WonJoon Chung

Biography

Dr. Chung is an industrial designer and design educator interested in research on individual and collective creativity of designers, strategic research on design thinking, and pedagogical research to improve students’ design competency to meets the demand of the 21st century. He received his bachelor’s degree from Konkuk University in South Korea and his master’s degree from the Ohio State University’s department of industrial design. After several years of design practices, he joined the Ph.D. program at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago and received his doctoral degree focusing on developing theoretical frameworks for the use of early prototype to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration in 2009. Dr.Chung started his design career as a kitchen furniture designer at ENEX in South Korea and worked as a design research intern at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and LPK in Cincinnati, Ohio.  While pursuing his doctoral degree at the Institute of Design, IIT, he taught a foundational course, called “Introduction to Product Design” for non-design background students. He joined Carleton’s design program in 2007 and is currently an associate professor.

Research

Dr. Chung’s research focuses on the individual and collective creativity of designers, strategic research on design thinking, and pedagogical research to improve students’ design competency in response to the demand of the 21st century. Specifically, he is interested in working on a practical application of the characteristics of design thinking such as abductive reasoning process, reflective practices, outside the box thinking, and iterative process using tangible artifacts (i.e. sketches and prototypes) to tackle a wicked design problem.

His research endeavour led him to be invited to participate in several government-funded projects in Korea that allowed him to establish a partnership with a number of prestigious industry partners as well as a design department in universities in Korea.

Research Projects​

Designing Learning Space to Promote Creativity and Collaboration in Schools 2020	Designing a new learning space to promote creativity and collaboration in schools. (Postponed due to COVID 19) The rapid development of digital technology and the emergence of the 4th industrial revolution have led us to re-evaluate the current education system and curriculum. Particularly, it is necessary to redesign the traditional learning space like a classroom to be a more effective space that allows students to actively engage with their learning and accommodate their multiple demands. This notion brings our attention to design a new classroom environment that would be appropriate for the young students to actively engage with teachers and their peers, foster their experiential learning, and facilitate greater access to content and resources. This matter is not limited to a particular region, but a global concern and also is not only an issue of post-secondary education but that of k-12 education as well.
Converging design for small and middle-size enterprises in Korea 2014	Development of Theoretical Foundation of Design & Technology Converging Design for Small, or Middle Size of Korean Enterprises.
Development of convergence design workshop Program 2014	Develop collaborative ideation toolkits for non-designers.
Ohio State University Veterinary school CT table 2002	Design, specification, and design management for The Ohio State University’s Veterinary School’s large equine transfer table for Computer Tomography scanning. Unique design challenges included designing for the large-sized animal, fitting the equine table over the fixed human patient table, and a combination of animal and human factors.

Publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wonjoon-Chung/publications