Beyond What We See

Every story begins with something we notice. But understanding why things happen often requires looking beyond what we can see.

My interest in visual storytelling gradually led me to a different kind of curiosity: How do the messages we encounter influence our perceptions? How do emerging technologies reshape communities and economies? And how can research help us understand the relationship between communication, human behavior, and social change?

Through academic research, I have begun exploring these questions by connecting analytical thinking with my interests in communication, creativity, and the world around me.

While photography teaches me to observe and design helps me communicate, research challenges me to question assumptions, examine evidence, and look for explanations beneath the surface.

For me, research is another form of storytelling — one that begins with questions and builds understanding through evidence.

A brand posts a compelling sustainability campaign. A product is presented through nature-inspired imagery, emotional storytelling, and environmentally friendly claims.

But how do consumers know whether the environmental impact they imagine matches the impact supported by evidence?

As someone interested in visual marketing and communication, I have become increasingly curious about the relationship between the stories brands tell and the beliefs those stories create.

This curiosity became the foundation of my research into Perceived Impact Inflation (PII), a concept examining the gap between consumers' perceived sustainability impact and expert-established sustainability benchmarks.

The central question was simple, but its implications were much broader:

Can combinations of digital marketing messages lead consumers to overestimate the environmental benefits associated with a product?

The study focuses on technology-mediated sustainability communication in Vietnam's food-and-beverage sector.

Rather than examining individual advertising elements in isolation, our research investigates how different communication cues may work together to shape consumer perceptions.

The study involved 312 respondents and employed fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to explore configurations of communication-related conditions associated with inflated perceptions of sustainability impact.

The analysis identified four configurations associated with this phenomenon, highlighting the importance of considering how different persuasive elements interact.

These findings raise questions about the responsibilities of brands and communicators, particularly when audiences may lack the information needed to evaluate environmental claims independently.

They also suggest that effective sustainability communication should be evaluated not only by how successfully it attracts attention, but by how accurately it helps consumers understand environmental impact.

Working on this study has made me reconsider what makes communication truly meaningful.

Through my creative projects, I have learned how design and storytelling can make a message more engaging. Through research, I have begun asking a different question: What happens after people see that message?

Do they understand it accurately? Can they distinguish evidence from persuasion? And how might the design of a campaign influence what they believe?

These questions are especially relevant to my interests in branding, digital communication, and community-oriented creative projects.

I want to continue developing visual stories that are not only engaging but also thoughtful about the information they communicate and the perceptions they may create.