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• College of Information Science & Technology

Department of Industrial Design

URL : http://id.kaist.ac.kr

 

Introduction

Since its establishment in 1986 as a unique design department in science and engineering disciplines with only 30 undergraduate freshmen, the Department of Industrial Design(ID) has grown into a department with 213 students (149 in the undergraduate, 36 in master's and 24 in doctoral programs) and 9 faculty members (as of October 2009). The department has been playing a leading role in creating effective and extra values of industrial products from the process of generating basic concepts to the final production of the products.

 

With a goal to cultivate "well-rounded industrial designers as generalists", the department offers education programs to build students' keen observation skills, broad knowledge, rich creativity, and superior form manageability which are required to lead a product development process by collaborating with other departments in various academic disciplines.

 

Furthermore, with a vision to nurture "world-class designers capable of creating innovative digital business by grasping hidden needs and desires of the users based on the understanding of the cutting-edge technology", the department also offers courses designed to foster students' scientific thinking skills and aesthetic creativity on the basis of their understanding of engineering.

 

 

Curriculum

The department provides an undergraduate program (BS) and a wide range of graduate programs (MA, Ph.D, MA/Ph.D). The BS program focuses on fostering creative and practical problem-solving skills for design problems, while the MA program (established in 1991) is constructed around the academic exploration of the design discipline and its application and methods. The Ph.D. program (established in 2002) offers in-depth research opportunities for systematically creating design knowledge. The MA/Ph.D combined program and BS/MA combined courses are also offered for a smooth and continuous advancement from BS through MS to Ph.D. The curriculum offered by the department is based on the recommendations from the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), and its excellence has been recognized internationally by 'Business Week' which selected the department as one of the top 30 design schools in the world. Domestically, it has been awarded the BK 21 program and has ranked the frist among the BK 21 design departments for two consecutive years. It also has won the bid for the WCU (World Class University) program and has invited an internationally distinguished scholar, Prof. Donald Norman of Northwestern University, as a visiting professor. The faculty and students of the department have won best awards from the world's most renowned design competitions such as the IF, Red Dot, IDEA.

 

 

Careers after graduation

The graduates from the department play leading roles in designing and developing of new products at various design-specialized firms and in corporate design research departments, as design consultants, as well as in teaching at educational institutions.

 

Research groups of the department of industrial design are as follows.