Main menu
Staff & students

Soomi Park

Staff details

Soomi Park

Position

Lecturer in Design

Department

Design

Email

s.park (@gold.ac.uk)

Soomi's work discusses the complex relationship between emerging technologies and human desires.

Soomi is a London-based designer and researcher whose work crosses the boundaries between design, fiction, and cognitive and social psychology. Through the lens of her research background, she explores the complex relationship between emerging technologies and human desires. Her practice spans a wide range of mediums, including speculative objects, film, photography, performance, interactive installations, and wearables.

Her work has been featured in global media outlets such as The New York Times, Vogue Paris, Frame Magazine, The Guardian, and Wired UK, among others. She was a Designer in Residence at the Design Museum in London in 2017. She was awarded a PhD (thesis titled 'Should Robots Blush?') from Queen Mary University of London, where she explored the relationship between social psychology and robotics through speculative design, funded by the EPSRC. She also holds an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London.

Academic qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy in Media and Arts Technology, Queen Mary University of London 2024
  • MA in Design Interactions, Royal College of Art 2013
  • MA in Digital Media Design, Hongik University (IDAS) 2007
  • BA in Multimedia and Animation/ Visual Communication, Sookmyung Women's University 2005

Teaching and supervision

BA Design Year 1 - Studio Project
BA Design Year 2 - Studio Project
BA Design Year 3 - Studio Project
MA Design: Expanded Practice - Design Transforcality

Research interests

My research interests include the following subject areas (but not limited to):
Speculative Design/ Design Fiction
Wearable Computing
Social Psychology
Social Robotics
Human-Nonhuman Interactions

Grants and awards

2017: Centre for Public Engagement Small Grant Award
Grant awarded for Embarrassed Robots project from Queen Mary University of London

2017: Designers in Residence of the Design Museum
Embarrassed Robots project

2016: Global Design Leader of Korea Institute of Design Promotion(KIDP), South Korea
Transitive Wearable study

Publications and research outputs

Article

  • Should Robots Blush? Park, Soomi; Healey, Patrick G. T. and Kaniadakis, Antonios. 2021. Should Robots Blush? CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(14), 717.

Audio

Book Section

Conference or Workshop Item

Design

Edited Book

Film/Video

Professional Activity

Project

Show/Exhibition

  • Embarrassed Robots Park, Soomi. 2023. Embarrassed Robots. In: "Femmes Designers - Through Her Lens: Testing boundaries in STEAM", Shoreditch Arts Club, United Kingdom, 19 October 2023.
  • Between Dreamy and Dreary: Fiction in Design Park, Soomi and Wells, Owen. 2020. Between Dreamy and Dreary: Fiction in Design. In: "Between Dreamy and Dreary: Fiction in Design", Celine Park Gallery, Korea, Republic of, 21 Aug – 21 Nov 2020.
  • The Republic of Privacy Park, Soomi. 2019. The Republic of Privacy. In: "The Paradox Of Privacy", Accenture The Dock, Dublin, Ireland, 8 July - 9 September 2019.

Thesis

Other

  • Femmes Designers Yunes, Nour Diab; Varelidi, Chloe; Cantera, Ana Laura; Hui, Angela Wei Nok; Park, Soomi; Hage, Nour; Tanaka, Kaoru; Richter-Lunn, Katharina; Zhang, Weidi; Estarita-Guerrero, Ana Carolina; Li, Jiabao; Petric, Maja; Tan, Ling; Soula, Noemie; Zeng, Jiani; Zacharias, Maroula and Yan, Shao. 2023. Femmes Designers. Femmes Designers Ltd..
  • Jeunes Talents: Les robots sensible de Soomi Park Mallet, Élodie and Park, Soomi. 2019. Jeunes Talents: Les robots sensible de Soomi Park. Intramuros, Paris.
  • Playing with the future Beckett, Kathleen; Park, Soomi; Hildrey, Chris; Danmole, Yinka; Ayaskan, Bike and Ayaskan, Begum. 2017. Playing with the future. The New York Times, New York.