Humming
Inside Us
[ Ongoing Pair Project ]
How might we support young Chinese Americans to care for their emotional well-being while honoring East Asian collectivist cultural values?
Outcomes
- We hosted two hybrid workshops—combining in-person and online participation—focused on awareness-building and developing self-care routines. In total, 33 people took part.
A participatory project that reframes everyday cultural practices as tools for emotional well-being among first-generation Chinese American young adults in New York City.
Humming Inside Us hosted in collaboration with clinicians and local organizations, Henry Street Settlement and Accent Sisters, a series of culturally relevant self-care workshops blend mind-body awareness with approachable emotional wellness strategiesaimed to build sustainable self-care routines, strengthen individuals’ ability to understand their feelings and reduce the shame often associated with expressing emotions.
View Full Process Book →CATA
Background
Methodology
Design
Background
Humming Inside Us is a participatory design project that explores how young Chinese Americans in NYC can care for their emotional well-being in ways that feel culturally safe and familiar.
Grounded in the context of East Asian collectivist values, this project addresses how emotional expression is shaped by cultural norms such as filial piety, endurance, and emotional restraint.
We collaborated with therapiests and community organizations to better understand the emotional lives of first-generation Chinese American young adults—especially how non-verbal, everyday practices can support mental health.
Methodology
View Full Process Book →We grounded our approach in the Community of Practice (CoP) framework and the Two Loop Model., aiming to connect individuals’ lived experiences with emerging, culturally resonant practices.
Our methodology is combined:
- 30+ semi-structured interviews with young adults, therapists, and cultural workers
- Over 100 survey responses from the Chinese American community
- Multiple co-creation workshops to test and co-develop tools
✦ A key design logic was to link emotional experiences back to the body, acknowledging that for many in our community, emotional discomfort is often first experienced somatically—through fatigue, tension, pain, or numbness.
✦ We framed this not as a problem to fix, but as a starting point:
What if emotional awareness could begin in the body?
✦ This guided us to explore and prototype tools that were non-verbal, sensory-based, and culturally grounded: reframing everyday rituals as meaningful practices for emotional care.
Design
Based on our research, we developed a series of interventions:
🌀 Mind-Body Map Toolkit – A visual tool to support non-verbal emotional reflection, tested across 7 usability workshops
🧠 Co-creation Workshops – Facilitated sessions combining guided reflection with cultural activities (e.g., improvisational movement, tea rituals)
📓 Self-Care Journal – A printed journal with body maps, guidance for culturally-rooted self-care strategies, and space for creative expression
Participants described the map as "a bridge between how I feel and what I say," and shared a sense of comfort and familiarity when engaging in these activities with their cultural peers.