People

Kyungho Lee Ph.D., Director
I’m an Assistant Professor at the Design Department in the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). I received a Ph.D. in Informatics with Art and Cultural Informatics concentration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with the support of the Fulbright Scholarship. My dissertation is dedicated to finding a better way to use machine learning and computational intelligence as an emerging source of design material to support richer, nuanced, and expressive interactions. I received a B.F.A in Visual Communication Design and a B.A. in Information Science and Culture from Seoul National University in South Korea. Before I started my doctorate, I had worked as an interaction designer as well as a web user experience consultant, mostly working in the field of enterprise-level rich internet application design and engineering for more than six years. Our team and clients’ projects received numerous prestigious national/international web design awards. I also served as chief design officer at a tech startup for two years which eventually drew an investment of 2.2M USD. Before joining UNIST, I was a Fiddler Innovation Research Fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to explore the potentials of deep learning for creating emerging media arts with a focus on style-transfer and building tools for generating art, music, or other creative outputs using super computing resources (XSEDE) under the supervision of Dr. Donna J. Cox.

Soohwan Lee (Ph.D. candidate, research assistant lead)
Soohwan joined the lab in 2019 as an intern and did his research on exploring the use of mid-air hand gestures for AR/VR. His current research interest is to apply AI to enhance the user experience of online meetings/collaborations using expressive cues. Soohwan earned his MSc degree from the UNIST working at the EXPC Lab. in 2022.
#non-verbal communication #gesture recognition #multi-modal interaction #CSCW/CMC

Yu Jin (Ph.D. program, research assistant, majored in fashion design)
Before joining the Lab, Yu was a fashion and pattern designer in China. She received a master’s degree from the University of the Arts in London in 2019. She hopes to explore smart design methods for clothing products and develop a new fashion shopping model that imitates the offline fitting experience through sensors and artificial devices.
#fashion design #wearables #artificial intelligence

Togzhan Kussainova (MS-Ph.D. program, research assistant, majored in design)
Togzhan joined the lab in 2020 to explore the design of an intelligent online platform, Skina, to support the users’ emotional support. Togzhan participated in creating a STAR-MOOC course ‘Design of AI-driven Products and Services’ as a contents creator.
#user experience design #digital media design #social computing

Ryeowon Kim (MS-Ph.D. program, research assistant, majored in fine art)
Ryeowon joined the lab in 2023 summer to explore the computer as a new tool and media for expressing nature and humanity, seeking to create more natural and beautiful expressions through generative approaches. She continues to research emerging media art based on generative art after she received an MFA degree from Pusan National University.
#computer art #generative art #computational creativity

Yousang Kwon (MS-PhD program, research assistant, majored in computer science)
Yousang joined the lab in 2021 to explore enhancing user’s music and sound experience by applying a machine learning approach. In detail, musician-computer interaction is his recent research interest.
#musician-computer interaction #digital media #machine learning

Seoyeong Hwang (MSc program, research assistant, majored in design)
Seoyeong joined the lab in 2021 winter to explore visual communication design and the editorial design process. Her interactive artwork, Particling Stars at Night, was exhibited at the Creative Awards venue at the HCI Korea’23 conference.
#graphic design #editorial design

Sangyun Lee (undergrad intern, majoring in design)
Sangyun joined the lab in 2022 summer. He is mainly working on the UI/UX design project with Ulsan MBC to provide novel civic news reporting experiences for Ulsan citizens.
#user experience design #computer-mediated communication #civic and political engagement

Minyong Shin (undergrad intern, majoring in design)
Minyong joined the lab in the 2023 winter to explore visual communication design and grahic design. He currently challenges creating an emerging media artwork with photorealistic expression using Unreal 5.
#emerging media art performance #genearative design

Jonghoon Byun (undergrad intern, dual majoring in physics and design)
Jonghoon joined the lab in 2023 April. His interests are fashion design, visual design, and human-computer interaction. He is creating an emerging media art performance to be premiered on May 2024, The New Four Seasons, remastered by Max Richter.
#human-centered ai #emerging media arts #quantum computing interface

Prospective Students
We are always happy to meet talented and motivated students who are eager to pursue a master’s and a doctorate from across the globe, or undergraduate research projects (UIRP) within the field of Intelligent User Interface Design, Data-Driven Design, Human-Centered Machine Learning, and Computational Information Design. Committed students worldwide are welcome to contact me via email, providing me with your CV and one-page cover letter focusing on (1) Who you are. I want to know which year and program you are in and what kind of skill set you have; (2)  What you need. Are you looking for an advisor, a committee member, a funded RAship, or something else; and (3) Your research interest. What is your potential topic and why do you think I might be a good person to work with? Please note that, in any cases, I assume that you have (1) a basic understanding/knowledge of programming to create a working prototype based on your idea (and a strong motivation to build something!), (2) analytical skills to describe your data and get insights from data, and (3) positive mindsets to learn something and willingness to collaborate other members working in the lab.

We are accepting a new undergraduate intern starting in the spring of 2024.
We accept one MS-PhD integrated/PhD student per year who is interested in designing human-centered AI&HCI research or emerging media arts research.

In particular, we are looking for self-motivated students who can contribute to one of our on-going projects : (1) designing a senior service robot’s intelligent UI/UX to contribute to building a service ecology; (2) building strategic directions and blueprinting a big data-driven web platform; or (3) creating an emerging media art performance and conducting related research. We expect that you will have a fundamental understanding of digital media design tools (Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, Zeplin), user experience design methods (persona, value proposition map, service ecology map/service blueprint, and use cases and scenarios), and computational thinking. If you’re looking for a position in (3), we expect you can do some coding experiences either in Cycling’74’s Max8/vvvv, Processing/P5js, Unity/Unreal, or similar. If you’re thinking about joining the lab for your graduate study, and you want to know about what it feels like researching at UNIST, I strongly recommend you consider participating in U-SURF/U-WURF (intensive summer/winter internship) program before applying.

Taeyoon Kim (M.Sc. program) at RIDI as a Product Manager
Taeyoon joined the lab in 2020, and his research interest is to design an interactive system that can help intellectual workers reduce the excessive using behavior of YouTube with the use of visual metaphors. Taeyoon earned his MSc degree from the UNIST working at the EXPC Lab. in 2022.
#addictive behavior #visual metaphor #nudging #social computing