Linh Dao


Assistant Professor, Interaction Design, California Polytechnic State University. 

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Linh Dao

Interaction Design, Assistant Professor, California Polytechnic State University

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Small Aspirations

2022-2023

Small Aspirations is based on critical play that critiques, subverts, and explores alternatives to the misunderstood immigration experience. I draw from both the traditional form of play (e.g., three object play) as well as video game play (e.g., puzzler) to inform the design of a web-based VR experience inspired by a fortune-telling custom in which a baby is given three objects to choose from at their first birthday, each of which symbolizes a path the child aspires to follow when they become adults. Here the player is a first-time immigrant to the U.S., choosing jobs such as restaurant and construction worker that are not glamorous but essential.

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Augmented Reality Wayfinding And Identity System For Queer Art at the Museums

2023

In collaboration with Elise Coatney & Chenin Rowe

An add-on queer augmented reality learning experience for art galleries and museums, consisting of an identity and wayfinding system as well as a digital archive. The experience was designed to blend seamlessly into traditional museum settings, transforming the printed descriptions on gallery walls into a portal of sorts, leading visitors to a larger network of curated similar or related queer works. Using the portable and powerful mobile device, onsite wayfinding and offsite exploration are both possible. A formerly static gallery or museum is re-imagined once more.

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Pre-arrival

2021-2023

An Extended Reality (XR) immersive experience into a digital typography experimentation of the geometry of the lights and shadows. It depicts the journey of undocumented immigrants in a poetic spatiotemporal typographic landscape built on the words of the poem The New Colossus by American Poet Emma Lazarus. The experience is built using the Unity Engine.

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Transitional Threads

2023

In collaboration with Amanda Stojanov (https://amandastojanov.com/)

An immersive virtual reality experience about migration as a complex multigenerational process in which the player interacts with sculptural types that carry sentimental meanings. Each of these words that we wrote together is a word that tells our story in two parts: one of us leaving from elsewhere, and the other arriving from elsewhere, both wanting to be truly at home here in the United States.

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Immigration Documentation

2019

Immigration Documentation allows immigrants to keep track of their passport, entry, visa, and visa application status. It also alerts the user if/when immigration policies change. The core of the application is a centralized, more actionable, and improved version of what is offered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Travel Documents. Moreover, each of these websites has its own set of challenges and issues.

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