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. 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 (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 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 (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

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
We 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.

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

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