Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology – Department of Industrial Design

The Department of Industrial Design at KAIST, known as ID KAIST, was founded in 1986 as the first design department established inside a college of engineering in Korea. It began with an undergraduate degree, added a master’s in 1991 and a doctorate in 2002, and has since moved from an education rooted in product design towards user interface, interaction, user experience, service and system design, design for society and business innovation, and human-computer interaction.

Teaching runs as a four-year progression: foundations in science, engineering, humanities and design in the first year, form principles and prototyping in the second, project work tied to marketing and production in the third, and system design, a graduation studio and portfolio design in the fourth. Master’s and doctoral students work in research labs grouped in three areas — human-centred design, new technology convergence and business innovation — with faculty covering interaction, UX, colour, HCI and design engineering.

Since 2016 the department has held the Design 3.0 Forum, an annual international event on design education and research in the era of the fourth industrial revolution. It describes itself as internationally recognised in HCI, interaction design and UX.

The department occupies Building N25 at 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, with fourteen full-time faculty.