People

Kyungho

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.


Current Students (in alphabetic order with academic status)

Soohwan

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. candidate, 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

Ryeowon Kim

Ryeowon Kim (MS-Ph.D. program, lab manager, 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

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

expc_Juhyeok

Juyeok Yoon (full-time researcher, majored in design)
Juhyeok joined the lab in 2020 winter to explore the design of human-machine interaction, and now exploring the foundations of machine learning to design intelligent interactions. After finishing his Bachelor’s. Juyeok continues his journey to advance the Lemmy’s product-service system ecosystem by creating HRI frameworks, facial expressions, and GUIs.
#human-machine interaction #intelligent interactions #product ecosystem 

seoyeong

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

Taeyoung

Taeyoung ko (MSc program, research assistant, majored in design)
Taeyoung joined the lab in 2021 to explore the field of computational interaction design, focusing on generating visual contents using a semantic segmentation and style-transfer approach. He continues his exploration of developing desirable and efficient web user interfaces using generative models as a full-stack developer after finishing his Bachelor’s.
#computational interaction design #human-centered ai #creativity support tools

Sangyun Lee (full-time researcher, 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

IMG_3995

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

Mingyu Kim (undergrad intern, majoring in design)
Mingyu joined the lab in June 2024. His interests are human-computer interaction. He is currently working on designing an interactive system using LLMs to support group conversation and decision-making better.
#human-ai-interaction #llm #computer-supported-cooperative-work

Haeeun Shin (undergrad intern, majoring in HCI Science and Statistics)
Haeeun joined the lab in the 2024 summer through UNIST’s U-SURF program to explore what role AI could play in the Virtual Reality context. During the internship, Haeeun is participating in building strategies for the Industrial Design Big Data Platform and exploring the effect of negative effects of conversational agents.
#deep technical user experience design #human-centered ai #virtual reality


Prospective Students
We are always interested in meeting talented and motivated students from all over the world who are interested in pursuing Master’s, Doctoral, or Undergraduate Research Projects (UIRP) in the areas of Intelligent User Interface Design, Human-Centered AI, and Computational Interaction Design. Self-motivated students from around the world are welcome to contact me via email with your resume and a one-page cover letter that focuses on (1) Who you are. I want to know what year and program you are in and what skills 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 and what you have done. What is your potential topic and why do you think I would be a good person to work with based on your prior experience? Please note that in all cases I assume that you have (1) a basic understanding 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 gain insights from it, and (3) a positive attitude to learning and a willingness to work with other members of the lab.

We are accepting one undergraduate intern from 2024 Winter
WarningWe are not accepting new graduate students from 2025 Fall to 2026 Fall

In particular, we are looking for self-motivated students who can contribute to one of our ongoing projects: (1) designing the intelligent UI/UX of an elderly service robot to contribute to building a service ecology; (2) developing strategic directions and designing a web platform for the national industrial design big data service; or (3) creating an emerging media art performance and conducting related practice-based research. We expect you to have a basic understanding of digital media design tools, user experience research methods, and computational thinking. If you’re looking for a position in (3), we expect you to have some programming experience in either Python, Cycling’74’s Max8, Processing/P5js, Unity/Unreal, or similar according to your research interests. If you’re thinking about joining the lab for your graduate studies, and you want to know what it feels like to do research at UNIST, I strongly recommend that you consider participating in U-SURF/U-WURF (intensive summer/winter internship) program before applying.


Alumni

expc_Taeyoon

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

expc_Soobin

Soobin Lee (M.Sc. program) at LG Electronics H&A Product Planning Division as a Product Manager
Soobin joined the lab in 2021 Spring and currently exploring the design of intelligent products and services to facilitate better communication between humans and AI with a design-engineering background. Before joining the lab, Soobin worked as a designer in California, USA and participated in Korea Design Membership Plus. She received the highest grades in the graduating class of  2023.
#self-motivation #visual metaphor #deep technical user experience design

expc_Togzhan

Togzhan Kussainova (MSc. program)
Togzhan graduated with a Master’s degree in August 2024. She explored how conversational agents’ different types of negative emotional feedback can influence mobile phone overuse.
#user experience design #intelligent user interface #computer-mediated commuinication


Previous Undergraduate Interns

Jaehee Choi (undergrad intern, dual majoring in media communication and service design engineering)
Jaehee joined the lab in the summer of 2024 through UNIST’s U-SURF. Her interests include applying human-centered design methods and computer-mediated communication theory to explore how humans are influenced by YouTube’s echo chamber.
#information seeking behavior #HCI/CMC #echo chamber

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

Haeeun Shin (undergrad intern, majoring in HCI Science)
Haeeun joined the lab in the 2023 winter through UNIST’s U-WURF program to explore what role AI could play in User-Centered Design. During the internship, Haeeun participated in building strategies for the Industrial Design Big Data Platform.
#deep technical user experience design #human-centered ai #virtual reality

Seonuk Kim (undergrad intern, majoring in industrial engineering) now at ThingsFlow
Seonuk joined the lab in 2021 winter to explore manga production support technology/service using AI, focusing on sketch simplification. Seonuk, as the first author, has presented his research on IASDR’23.
#human-centered ai #stable diffusion #creativity support tool

Yeji Park (undergrad intern, dual majoring in electrical engineering and design)
Yeji joined the lab in 2022 summer to explore the field of interaction design, focusing on human-robot interaction using AI.
#interaction design #human-robot interaction #intelligent user interaction

Kyeongseok Lee (undergrad intern, majoring in energy and chemical engineering)
Kyeongseok joined the lab in 2022 winter to explore various design and technical topics to create emerging media arts and digital media design. He is interested in producing innovative and inspiring visual content through media art from a cultural technology perspective.
#emerging media art #visual communication #digital media

Usmonali Pakhlavonov (undergrad intern majoring in computer science and engineering)
Usmonali worked at the lab in 2022 winter for developing multi-threading/processing units to enable better human-robot interactions for the LEMME robot.
#human-robot interaction #deep technical ux

Sojeong Yoon (undergrad intern, majoring in industrial engineering), now at LET Lab at Seoul National University 
Sojeong worked at the lab from 2022 spring to summer to explore the world of design with a question on how we might apply AI to enhance the user experience. Sojeong participated in the LGHNH Print.ly project.
#artificial intelligence #user experience design

Dongsoo Kim (undergrad intern, majoring in design)
Dongsoo worked at the lab from 2020 to 2022 to explore various issues closely related to the design of smart buildings and sustainable architectures. Dongsoo received an honorable mention at the Busan International Design Awards ’20 for her work, EcoTarium.
#smart building #space design

Minju Baek (research intern), now at Grad. School of KAIST CT
Minju joined the lab from September to December 2021. She worked on setting up a prototyping environment for a LEMME project using the Delft AI Toolkit.

Azhar Smagulova (undergrad intern)
Azhar joined the lab in 2020 to experience a more professional digital media design process and interactive prototyping techniques. Togzhan and Azhar’s work received the iF Design Concept Awards in 2021.
#graphical user interface design #user experience design

Soojeong Kim (undergrad intern)
Soojung worked at the lab during 2020-2021 to explore the field of computational information design and emerging media arts, focusing on the visualization of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
#interactive visualization #music visualization #emerging media arts

Sehoon Lee (undergrad intern)
Sehoon joined the lab in spring 2019 to explore various issues closely related to information, visualization, and design.

#information design #aesthetic computing #albegragic symmetry

Seunghoon Lee (undergrad researcher), now at Hyundai Motor Company after MSc in Design UNIST
Seunghoon joined the lab in winter 2019 to explore the future trends in automotive interior design and perceived aesthetics from a computational design perspective.
#concept design #futuristic automotive experience #graphic design


Advising & Mentoring *Supervisor otherwise serving as a committee member

On-going
*Jin Yu (Design MS-PhD from ‘20), *Togzhan Kussainova (Design MS from ‘20), *Soohwan Lee (Design PhD from ’22), *Ryeowon Kim (Design MS-PhD From ’23), *Taeyoung Ko (Design MS From ’23), *Yousang Kown (Design MS-PhD ’24), Seoyeong Hwang (Design MS ’24), *Yonghwan Shin (BME PhD co-supervising with Prof. Ian Oakley), *Eunyong Cheon (BME PhD co-supervising with Prof. Ian Oakley), *Mingyu Han (Design MS co-supervising with Prof. Ian Oakley), Youryang Lee (BME PhD co-supervising with Prof. Ian Oakley), Jiwan Kim (Design MS co-supervising with Prof. Ian Oakley), Gaeul Han (Design PhD), Haeun Park (Design PhD), Sungjun Kim (Design PhD)

2023
*Soobin Lee (Design MS), Termirlan Dzhoroev (Design MS), Dongyoon Kim (Design MS), Kyung-ryong Lee (Design PhD), Hyunjae Gil (BME PhD), Jiyeon Lee (Design MS)

2022
*Soohwan Lee (Design MS), *Taeyoon Kim (Design MS), Malika Gabbas (Design MS), Junyoung Kim (Design MS), Byunghern Kim (Design MS), Yedam Ryu (Design MS), Soonyeong Kwon (BME(HFE) MS), Seongbeom Kim (Design MS), Seunghoon Lee (Design MS), Hyeshin Chu (AIGS MS)

2021
Heimin Kang (Design MS), Sungwon Jang (Design MS), Kwangmin Cho (Design PhD), Doyoung Lee (BME PhD), Mintra Ruensuk (Design PhD)

2020
Bomin Kim (Design MS), Somi Ju (Design MS), Jihyeon Yang (Design MS), Hayeon Choi (Design MS), Jisoo Kim (Design MS), Eunyong Cheon (BME MS), Yoon Heo (HFE MS), Tufail Muhammad (Design PhD), Juntae Kim (Design PhD)

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