Alvin Chang’s project for The Pudding, “The Search for My Kimchi,” reflects his signature approach: blending personal narrative, cultural memory, and interactive design to explore the emotional terrain between food and identity.

In this Q&A, Chang discusses how he structured the interactive essay, the challenges of researching kimchi’s history in the West, and why his hand-drawn visuals add to the emotional weight of the story.

You previously spoke to Storybench about making visualizations that are intuitive and inviting. How does that approach show up in “The Search for My Kimchi”?

I think a lot about how people experience a story, not just reading it, but feeling it. In the past, my visualizations have been about making data more intuitive, but this time, I wanted the entire story to feel experiential. That’s why the piece is structured like an interactive journey. 

Instead of just reading about kimchi, the audience has to search through different elements, picking recipes, navigating different stages of life, clicking around in a way that mimics the experience of searching for something familiar but just out of reach.

That reflects my personal experience with kimchi, which isn’t just a dish – it’s a deeply ingrained part of memory and identity.

You originally set out to find the “perfect” kimchi recipe. How did that idea evolve into something more personal?

This story is interesting because it started with me wanting to find the perfect kimchi recipe. Because I thought, well, hey, I make it all the time, but every time I saw these recipes coming out, especially in the last few years when really high profile food journalists started to release their kimchi recipes – people like Roy Choi, a famous chef releasing his kimchi recipe, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, this is a little bit different than I do it.’ And so it initially started from this idea of, well, I’m curious what those recipes are and whether there’s, like, a core of we all do this the same, but all of us kind of riffed over here.

But when I actually surveyed people and looked at different recipes, I realized that the differences weren’t just about ingredients, they were about memories.

I started to realize, “Oh, we all just make the same thing with just the tiniest amount of different differences,” but a lot of it is just in the kind of nuances of how it turns out… It’s how our grandma made it, or tied to a memory. And so I realized a lot of times I go to restaurants and it’s like, “That’s not my kimchi, that tastes different.” Every Korean family will do that, but go somewhere to eat someone else’s kimchi and complain about it, judge it a little bit.

That’s what shaped the final version of the story. Instead of just searching for “a kimchi,” I was really searching for my kimchi.

Your previous work is very data-heavy, but this piece leans into personal storytelling. How did you balance that?

A lot of my storytelling is about zooming in on one experience, then pulling back to show the bigger picture.

I wanted to tell one story – my story, but always keep it within the context of larger Korean American history, kimchi’s global evolution, and the way cultural traditions shift over time.

For example, as I move through different life stages in the piece, the audience also gets little bits of history – how kimchi changed when Koreans immigrated to the U.S., how it appeared in early American cookbooks, and how its perception evolved in Western food culture.

The goal was for people to see their own experience reflected, even if they weren’t Korean. Maybe they have a dish from childhood that feels the same way – something deeply personal that they’re always chasing.

You use a mix of hand-drawn illustrations and interactive elements. Why did you choose this visual style?

I’m not a particularly good artist, but that’s kind of become my style, it’s like my brand. My style of work is just what I can produce. And this is what I wanted to do. This is the idea I had.
If scrolling on a piece of paper, was all I was capable of, I would say, “You know what? Let’s tell a story that way.” It’s okay. 

And I think a lot of times there is story and content in the details of what you’re able to do. You can literally see where I can’t quite connect these lines or I can’t really draw a circle. And I think it’s important to show that it’s not a machine doing it — it’s my hand trying to stay still.

Your research included tracking down old cookbooks and missionary letters. What was the biggest challenge in documenting kimchi’s history in the West?

The history of kimchi itself is well-documented, but its introduction to Western culture isn’t as clear.

I had to dig through really old American cookbooks, letters from missionaries in Korea, and pop culture references just to piece together how kimchi was first perceived outside of Korea.

One of the hardest things was tracking down out-of-print books. I had to find and buy a 1950s Korean cookbook because it hadn’t been digitized anywhere. It was time-consuming, but I felt a responsibility to uncover the work that had been done before me – otherwise, it would be easy to act like I was “discovering” something that others had already documented.

You mentioned the story is structured like a search. How did you decide on its pacing and transitions?

A lot of the structure was, you’re searching for something, right? There’s a little narrative tension there. And so a lot of the setup is like, the first scene is like, build up something that’s really important to you. Oh, my god, that’s amazing. And the second scene is like, Oh, my god, you lost something. A third scene, it’s like, you’re looking for something. The last scene is you found it. If you were to tell, like, a kid’s story around it, it’d be like, “Oh, that makes sense, duh.” But when you do it in a more philosophical or more like personal narrative, adult personal narrative style, you don’t see it quite as easily, but it’s just a really basic kind of narrative format that I adopted here.

A lot of times, the structure is just what is, which is a way for a piece to maintain narrative momentum, so that throughout the piece you can always have a feeling of, “I know where this is going, and I know where you know and that you’re not always there.” There’s a purpose of reading it rather than it’ll make sense later.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently in terms of storytelling or design?

I think about how to make the interaction feel smoother, especially on mobile.The point-and-click navigation mimics old-school games, but on a phone, tapping around can feel frustrating. If I had more time, I’d experiment with a Google Maps-style zoom interaction or a way to pan through scenes more intuitively.

But ultimately, this format worked because it reflects the act of searching – which is exactly what the story is about.

What advice do you have for journalists who want to merge personal storytelling with data and visuals?

A personal story is great, but it has to mean something to the audience.

Your story is one road, but readers need to see the entire map. They should either see themselves in your experience or walk away with a new understanding of the world.

That’s why I zoomed out to include history, research, and cultural context. Otherwise, this would just be a personal essay – but I wanted it to be a piece of journalism.