🧭 Navigate To: → My Role/Research Impact Summary → Pervasive Tsinghua Project: ESL Anxiety & Avatar Design in Video Conferencing → BLUES Berkeley Project: The Smartphone Privacy Divide

LinkedIn | Resume | Contact Me | @joshrafasan

→ Research Experience Summary

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Timeline & Roles:

• Roles: UX Researcher, Cross-Cultural Study Lead, Co-Author
• Dates: September 2020 through August 2022.
• Overview: I conducted 2 long-term UX research initiatives — one at UC Berkeley’s BLUES Lab and one at Tsinghua University’s Pervasive Computing Lab — focused on deeply understanding marginalized user experiences through rigorous design research. Each project resulted a published, peer-reviewed paper at top-tier academic venues (CHI ‘22, CHI ‘23) and shaped my foundation as a research-informed, impact-driven product thinker. </aside>

→ Overall Impact & Mission

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Mission:

My mission was to investigate underrepresented user needs through large-scale, mixed-method research and apply those findings to create better, more inclusive products. I focused on how anxiety, privacy, and power dynamics impact user behavior in digital environments.

→ @ Berkeley: Uncovering how tech disparities impact mobile privacy management across socioeconomic lines.

→ @ Tsinghua: Understanding avatar design’s effect on ESL user anxiety in video conferencing environments.

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Overall Impact:

→ 2 research papers co-authored and presented at CHI/ACM conferences.

• Link to Paper → Exploring and Analyzing the Effect of Avatar's Realism on Anxiety of English as Second Language (ESL) Speakers
• Link to Paper → Users’ Expectations About and Use of Smartphone Privacy and Security Settings

→ Collaborated with PhDs, faculty, and international teams to conduct mixed-method research. 🤝🏼

→ Developed critical insights into privacy, accessibility, and design for anxiety-reduction. ☑️

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→ ESL Anxiety & Avatar Design in Video Conferencing

Link to Paper → Exploring and Analyzing the Effect of Avatar's Realism on Anxiety of English as Second Language (ESL) Speakers

Tsinghua University, Pervasive Computing Lab | CHI ‘23

→ Background & Research Question:

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Can the design of avatars reduce anxiety for non-native English speakers in remote video calls?

• → As remote communication becomes more integral to work, learning, and health, many ESL (English as a Second Language) users continue to experience heightened anxiety when interacting with native English speakers.
• → Hypothesis: The level of avatar realism could impact this anxiety—either mitigating or exacerbating emotional discomfort during virtual conversations. </aside>

→ Approach & Methodologies:

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Conducted a 6-month UX research study at Tsinghua’s Pervasive Computing Lab. (🇨🇳 ↔️ 🇺🇸)

🚹 Used a between-subjects experimental design with 3 avatar types:

1. Cartoon-stylized avatars
2. Photo-realistic avatars
3. Real video footage

✏️ Collected qualitative and quantitative data using:

• Interview sessions with ESL/native speaker pairs.
• Behavioral analysis of anxiety indicators.
• Post-session surveys and translated sentiment scoring. </aside>

→ Execution & Collaboration:

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Owned the full research pipeline:

• Literature review
• Interview script development & translation
• Pilot tests, user recruitment, and experimental design
• Data analysis, statistical review, and manuscript writing

Worked across China-US time zones, leading interviews between Tsinghua-based ESL speakers and native English speakers abroad. 🌐 (🇨🇳 ↔️ 🇺🇸)

• Managed cultural and language barriers while translating results across both English and Mandarin contexts. </aside>