Humming Inside Us by Nany Xinyu Chen & Jiayao Li (MFA DSI ’25) is a participatory project that reframes everyday cultural values
as tools for emotional well-being. In collaboration with mental health clinicians,
Henry Street Settlement, Accent Sisters, self-care workshops blend mind-body
awareness with culturally-relevant wellness strategies to help first-generation
Chinese American young adults in New York City understand their feelings and
reduce shame.
Xinyu “Nany” Chen
Nany Chen is a designer and illustrator currently residing in the New York area. She earned a BFA in Communication Design from Nanjing Normal University and studied for one and a half years at HFG Offenbach in Germany. While studying at HFG, she participated in an interdisciplinary exhibition project called “Making Crisis Visible,” which sparked her interest in social design. As a designer with a strong interest in mental health, Nany is eager to collaborate with faculty and peers to learn how to use design as a method for raising awareness of mental health in society. She hopes to make a greater effort in social innovation design through these collaborations.
Jiayao Li
Jiayao, got her BA in psychology major, currently has a goal to develop in user experience and service design. Growing up in China, she discovered the lack of attention that people here put on mental health problems. During her undergraduate years, she accumulated abundant information in psychological and social fields. At the same time, she found that it would be great to integrate that information into user experience and service design, which put great importance on users’ feelings, in order to bring interest to individuals in society.
