Khanh Nguyen

khanh nguyen is an interdisciplinary designer & researcher seeking empathetic ways to understand, provoke, and solve the world’s most pressing issues. With a background in mechanical engineering and human-centred design from MIT and two years of experience working in strategy, she wears many hats.

A first-generation vietnamese-american immigrant, she finds this identity core to her, as it allows her to bring in hybrid perspectives and switch between vastly different cultures. She is both suspicious of and beholden to the institutions that have shaped her, aware that she has insight to both underrepresented voices and privileged spaces. Having lived and worked in the Bay Area, New York City, Milan, Kuala Lumpur, Boston, and London, her background and experiences bring a deeper degree of empathy to all that she creates.

She considers herself a creative technologist, marketing mixologist, yes-and activist, and kaleidoscopic strategist. Remember her in cmyk, and get the full spectrum of colour.

the designer sitting in her pangolin chair (a previous project)

Here's the story behind this photo: the entire time I was creating my prior project, I had this crawling hand injury. I went to nine different medical appointments, where I had to explain the story of my pain to a different nurse or doctor each time and advocate for myself when they didn't believe me. I did receive meticulous care by the end (and the injury is now healed), but only after I had to go through the exhausting process of corroborating my own medical history. That is with pain that is physical and visible.

I have a constant muscle knot in my back, which leads to chronic pain and fatigue. I've always dismissed this as not something to bring to a doctor. Yet if knots persist for longer than three months, they may be classed as myofascial pain syndrome, MPS. So why did I feel like my pain was something I should diminish?

Persisting MPS may cause fibromyalgia, a chronic muscle pain condition that most healthcare practitioners still struggle to understand. In parallel, endometriosis, a chronic pain condition caused by uterus lining growing elsewhere, is often dismissed as "just normal period pain." (Should there be such a thing as "normal" pain?) These both invisible illnesses that primarily affect women.

My practice is mixed media design and research. Inspired by shibari, meditation, and the bodily, tactile feeling of rope and thread, I have created artefacts and narratives to explore the cultural and medical journey of women in pain and provoke conversations and further interventions.

This is a film exploring the cultural and medical journey of pain. In one thread, I use my physical designs to explore the pain in my chronic muscle knot that day. In the other thread, the words of women I interviewed or women whose written quotes I took inspiration from are heard.

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film, digital zine

Medium:

frosted acrylic, rope, embroidery thread, fabric

chronic-pain communication health healthcaredesign medical-design women-in-pain womenshealth

Some ropework visualising my muscle knot on different days. The cards and rope work in conjunction to help patients express their pain. They can start with the ropework to create that visual of the pain, then pick out the cards that apply, or the inverse. Patients can continue to change the design as their pain changes.

Medium:

jute rope, cotton rope

bondage mental-health pain patients rope ropework shibari therapy visualisation

Patients find it hard to have their pain believed. By illustrating amorphous pain as pseudo-engineering diagrams, I turned it into something that can be quantified instead of questioned. Exploded axonometric diagrams of the most common pills given to patients of fibromyalgia and endometriosis reveal dangerous side effects. A sankey diagram shows drainage and fatigue that patients cope with.

Medium:

digital, canvas, frosted acrylic

chronic-conditions chronic-fatigue-syndrome endometriosis fatigue fibromyalgia health medicine nhs pain pills side-effects

My research practice is mixed media research. In addition to regular literature review and interviews, this involves cultural-social engagement, visual experimentation, and alternative sparks of inspiration. This creates an intense, extensive understanding of a subject. Download the pdf below to see my process.

PDF: khanh nguyen pain points process journal

activism design-activism design-process design-research process

Khanh Nguyen

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Royal College of Art