Hong is a senior researcher in the Co-Stars Service Design Research Group, and a project coordinator in the SmartCulTour – Smart Cultural Tourism as a Driver of Sustainable Development of European Regions – project.

Hong holds the degree of Doctor of Arts with distinction. She successfully defended her doctoral dissertation: Connecting Couples in Long-Distance Relationships – Towards Unconventional Computer-Mediated Emotional Communication Systems. Her doctoral research was dedicated to applying design thinking to investigate how intensive technologies can be redesigned and humanised to support new and positive human experiences. Particularly, she focused on mediating emotional communication for connecting distant loved ones through unconventional user interfaces that use interaction solutions beyond the scope of their conventional use.

Hong has a multicultural and multidisciplinary background. She originally comes from China. She studied Japanese Business and Culture at Hokkaido University as a Japanese Government Scholarship student. She was awarded the degree of Master of Design in Design for Services by the University of Dundee, UK.