My projects are interconnected explorations of how technology can foster connection and understanding. I design tools that help us listen more deeply -
to our environment, to our children, and to our own creativity. While the contexts vary, the mission is constant: to bridge gaps between people, ideas, and inner states through thoughtful human-computer interaction.
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MeloGo is an interactive educational game from Harvard GSE that champions informal learning. Players help Melo, a music-loving dog, rediscover the music hidden in their daily environment. By exploring surroundings to capture and create music from everyday sounds, the game fosters a playful, organic form of learning.
Through rhythm practice and sound exploration, it cultivates listening awareness and musical expression, making music education accessible and engaging for young learners.
Hrvard Graduate School of Education · Fall 2024
Echo Explorers is an interactive listening card game designed by Cinta Xia to spark human connection, storytelling, and imagination. Inspired by Deep Listening, it offers simple prompts - notice the quiet, recall a memory, imagine a far-off sound - that can be played solo or in a group.
Use it to build focus, creativity, and shared stories in families, classrooms, and community circles.
Echo Explorers· MIT ·
Supervised by Tod Machover
Can We See Sound?
Inspired by Kandinsky’s synesthetic vision, I imagine something else - not painted sound, but sound that paints itself.
With creative coding, I broke my painting into 36 elements, each mapped to audio via real-time FFT. The system becomes a living ecosystem: low frequencies scale forms, midrange sets orbital paths, and highs trace delicate oscillations.
This isn’t visualization - it’s algorithmic composition. Every input yields fresh spatial relationships and motion patterns, an emergent visual counterpoint. Like a score for the eyes, each performance writes new harmonies in real time.
How Many Worlds in a Beam of Light is an installation that plays with how we see. Light passes through cut black paper and holographic film before reaching the eye, creating shifting patterns of color and depth. As viewers move, diffraction reshapes their visual field, turning an ordinary beam of light into something layered, unstable, and quietly extraordinary.
Light Layers· MIT ·
Supervised by Seth Riskin & Pawan Sinha
First exhibited in the MIT Museum Gallery, Cambridge, MA, 2025.
Interactive Digital Library is a data-visualization-driven discovery system champions intuitive learning. Young learners help explore a digital bookshelf, rediscovering the joy of reading hidden in a spatial layout. By navigating a visual interface to find and select books from vibrant topic clusters, the system fosters a playful, organic form of exploration.
Through visual scanning and intuitive interaction, it cultivates literary discovery and engagement, making book selection accessible and engaging for early readers.
Interactive Digital Library · MIT ·
Supervised by Ben Fry
Kinnect is an AI chatbot designed by Cinta Xia, aimed at bridging the communication gap between parents and children. It addresses the critical issue of school bullying, empowering kids to express their struggles and helping parents to understand and respond with empathy.
By facilitating guided, supportive conversations, Kinnect fosters stronger family bonds and creates a safe, neutral platform for sharing difficult feelings. Its mission is to ensure no child faces bullying alone, transforming family dynamics through AI-driven insights and compassionate dialogue.
Kinnect · Harvard Graduate School of Education · Supervised by David Dockterman
MeloMind
Python project
Melomind is an interactive music-based experience that uses guided soundscapes, breathing exercises, and reflective prompts to help people notice, name, and process their emotions. It turns listening into a gentle self-reflection ritual, blending music, mood tracking, and short writing to support everyday emotional wellbeing.