Chenfei Yu

Chenfei “Faye” Yu, MSN, RN, is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Design and Media at Northeastern University and a registered nurse with a master’s degree in Adult-Gerontology Primary Care. Her work bridges healthcare, service design, experience design, healthcare communication, and health humanities, with a focus on making healthcare delivery more human, responsive, and compassionate.

Rooted in both clinical practice and design research, Faye brings a critical and care-centered perspective to longstanding challenges in healthcare. Her current doctoral work focuses on experience design in healthcare, particularly within end-of-life care, high-stakes healthcare conversations, and shared decision-making. She is interested in how services, environments, communication tools, and participatory methods can better support patients, families, and healthcare teams during emotionally complex and uncertain moments.

Faye’s research explores how interdisciplinary design approaches can help soften the hardest moments in healthcare by creating clearer, more dignified, and more compassionate experiences. Rather than treating healthcare communication as simply the exchange of information, she approaches it as a deeply relational experience shaped by emotion, timing, family dynamics, culture, and systems of care.

Through her PhD journey, Faye aims to break down traditional boundaries between healthcare and design, using human-centered and dignity-driven approaches to imagine more supportive care experiences. Beyond research, she remains committed to patient- and family-centered care, interdisciplinary collaboration, and creating healthcare systems that are not only effective, but also emotionally supportive, inclusive, and humane.