Background

In 1997, CJ Kim received a bachelor degree in mechanical engineering from Chungang University in South Korea. Then he worked at an engineering company, Jasstech Corporation, for six years. He started with designing machinery for stage equipment, and later he worked for the technical marketing department for overseas markets. After this professional experience, he decided to study for a Master’s degree in Industrial Design Engineering at the University of Delft, Netherlands. He specialized in design for interaction with a particular focus on cultural diversity in design.

After his Master’s, he kept studying the role of culture in the field of industrial design. In April 2007, CJ started his PhD research on User Characteristics, part of the Design for Usability project. He has focused on the relationship between characteristics of users and their usability problems. The project allowed him to follow his interest in diversity in design, encompassing cultural influence. During the last four years, a number of international surveys and experiments were conducted with subjects from very different cultural backgrounds. His study discovered that user characteristics have a big influence on the product experience. Currently, he is developing an interactive tool, a database with extensive data on user characteristics and usability problems.

“Consumer products would be nothing but objects of art or rubbish without Usability.”

Work package: User Characteristics