MFA Alumna Julie Huang Continues Award-Winning Streak

Huang's Award Winning EMO Project

Armed with BFA in Applied Art, 3D Computer Animation, from her native Taiwan, Julie Huang dove into the Web Design + New Media MFA program at AAU in 2005. Her graduate thesis called EMO — a mobile-based memory tracking application — was unveiled at AAU’s annual Spring Show and won the department’s Best of Show award in 2008.

Upon the urging of graduate director, Lourdes Livingston, Julie submitted her project to SIGGRAPH, the leading industry association focused on computer graphics and interactivity. A few months later, it won first place in the Space Time Interactive Competition at the annual conference in Los Angeles.

Wait. We’re not finished.

This year, the project was recognized as an Official Honoree by the judges of the 13th Annual Webby Awards – the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet.

What is this project? And who is Julie Huang?

Julie states on her site that “the purpose of EMO is to store people’s current feelings and represent their memories in a creative way.” Via their cell phone, users capture their current mood and location at any moment in time. The message from the cell phone is immediately transferred to the EMO site where it is stored in the users’ Personal EMO – an online memory journal. Over time, users see how their emotions change at different ages and they can compare them with other users in a visual way.

“The site also experiments with how environments affect people’s moods,” she continues. For example, the memories from all users based in San Francisco are compiled into a map, organized by moods and districts. In the EMO Public Map, anyone can see the dynamic emotional report about this city, and view how others feel around them.

Julie prides herself as a bilingual, award winning interactive designer. Fluent in written and spoken Mandarin and English, she specializes in information architecture, UI design, and Web application development. Today, she’s a web designer at Livescribe, makers of the Pulse Smart Pen.

Find out more about Julie at her personal website.