
WonJoon Chung
Associate Professor
| Building: | Mackenzie |
| Department: | |
| Degrees: | B.A, M.A, Ph.D. |
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鈥 design competency to meets the demand of the 21st century. He received his bachelor鈥檚 degree from Konkuk University in South Korea and his master鈥檚 degree from the Ohio State University鈥檚 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.聽 While pursuing his doctoral degree at the Institute of Design, IIT, he taught a foundational course, called 鈥淚ntroduction to Product Design鈥 for non-design background students. He joined 杏吧原创鈥檚 design program in 2007 and is currently an associate professor.
Research
Dr. Chung鈥檚 research focuses on the individual and collective creativity of designers, strategic research on design thinking, and pedagogical research to improve students鈥 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鈥


