Tianyu Hu Lange (胡天宇）
I came to the United States in the summer of 2013 after I graduated from Wuhan University in China. Majored in Digital Publishing, I found myself like to play around those online interactive magazines the most. Later on, I realized in many cases, readability can also expand to usability. That's where I first got to know the fancy term Human-Computer Interaction, and that's also why I chose to continue my education in the field of HCI.
During my time in Michigan State University's Media Information program as a grad student, I specialized in Serious Game Design with the belief that gaming, especially gaming for good will be huge. Hence I focused my research and practice on health games as well as education games, while exploring the possibility of technology with Unity 3D, Arduino and all other fun stuff as well.
I don't like the term "gamification". Game design is serious, game play should be meaningful. A media should be able to categorized as a game, or not a game. Anything in between is just not perfect enough to be a game but still try to be fancy, probably... a gimmick.
Now I'm working on one of the biggest early education product -- ABCmouse.com, actively doing user researches with kids in different age groups. Understanding kids is not easy, but it's rather fun and rewarding, when you see they are actually learning while having fun with the context you designed.
Besides of design and technology, I'm also interested culture differences, food, beer, travel and corgis. Well, actually, anything cute or worth exploring. XD