WonJoon Chung’s interests lie in developing design methods and tools to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration, co-design, and group ideation processes. He particularly focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration through developing "the implication of Jazz improvisation", "investigation of the principles of design sketches for idea visualization", "development of theoretical foundation of early prototype use" and "the theoretical framework of metaphor for product designers". WonJoon has a PhD from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) where he focused on developing a theoretical framework to foster design collaboration. He also has an M.A. from the Ohio State University and a B.A. from Konkuk university in South Korea. In his professional career, he has worked as a kitchen furniture designer, a design researcher for several organizations like ENEX, Battelle Memorial Institute, and an educator at the Institute of Design, IIT.
Cliff Shin is an award-winning designer and assistant professor of industrial design at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He has a bachelor’s in engineering from Arizona State University and master’s in industrial design from Purdue University. He worked for LG Headquarter Design Center as a senior designer with expertise in consumer electronics and other products. His research area is emotional design based on decision-making, neuroscience and consumer behavior. His work was presented at the 2011 International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making, and the 2012 International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition, to name just two.