Keynote Speaker Introduction
Professor /
Kwan Myung Kim
Professor KwanMyung Kim is Dean of Research Affairs and a Full Professor of Design at UNIST, Korea. He serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Archives of Design Research and contributes to the international design community as a design award juror. He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from KAIST.
With 32 years of experience spanning industry and academia, he bridges creative human-centered inquiry and engineering reality to advance design innovation. His research focuses on design-engineering convergence, AI-driven design methodologies, and design solutions for aging societies. He explores evolving intelligent systems into relational agents; in his ongoing eldercare research, he introduced the “robot personality” concept as a research direction, exploring its role in Kansei AI through emotional connection, trust, and human values.
His impactful projects include GOOPI, a rehabilitation device honored with the Red Dot Award: Best of the Best, and Lemmy, an eldercare robot recognized with a CES 2025 Innovation Award. Notably, his lab's brain-training toy, "UCUBE," was successfully commercialized through a faculty-led startup. Currently, he leads a project developing AI-based design evaluation tools that assess unique design values during early product development while addressing engineering and manufacturing constraints.
Professor Kim received the Korean Minister Award in 2020 and the Medal of Service Merit in 2024. He has developed 38 innovative products, authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications, received 37 international design awards, and holds 38 patents. His career continues to advance intelligent systems beyond mere functional efficiency, shaping them into trusted partners that enhance human well-being, dignity, and emotional connection.
professor
Deputy Manager
Fusako Ishimura
Ms. Fusako Ishimura is an acoustic engineer and Kansei research specialist with more than 15 years of experience in the development of digital pianos and electronic keyboards. Her background spans mechanical design, acoustic system design, and perceptual/emotional evaluation, enabling her to bridge industrial product development and research. Since March 2025, she has been collaborating with National Taipei University of Technology on a project titled “Research on UI Improvements for Digital Piano and Electronic Keyboard Interfaces,” focusing on interaction design and user experience optimization, particularly control/operation design and usability. Since 2019, Ms. Ishimura has served as an Assistant Manager at Yamaha Corporation in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan, where she has been engaged in acoustic development and Kansei research. She has led acoustic development teams, overseeing end-to-end development and scheduling, as well as cross-departmental coordination. She has served as the acoustic development team leader for the following products: P-S500, CSP-295GP, ELA-1, and ELS-03. She has also conducted Kansei evaluation experiments to support product development decisions, established latency guidelines for digital piano performance based on perceptual thresholds, identified physical parameters related to spatial impression, and proposed the use of phase entropy to describe the temporal complexity of binaural phase differences.
professor
Chun-Cheng Hsu
Professor Chun-Cheng Hsu is a professor at the Institute of Applied Arts, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. He previously served as Director of the Institute of Applied Arts and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and MIT. He received the 2026 Outstanding Research Award from the National Science and Technology Council and the 2024 Future Tech Award. His research and creative practice focus on Interaction Design, Technological Art, and Cultural Technology. He has recently led interdisciplinary projects such as the “Future Glove Puppetry Theatre,” which integrates Virtual Reality (VR), real-time interactive systems, and traditional puppet theatre culture to rethink how technology intervenes in and reshapes the relationships among performance, the body, and ritual experience. He has also directed a project exploring slime-based dynamic materials as interfaces, investigating how unstable materials can serve as media for interactive interfaces and sensory extension. In addition, he has promoted nostalgic VR projects that combine immersive experiences with generative narratives. Through a research-through-design approach, Professor Hsu continues to develop theoretical frameworks that integrate technological art and humanistic design. His works have been exhibited and presented at major international venues and conferences, including Ars Electronica, SXSW, ACM CHI, and SIGGRAPH.
Assistant Manager /
Fusako Ishimura
Ms. Fusako Ishimura is an acoustic engineer and Kansei research specialist with more than 15 years of experience in the development of digital pianos and electronic keyboards. Her background spans mechanical design, acoustic system design, and perceptual/emotional evaluation, enabling her to bridge industrial product development and research. Since March 2025, she has been collaborating with National Taipei University of Technology on a project titled “Research on UI Improvements for Digital Piano and Electronic Keyboard Interfaces,” focusing on interaction design and user experience optimization, particularly control/operation design and usability. Since 2019, Ms. Ishimura has served as an Assistant Manager at Yamaha Corporation in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan, where she has been engaged in acoustic development and Kansei research. She has led acoustic development teams, overseeing end-to-end development and scheduling, as well as cross-departmental coordination. She has served as the acoustic development team leader for the following products: P-S500, CSP-295GP, ELA-1, and ELS-03. She has also conducted Kansei evaluation experiments to support product development decisions, established latency guidelines for digital piano performance based on perceptual thresholds, identified physical parameters related to spatial impression, and proposed the use of phase entropy to describe the temporal complexity of binaural phase differences.
Professor /
Chun-Cheng Hsu
Professor Chun-Cheng Hsu is a professor at the Institute of Applied Arts, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. He previously served as Director of the Institute of Applied Arts and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and MIT. He received the 2026 Outstanding Research Award from the National Science and Technology Council and the 2024 Future Tech Award. His research and creative practice focus on Interaction Design, Technological Art, and Cultural Technology. He has recently led interdisciplinary projects such as the “Future Glove Puppetry Theatre,” which integrates Virtual Reality (VR), real-time interactive systems, and traditional puppet theatre culture to rethink how technology intervenes in and reshapes the relationships among performance, the body, and ritual experience. He has also directed a project exploring slime-based dynamic materials as interfaces, investigating how unstable materials can serve as media for interactive interfaces and sensory extension. In addition, he has promoted nostalgic VR projects that combine immersive experiences with generative narratives. Through a research-through-design approach, Professor Hsu continues to develop theoretical frameworks that integrate technological art and humanistic design. His works have been exhibited and presented at major international venues and conferences, including Ars Electronica, SXSW, ACM CHI, and SIGGRAPH.
