Designing a contextual viewing layer to help global audiences understand Korean culture while watching K-content.
SKILLS
User Research, Prototyping, Interaction Design, Localization Strategy, Web
TEAM
Sole Designer
TIMELINE
February 2024 - August 2024
6 Months
Built on Lottielab.
OVERVIEW
International audiences love K-content, but often miss the meaning behind foods, gestures, locations, and cultural references. When curiosity strikes, viewers pause, switch apps, and search for answers that rarely match the exact moment they just watched. This breaks immersion and fragments understanding.
A national survey found that one in three foreign visitors became interested in Korea through K-content (welcon.kocca.kr), highlighting how influential these moments are when they are understood clearly.
Kulturfy is a responsive web experience that adds cultural context directly on top of scenes, allowing viewers to understand Korean culture in the moment without pausing or Googling.
ROLE
Product Designer
I led the end-to-end design of Kulturfy, from research and concept framing to interaction design and prototyping. I interviewed global K-content viewers to identify where curiosity peaks, synthesized insights into a unified interaction model anchored to the video timeline, and designed the contextual panel, timeline markers, and lightweight social layer. I owned flows, wireframes, prototypes, and final responsive web UI, iterating to validate usability and immersion.
IMPACT
Designed a unified timeline-based system that delivers cultural context without breaking viewing immersion.
Translated moments of viewer curiosity into a predictable interaction model anchored to video playback.
Demonstrated how cultural understanding can be layered into streaming experiences without pausing or switching apps.
Framed a scalable interaction pattern applicable to streaming platforms, travel discovery, and localized media.
THE PROBLEM
Cultural cues get missed.
Foods, gestures, places, and phrases often go unexplained.
Searching breaks immersion.
Searching for context interrupts playback and disrupts immersion.
Discovery is fragmented
Even if something sparks interest, it rarely leads to real understanding.
As a result, international viewers remain engaged with the story but disconnected from the culture behind it.
WHY I BUILT THIS
Friends and family visiting Korea for the first time kept asking the same questions while watching K-content:
What dish is that?
Where is that park?
Why did that moment matter?
Their curiosity consistently turned into Googling, which felt scattered and disconnected from the viewing experience. Seeing this pattern made me want to design a way to support cultural understanding exactly when curiosity appears.
RESEARCH & INSIGHTS
From interviews and observational sessions with global viewers, 3 patterns emerged:
Curiosity happens in specific moments rather than throughout an entire episode.
Viewers want cultural context without interrupting playback.
Lived experiences make cultural explanations feel more meaningful than definitions alone.
These insights shaped a core interaction principle: cultural context should be time-anchored, optional, and lightweight.
FROM FEATURES TO A UNIFIED SYSTEM
Early Feature Exploration
Early concepts explored multiple standalone features, but they felt disconnected. Mapping real viewing behavior revealed that every moment of curiosity was tied to something happening on screen. This insight reframed the product around the video timeline as the primary interaction anchor.
A simple sketch showing my 3 early feature concepts.
Benchmarking
I studied how streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video surface interactions during playback. While these platforms anchor controls and social features to the timeline, they offer little support for contextual understanding. This gap informed a unified system that integrates cultural context without introducing new mental models.
Unified System
Instead of building separate features, I unified cultural context, social insight, and notifications into a single timeline-anchored system. By tying every interaction to a specific moment in the video, viewers could access meaning exactly when curiosity arose, without learning new controls or breaking immersion.
The mock-up above shows timeline markers, a contextual panel with two tabs, and notification cards, all anchored to the same moment in playback.
THE SYSTEM I DESIGNED
Kulturfy integrates cultural understanding directly into the viewing experience through a single cohesive system.
Timeline Markers
Key cultural moments appear as markers on the video timeline. This gives viewers a consistent and predictable way to explore what they’re seeing without interrupting playback.
Contextual Panel
Tapping a marker opens a side panel with concise explanations of foods, gestures, locations, slang, or traditions. Categories help viewers focus on what matters most to them, and the panel can be hidden instantly to return to full immersion.
Social Discussion
A second tab within the same panel surfaces lived experiences from fans and travelers. These perspectives add emotional depth without introducing a separate feature or workflow.
Notification Controls
Viewers can adjust how often contextual cards appear, allowing them to control pace and reduce cognitive load based on personal preference.
REFLECTION
Designing Kulturfy made me realize how strongly K-content shapes real-world travel behavior. Many international viewers visit Korea because of the media they consume, and pop‑culture tourists consistently show high satisfaction, strong spending, and clear revisit intention, especially around K‑drama locations and experiences (wesleyanbusinessreview.com). This reinforces the opportunity for Kulturfy to support more intentional and culturally grounded discovery.
I’m currently vibe-coding new variations in Figma to explore how this cultural layer can feel even lighter and more intuitive, especially as I experiment with motion cues and ways the system could integrate directly into streaming platforms. My goal is to keep pushing Kulturfy toward a direction that respects the viewing experience while helping people discover Korea in a more intentional and culturally grounded way.