joonsbaek

Last modified by Joon Sang Baek on 2009/10/23 11:10

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Profile

Profile of Joon Sang Baek

Personal Information

First name

Joon Sang

Last name

Baek

About

Joon Sang Baek is a Ph.D. candidate of Politecnico di Milano. He works at the research unit of Design and Innovation for Sustainability in the department of Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication. His research areas include design for social innovation and sustainability, service design, peer-to-peer and information communication technologies (ICT) and particularly he is interested in using ICT to empower people to innovate societies in more sustainable ways.

His current research focuses on identifying the role of ICT in facilitating the diffusion of social innovation at the grassroots level and enriching the social network of people who innovate. When people interact and collaborate to meet their social needs in an innovative way, two essential elements for social innovation are produced: solutions to social needs and social networks. ICT can be used to design a platform that empowers and motivates people to initiate or join such collaborations. ICT also reinforces the social network of collaborative organizations by creating weak ties in and between organizations, which maintain the organizations open and connected and facilitates the diffusion of innovative ideas. His specific interest lies in using ICT to promote collaborative services for sustainable local development and how to harness ICT in the service design process.

Before he came to Milan, he was a user interface designer at Samsung Mobile. During this period, he designed mobile user interface for China, USA and Korea markets. He completed a bachelor's degree in industrial design at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and a master's degree in interaction design at the same institute. He wrote his master thesis on a participatory design approach to information design for children.