Improving everyday lives, creating impact, and sharing vision through design.
Our Story
D.FLUENCE is an experience design practice founded by Yihyun Lim and Bumjin Kim, around a vision of searching for ways to improve our everyday lives through design. We search for design opportunities by studying current societal issues and emerging trends, and envision future experiences through design and prototyping.
Team
We are dynamic team of designers, architects, researchers, and strategists, all around motivated and passionate about what we do. Yihyun and Bumjin met at MIT while pursuing their M.Arch degrees, and have been collaborating on projects since then.
They have individually pursued their careers as researcher, architect, and designer, before deciding to team up to continue explore impact of design.
Yihyun Lim
Co-founder, Principal
Yihyun Lim is an architect, urban designer, and assistant professor of practice, design at USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy. She was the director of MIT Design Lab, where she led a group of multidisciplinary researchers and students and conducted value-driven interaction and experience design research projects by contextualizing emerging technologies in the projected future.
Through her work at MIT Design Lab, she has collaborated with industry partners across all sectors, including energy, banking, sportswear, and consumer electronics to create strategic innovation experiences and future visions. Yihyun is currently leading MIT Civic Design Initiative, working on projects related to climate change, financial wellbeing, and pandemic experiences.
Her work has been exhibited at international design events such as Milan Design Week, Ars Electronica and London Design Museum.
Bumjin Kim
Co-founder, Principal
Bumjin Kim is an urban designer, artist and architect based in the US, with a strong belief that design can improve our society and culture. He works with projects of various scales and searches for design opportunities in everyday city experiences.
Bumjin is currently a visiting professor at Indiana University, in the Comprehensive Design Program. He received a Master of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute Technology (MIT), and bachelor's degree in Hongik University. He has working experiences in the U.S., France and Korea and his works were exhibited in the U.S., Spain, Italy and China including the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
His projects and images have received numerous awards from Red Dot Design Award, A’Design Award, International Design Award, and etc.. He has also been appointed to the Grand Jury panel for the A'Design Award since 2017.