Translating emerging signals into objects, systems, and future conditions.

Hanna Park is an interdisciplinary designer and researcher based between London and Seoul. Through Almost There Lab ↗, she explores how emerging technologies, cultural shifts, and speculative thinking become tangible experiences, objects, and future conditions.

Her work investigates how people encounter technological systems in everyday life, with a particular interest in artificial intelligence, domestic futures, privacy, ritual, and embodied interaction. Rather than approaching design as a process of problem solving, she uses research, prototyping, and object making as tools for inquiry and reflection.

Almost There Lab approaches design as a form of cultural and technological inquiry. The practice investigates how emerging technologies, social transformations, and behavioural shifts influence the ways people live, interact, and imagine the future. Research, prototyping, and object making are used to translate emerging signals into tangible experiences, allowing future conditions to be explored in the present. By moving between research and material practice, the studio creates objects, systems, and experiences that encourage reflection on the futures already taking shape around us.

Almost There Lab also operates as an independent design research practice, translating weak signals and emerging behaviours into physical experiences. Projects often begin with observations of technological and cultural change and evolve into speculative scenarios, interaction prototypes, and future artefacts that make possible futures tangible in the present.

Through this approach, the studio seeks to create preferable futures and positive forecasting errors: outcomes that become better than anticipated. The work is less concerned with predicting what will happen than with expanding what could happen.

Hanna is currently completing an Master in Design Futures(MDes) ↗at the Royal College of Art. Her studies focus on futures thinking, speculative design, and emerging technologies as tools for societal and cultural exploration.

Previously, she majored in Object Design and Art Management at Korea National University of Arts ↗, graduating as the top student in the Design department. She also completed an exchange semester in Industrial Design at Zurich University of the Arts ↗, where she collaborated across disciplines with students from ZHdK, ETH Zürich, and the University of Zürich.

Her professional experience spans industrial design, interaction design, speculative design, and design research. She has worked on AI-mediated experiences at Neutune / KAIST Company Lab ↗, future urban scenarios with Hyundai Motors Group ↗, and product development projects at Vetica Group ↗in Switzerland. More recently, she worked as a Research & Design Assistant at LS Design Studio in Seoul.

Her projects have been exhibited internationally, including at New Designers London ↗. She is also a recipient of the Royal College of Art International Scholarship and has received awards for SODEXO Group ↗academic-industry collaborations exploring food systems, algorithms, and future experiences.