Kitty Yue Zhao

WonderView is a web-based amblyopia treatment assistance system designed to address the limitations of existing digital amblyopia training products, including low accessibility, lack of user interaction leading to poor compliance, and insufficient specificity for different amblyopia types. The system provides three distinct training modules, each targeting specific cognitive skills and visual functions corresponding to different amblyopia causes (refractive, anisometropic, and strabismic). Built as a web application requiring only keyboard and mouse input, WonderView features detailed UI rule descriptions to ensure high accessibility and user-friendly interaction.

Fox Journey - Refractive Amblyopia Module: This gamified training module addresses contour integration and global form processing impairments through a child-friendly narrative. The core therapy mechanics feature continuously rotating concentric Gabor patches in the background to activate neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1). Users drag a fox icon along a semi-transparent winding path from start to destination, engaging higher visual form recognition in extrastriate cortex (V2/V3) and requiring efficient integration of shape information against a dynamic background.

Dichoptic Training Module - Anisometropic Amblyopia: This module addresses interocular suppression and binocular neuronal response asymmetry. The interface displays a stereoscopic 3D scene (compatible with VR Cardboard) with rotating 3D objects textured with Gabor patches. The system enhances the amblyopic eye's image with maximum brightness, saturation, and contrast while suppressing the dominant eye's input through reduced brightness and grayscale conversion. This dichoptic differential stimulation aims to balance interocular input intensity, restore binocular balance, and enhance visuospatial attention and visuomotor coordination.

Fox Food Collection - Strabismic Amblyopia Module: This 3D dynamic navigation training module targets impaired binocular integration, abnormal 3D motion processing, and visuomotor coordination deficits. Players automatically move forward along a track, using keyboard controls to navigate laterally and collect target objects while avoiding obstacles. The environment features dynamic colored distractors and a rotating Gabor pattern skybox to activate motion-sensitive cortical areas (MT+). The fast-paced gameplay with randomized object generation aims to improve dorsal stream function, enhance hand-eye coordination, and promote spatial cognitive abilities.

"Mornin'!" is a cooperative digital game designed to support children with strabismic amblyopia by integrating therapeutic visual-training principles into playful, narrative-driven interactions. The game uses collaborative role-play, perspective-taking scenarios, and visually calibrated tasks to encourage binocular cooperation and reduce reliance on the dominant eye.

Game Mechanics: Players control a mother–child duo, each operating separate screens with asymmetric information. They must collaborate to complete morning-routine activities—like washing, cleaning, organizing items, or preparing for school—through raytracing-based vision checks that determine whether the mother "sees" the child performing an undesirable action. The game employs task decomposition using a finite-state machine that structures each chore into sequential, cooperative subtasks. Double-screen collaboration requires each player to work with partial information and communicate to synchronize actions. Interaction mechanics include tapping, pressing, picking up objects, and coordinating movement between rooms. A time and score system encourages repeated practice and engagement.

Tools and Technologies: The project is built primarily in Unity, with C# scripting for player interaction logic, FSM task flow, raytracing-based detection, and UI behavior. 3D modeling was done in Sketchfab and external tools, with scenes textured and built inside Unity. Custom toon/cell shaders provide stylized rendering.

Therapeutic Benefits: The game design directly incorporates insights from clinical amblyopia therapy, especially the need to strengthen binocular coordination and reduce suppression of the weaker eye. It helps children by encouraging sustained fixation and precise visual attention through object-interaction tasks. By embedding binocular cooperation into gameplay—where each player receives only half of the information—the child must visually track, communicate, and coordinate with their partner. The raytraced visual-field simulation models perspective, prompting players to understand what the other sees, reinforcing perspective-taking and controlled eye movement. High-contrast, kid-friendly, carefully calibrated visuals are more engaging than traditional amblyopia therapy screens, reducing drop-off caused by unappealing stimuli. The game allows repetitive yet varied tasks, supporting habit-forming therapeutic practice without the child feeling like they are performing medical exercises.

Terror Tower is an interactive Unity/WebGL game inspired by a trip to ShanXi, combining documentary photography, procedural modelling of the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, and custom shaders to recreate a decaying, nostalgic, and industrialized environment. Built with Unity, Blender, Python-generated tenon joints, and C# NPC systems, the project guides players through themed floors that reveal the overlooked lives of janitors, miners, and marginalized women. Through contrasting reality with state-shaped cultural imagery, the work examines nostalgia, modernization, and how propaganda distorts identity and heritage.

Cache is an interactive web-based media art piece exploring memory and landscape society in the digital age. The work examines how we offload episodic memories to digital devices and how our overreliance on external media affects emotional recall. Built with Three.js, the project allows users to navigate a virtual network of memory containers, where scattered 3D boxes textured with daily photographs symbolize our digital memory storage, and chromatically distorted images represent the biased impressions we form of past events.

StarMedia aims to turn the sonsory intuitive perception of stargazing into an accessible audiovisually immersive media-art design tool, allowing astrophotographers to interact with dynamic celestial spaces. It uses JavaScript, WebGL, custom fragment and vertex shaders, and computer graphics algorithms that detect stars from 2D photos and generate their corresponding 3D models. The work focuses on bridging technical astrophotography and emotional perception by transforming astrophotographs into an explorable digital space.

Bactoria is an AI opponent real-time strategy game built in Ludum Dare 56, where players control bacterial colonies competing for resources and territory. Players click on their ECM (Bacterial Extracellular Matrix) to produce different types of bacteria, each with varying nutrient costs. By drag-selecting bacteria and clicking to direct their movement, players must collect nutrients, defend their base, and capture enemy ECMs to win. The game features four distinct bacterial types: α (warriors), β (guards), γ (scouts), and δ (support units), each serving unique strategic roles in combat and resource management. In the team, I contributed as the UI artist and programmer.

Ludum Dare 56 Results

Final Results:

Overall: 299th (3.795 average from 41 ratings)

Fun: 538th (3.41 average from 41 ratings)

Innovation: 301st (3.59 average from 41 ratings)

Theme: 77th (4.282 average from 41 ratings)

Graphics: 79th (4.45 average from 42 ratings)

Audio: 159th (3.846 average from 41 ratings)

Humor: 459th (3.184 average from 40 ratings)

Mood: 320th (3.795 average from 41 ratings)

Metrics:

Karma from Feedback given: 65

Ratings given: 44.75

Ratings received: 41

Classic Balance: 105.7710

Smart Balance: 4.4966

DepthBorne is an underwater escape game developed for Ludum Dare 57, where players dive deeper while being chased by giant marine creatures. Initially vulnerable to enemy attacks, players grow stronger through resource choices. The game combines survival, bullet-hell, and racing mechanics with an RPG upgrade system. Controls use WASD for movement and clicking to fire. As the team's producer, I led team meeting, allocated team members' tasks, and contributed to UI programming and character animation design.

Our game was playtested by gaming YouTuber Molpe Games, who featured DepthBorne in their content and provided valuable feedback on gameplay mechanics and visual design.

Ludum Dare 58 Results

Final Results:

Overall: 178th (3.883 average from 49 ratings)

Fun: 279th (3.611 average from 47 ratings)

Innovation: 229th (3.609 average from 48 ratings)

Theme: 94th (4.229 average from 50 ratings)

Graphics: 28th (4.606 average from 49 ratings)

Audio: 120th (3.924 average from 48 ratings)

Humor: 510th (2.638 average from 42 ratings)

Mood: 98th (4.144 average from 47 ratings)

Metrics:

Karma from Feedback given: 76

Ratings given: 51.125

Ratings received: 47.5

Classic Balance: 104.8553

Smart Balance: 4.5363

Crash Handler is a fast-paced, arcade-style computer simulation game where players must keep a overheating laptop from crashing while completing short, frantic minigames. Inspired by the noisy, chunky laptops of our peers, the game is designed to be fast, fun, and highly replayable. Players balance gaining points against rising CPU temperature.

Core Gameplay Mechanics

Minigames: The game features numerous quick tasks that players must complete using mouse controls, WASD keys, or the spacebar. These fast-paced minigames require quick reflexes and strategic decision-making as players race against the clock.

Temperature System: The game's core mechanic revolves around managing CPU temperature. Red tabs represent rising temperature that threatens to crash the system, while green tabs represent points earned through successful gameplay. Players must carefully balance completing minigames quickly to earn points while avoiding actions that cause excessive temperature spikes.

Scoring: The final score is calculated by combining the total green tabs collected with a time multiplier, rewarding both efficiency and endurance. This scoring system encourages players to play quickly while maintaining control over the system temperature.

Objective: The primary goal is to keep the computer cool while earning as many points as possible. Players must make split-second decisions about which minigames to prioritize and when to take risks for higher point values.

Art & Visual Design

Style: The game features a chunky, exaggerated computer aesthetic with flashing UI elements that emphasize the chaotic nature of an overheating system. The visual design captures the essence of vintage computing with a modern, stylized twist.

Background: Custom wallpaper and desktop environment create an immersive computer simulation experience, making players feel as though they are actually interacting with a physical laptop.

UI Features: The interface includes a comprehensive start screen displaying high scores and game information, an in-game CPU temperature gauge with a red vignette effect that intensifies as the system heats up, and a detailed game-over screen with score breakdown and replay options. Short, skippable cutscenes add narrative flair and enhance the overall player experience.

Sound Design

Background Music: The soundtrack features fast-paced, intensifying music that builds tension over time, creating a sense of urgency. This is contrasted with calm menu music that provides a moment of respite between gameplay sessions.

Game Audio: The audio design incorporates foley and sourced sounds from Freesound, with pitched variations providing immediate feedback for minigame interactions. Background fan noise adds to the immersion, making players feel the physical presence of the overheating computer.

Audio Management: Sound effects are carefully integrated with gameplay events and UI interactions, ensuring that audio cues provide meaningful feedback and enhance the overall player experience.

Programming & Development

Pre-Interim Focus: Early development focused on core technical systems including additive scene loading for seamless transitions, comprehensive input detection supporting both mouse and keyboard interactions, GameObject movement and animation systems, and dynamic generation of game objects and minigames to ensure varied gameplay experiences.

Post-Interim Improvements: Following the initial development phase, the game received significant enhancements including an improved tutorial system with clearer in-game instructions, the addition of a time multiplier to the scoring system, refinement of existing minigames alongside the introduction of new challenges, and improved UI clarity with better player guidance throughout the experience.

Challenges & Solutions

Sound Integration: Managing multiple audio sources and creating responsive variations required careful implementation to ensure smooth performance and appropriate feedback timing throughout gameplay.

Debugging: Development involved resolving issues with additive scene loading and ensuring proper gameplay rendering on the main screen, which required careful attention to Unity's rendering pipeline and scene management systems.

Unity Build Issues: Sprite rendering errors during project builds were identified and resolved, ensuring consistent visual quality across different build configurations and platforms.

Player Clarity: To improve player understanding and engagement, clearer instructions and visual cues were added to minigames, helping players quickly grasp the objectives and mechanics of each challenge.

30+ minigames

This feasibility study examines the development of a digitally gamified therapeutic treatment for amblyopia patients in Shanghai from three perspectives: vision neuroscience, microeconomics, and behavioral economics. The research explores the potential for creating a high-accessible and user-compliant digital intervention that addresses the challenges of traditional amblyopia treatment methods such as patching (occlusion method) and atropine penalization..

The study concludes that a digitally gamified approach to amblyopia treatment shows significant promise in improving patient compliance and engagement compared to traditional methods. From a vision neuroscience perspective, the systematic literature review and expert interview confirm that targeted visual stimuli can effectively activate specific visual cortex (V1-V5) areas related to different amblyopia types (refractive error, anisometropic, strabismic), leveraging neuroplasticity. Microeconomic analysis, based on Taobao sales data of 13 domestic digital amblyopia treatment devices, reveals that the demand price elasticity of this product is -1.54, indicating an elastic market demand where price is a key factor affecting its popularization. Behavioral economics insights demonstrate that parents' decision-making is significantly influenced by loss aversion, status quo bias, mental accounting, and representativeness bias. They are prone to classify gamified therapy as "entertainment products" rather than "medical necessities," thereby inhibiting their willingness to pay.

In summary, while gamified digital therapy has clear clinical potential and can theoretically solve the compliance pain points of traditional treatments, its feasibility for large-scale promotion in Shanghai is currently limited by economic accessibility and cognitive acceptance.

Due to privacy considerations, the full research document cannot be directly accessed here. The complete study is available via Google Drive link in additional information.

Chocolate's Dream is a short film reflecting on Carpe Diem, created by high school film studio and winner of the only Audience's Choice Award at Shanghai Film Marathon 2024. Inspired by Orson Welles' quote—"Ignorance … sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful"—we embraced this 'naive' approach to professional filmmaking, which opened new creative possibilities. We boldly imagined and brought our visions to life, attempting challenging shots, experimenting with lighting, filming pets, and even shooting at 3 AM on the Bund. The project involved original music composition and collaborative editing and post-production, demonstrating our collective passion for filmmaking and willingness to take creative risks.

Time Difference is a microfilm produced by a high school film studio. This story explores a broken long-distance friendship. As the title suggests, we cannot forever overlap and anchor at midnight. The film is adapted from a student prose 'Freeze dried strawberries' from high school Chinese magazine, exploring themes of distance, connection, and the fragile bonds that persist across time and space.

Research Intern @ Computational Media, UCSC Science Internship Program (with Dr. David M. Torres-Mendoza)

"Scaffolding Research Paper Reading With AI"

This research project focused on developing an AI-powered system to assist with academic paper reading. In collaboration with 3 other interns, I iterated with different prompts and assessed NotebookLM performance and user experience. I conducted a comprehensive literature review on social computing and user psychology, specifically examining the efficacy of academic reading LLMs in helping ESL students. Through prompt engineering on OpenWebUI, I recorded comparative assessments of multiple language models. The final implementation involved developing the model as an API for a chatbot website that will be used by UCSC undergraduate students.

The Sailun Xiaohai Hot Spring Astronomical Observatory is a public-facing observatory project located in Xiaohai Town, Dafeng District, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province. The site was selected for its minimal light pollution, high atmospheric transparency, and convenient transportation access, making it an ideal location for astronomical observation and scientific research.

The observatory serves multiple functions: scientific research observation of planets, stars, and deep-sky objects; public science education for students and the general public; and cultural tourism integration with local ecological attractions such as the Milu Nature Reserve. The project aims to promote local science education and tourism development while contributing to rural revitalization efforts.

The construction process involved comprehensive site selection analysis, focusing on locations at least 5 kilometers from urban light sources, with elevated terrain and open vistas. The final site was chosen at the rooftop terrace of the Sailun Biological Xiaohai Hot Spring Training Center swimming pool building. The observatory is equipped with advanced astronomical telescopes for both visual observation and astrophotography, remote-controlled dome systems, comprehensive monitoring systems, and environmental control equipment to ensure optimal observing conditions.