Data as Experiential Knowledge and Embodied Processes, 12-13 May, Budapest, Hungary. https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2025.115
• 05. 2025 Sanders, E. B. N., & Shen, Y.  Direct vs. remote data collection methods in co-design: Navigating the evolving landscape. CoDesign, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2025.2472172
• 06.2024 Shen, Y. From Data Points to Well-being: A Design Framework of Self-Tracked Data through the Lens of Positive Psychology In: DRS (Design Research Society) 2024. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.196
• 05.2024 Shen, Y. Bosch, G, Pino, L, Gopalan, V. Use of the "Double Diamond" Design Framework to Nurture Creativity in Life Sciences Research In Trends in Biochemical Sciences (TIBS) Cell Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibs.2024.04.008
• 10.2023 Glover, R., Shen, Y.Tracking Acts of Kindness through Comics: an Experimental Study In: IASDR2023 Milan: Life Changing Design. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.697
• 04.2023 Shen, Y., Sanders, E.B.-N. Identity discovery: Small learning interventions as catalysts for change in design education. Journal of Design, Business & Society, Special Issue: ‘Design and Interdisciplinarity’, 9:1, pp. 127–44, https://doi.org/10.1386/dbs_00049_1
• 11.2022 Shen, Y., Sanders, E.BN. Visualizing Stress – In-person and Virtual Co-designing with Chart-Based Tools. In: Bruyns, G., Wei, H. (eds) [ ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes. IASDR 2021. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4472-7_173
• 06.2022 Chu, H.Y., Shen, Y. User Feedback Design in AI-Driven Mood Tracker Mobile Apps. In: Kurosu, M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. User Experience and Behavior. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13304. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05412-9_24
• 05.2022 Ortega, A., van Kollenburg J., Y. Shen, et al. SIG on Data as Human-Centered Design Material. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI EA ‘22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 160, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3516403
• 02.2022 Shen Y. Supporting Student Mental Health in an information Design Class By Employing Approaches Derived From Positive Psychology. Dialectics Vol. 3 Issue 1, AIGA Design Educators’ Community and Michigan Publishing https://doi.org/10.3998/dialectic.14932326.0003.106

Active Community and University Service and Leadership

• AIGA Design Educator Steering Committee board member
  (co-chaired 2025 AIGA DEC conference Weave)
• Across the Divide, Chinese Art and Educator in American Academia board member
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• Affiliated faculty to EASC (East Asia Study Center), Interdisciplinary Master Program Fellowship Committee
• Students Wellness Committee for College of Arts and Sciences 
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• Visual Communication Design program coordinator
• Undergraduate Study Committee
• Strategic Plan Committee, Faculty Eminence and Funding Subcommittee
• Events Committee
• Search Committee

Selected Recognition

• 2023 Design Incubation Communication Design Educators Awards Teaching category Runner up
• 2022 Johnson & Johnson Innovation QuickFire Challenge Award "Wheeltrak" project team
• 2020 Web Design Award (GD USA)
• 2020 The Ohio State University Research Seed Grant Studying Subjective Well-being on OSU Campus using Modern Machine Learning Techniques
• 2019 The Ohio State University The Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Open Grant "How the Arts and Humanities can Benefit our Well-being"
• 2013 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Creative Project 2nd Place Award
• 2011 Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA) Innovation in Interactive Media in Education Semifinalist, Adobe Systems
• 2007 STA (The Society of Typographic Arts) Scholarship: Jack Weiss Founder Award (First Prize)
• 2007 Creative Quarterly Graphic Design Bronze Award (Issue 7) New York, New York

Selected Exhibitions

• 08.2019 The Beauty of Visual Language as Art exhibition. San Francisco Public Library
• 10.2018 RSD7 Visualizing Complex Systems Exhibition. Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• 02.2018 Words in Characters, Books as Vehicles. Earl & Virginia Green Art Gallery, Biola University, CA
• 12.2017 Shanghai Visual Art and Design Exhibition 2017. Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai, China
• 07.2017 ChinaVis Data Visualization Poster Exhibition. Qingdao, China
• 04.2017 The Art of Language in Asian Culture juried Exhibition, Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, East Asia Library of Stanford University