Research · Human × AI

Study

YuCROWN's research direction, exploring how people understand, construct and express professional identity through their practices.

Primary umbrella

Professional Identity & Practice

“How can digital technologies help people understand, construct, and express professional identity through their practices?”

It grows from the real participation happening through C// Fellow and C// Conversations, and from the works and context made visible through Earth Library. It is YuCROWN's realm for scholars, practitioners, designers, technologists and independent Study Leads, who each lead distinct studies within a shared frame.

How a Study runs

Study Lead
Research question
Open or recruited participants
Research and fieldwork
Outputs

A Study is led. Each Study Lead brings their own question, method and standard of evidence. YuCROWN provides the frame, the connective tissue, the grounding in real participation, and, where appropriate, a route to public visibility.

//Research areas

How people develop an understanding of professional identity through experiences, practices, relationships and reflection, and how significant projects, consequential decisions, failures, collaborations and value judgements shape the professionals they are becoming.
How people represent themselves through practice: artifacts, processes, decisions, iterations and reflections as evidence of professional identity. And how digital platforms can show the relationships among these forms of evidence, supporting professional narratives that stay coherent without becoming fixed, and that accommodate change, uncertainty and multiple directions.
How people express professional identity across different contexts and audiences while keeping meaningful connections among its many aspects. One person may work across research, design, creative practice, entrepreneurship, community work and other domains.
How AI influences the ways people understand and express professional identity, and how AI systems can support reflection while avoiding identity descriptions that are generic, exaggerated, or disconnected from personal experience.

Professional identity construction and self-presentation

How people develop an understanding of professional identity through experiences, practices, relationships and reflection, and how significant projects, consequential decisions, failures, collaborations and value judgements shape the professionals they are becoming.

//Research mission

Professional identity reflects how people understand their practices, capabilities, values, roles and future directions. It develops through experiences, creations, decisions, relationships and reflection.

Current digital platforms often reduce it to profiles, labels, content lists and measurable achievements. YuCROWN Study investigates how digital technologies can connect people's experiences, works, reflections and relationships, to support more dynamic and self-directed professional identity construction.

So that a person can

Identify capabilities and values across different experiences.
Recognise recurring interests and ways of working within their practices.
Connect projects, decisions, reflections and developmental trajectories.
Use concrete evidence to communicate how they work.
Express professional identities that reach beyond job titles and credentials.
Adapt the expression of professional identity across communities and contexts.
Maintain a coherent sense of professional identity as practices evolve.
Retain personal judgement and agency when AI participates in identity construction and expression.

//Where its questions come from

C// Fellow
A sustained practice context, where young people make original work and develop voice, judgement and authorship using AI and other creative tools.
C// Conversations
Intergenerational experience, tacit knowledge, judgement and context, through questions led by young people.
Earth Library
The public environment where independently created works and human context remain visible in relation to one another.

Study

These activities can inform Study questions about professional identity, practice, judgement, agency, authorship and Human–AI interaction over time.

//What a Study produces

Papers
Field notes
Public reports
Design principles
Anonymised findings
Toolkits
Interactive Stations

Where appropriate, Study findings can be contributed into Earth Library as public-facing work.

Research keywords

Human–Computer InteractionHuman–AI CollaborationWell-beingProfessional IdentityProfessional Identity ConstructionDigital Self-PresentationDigital IdentityPractice-Based Self-RepresentationProfessional NarrativesHuman–AI Identity WorkAI-Assisted Reflection

Current research context

Contributes to YuCROWN Study

Cali(Jiazhou Wu)

Cali's work in Study looks at how people construct and express professional identity through their practices, and how judgement, agency and authorship hold up when AI takes part in that work.

Background

A doctoral researcher in the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), in the Design, Interaction, and Data Lab. His research interests include Human–Computer Interaction, Human-Centered AI, Human–AI Collaboration, Accessibility and Value-Sensitive Design, with a broader interest in technological innovation, social responsibility, and the sustainable development of emerging technologies.

The university named here is where Cali studies; no university sponsors or partners with YuCROWN.

Study stays open by design: scholars, practitioners, designers, technologists and independent Study Leads can each lead distinct studies within this shared frame. Cali's work is one current example of the research context that supports the realm.

Boundaries, ethics and consent

Earth Library and the C// programs exist for the people who take part in them. Study draws its questions from that participation, and any formal human-subject research runs with its own explicit consent, defined data boundaries, participant safeguards and methods. Taking part in research is always a separate, deliberate choice.