Eun Jeong Jeon 

 

Eunjeong has attained the skills as an artist, a designer, as well as a researcher.  She has extensive experience in (interaction) design and research-through design.  Her research and creative practice is interdisciplinary.  She has excelled in all areas of her expertise but has a strong interest in designing for the aesthetics of interaction, with a special focus on understanding how the emotion, sensory and movement dimensions of the body contribute to a product (3D object) in respect to one’s health and well-being. 

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Since completing her doctorate, Designing Enriched Aesthetic Interaction for Garment Comfort, in 2013 her research has been expanded to include how the integration of new technologies with textiles offers innovative design possibilities.  Her research has developed and designed textiles that are integrated with multi-sensory-movement technology to investigate the complex phenomenological activities and human behavioural processes (emotions).  Design methods and tools based on user-centred and participatory design methods are central to her research projects. 

After studying at the Denmark International Study (DIS) Program (1996) in Furniture Design, Eunjeong graduated at Hong-ik University, School of Fine Art (BA), Seoul, South Korea in 1997.  Following her graduation, she worked in the field of art furniture as a designer.  On moving to Australia in 2001, she studied at the School of Art and Design, Curtin University, Western Australia where she graduated with a Diploma in Design and Visual Art and later obtained a Master of Design Degree in 2005.  

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Her Master’s project applied emotional aesthetics to chair design through a cross-cultural examination of sitting behaviour and cognitive images. This was followed by participation in Thingness of Thing and Thing from the Void in Visual Art project 2006, which involved research into the body’s interaction with spatial tactility.  As a further extension of her professional experience, Eunjeong participated in the FORM “Designing Futures” industry cluster project, Perth, Western Australia in 2007.  She received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Design at Curtin University in 2013. 

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Eunjeong’s doctoral research (2013) realised a deeper and broader understanding of comfort for garment design gained from sensori-motor research into the wearers’ emotional needs and their subjective experience throughout their daily activities.  This research contributed substantially to the expanding discourse on comfort by investigating the influence of kinetic interaction, emotion, and aesthetics to enhance comfort, through a user participatory design approach.  Her research shows how the design process can incorporate a user-centred approach in applying qualitative and quantitative research techniques, such as motion capture and Laban’s movement analysis. The strength of her research lies in the practical application of the Enriched Aesthetic Interaction framework to a series of innovative textiles design called Trans-For-M-otion.  This led to the development of a set of design principles based around serendipity, kinaesthetic, evoking mood and enjoyment. 

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Eunjeong’s research expands the research surrounding the integration of textiles with technology for the benefit of human health and wellbeing. Further to this, Eunjeong was involved in the Smart Textiles Services (STS) project (2012-2014) that is part of Creative Industry Scientific Programme at Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherland.  Within this project, she investigated how the properties of wool and felted wool techniques interlaced with conductive yarn would enhance the tactile and sensorial effect. This design was aimed to inform a multi-disciplinary audience about the opportunities of integrating textile and vibration for individual/self-healthcare services at home or even in everyday activities. It was a collaborative design project with TextielMuseum TextielLab and Metatronics, in the Netherlands, their contribution in aid of realizing smart textiles.  

Eunjeong’s most recent project, named Tangible E-M-otion (2016~) investigates: (1) how our emotion can be generated from body movement; and (2) how the smart textile as an interactive medium can perceive a change in people’s emotion.  This work was a collaborative design work with an academic researcher at the department of Robotic Science and Technology in Chubu University in Japan. 

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Eunjeong has exhibited in Australia, Belgium, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, UK, South Korea, Spain, and the Netherlands, presenting examples of emotion crafted in textiles, technology integrated textiles (smart textiles).  Her creative work has been included in recent publications on textile innovation and sustainable design, examples include Ambiguous Scenery at Digiark, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (June-Aug 2017), Mode in Flux exhibition at Loca London Gallery, UK (1 Jul- 27 Aug 2016) and Fashion Now exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam, the Netherlands, (11 Oct 2014 -18 Jan 2015).  

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Eunjeong has also engaged with industry and has presented the research aspect of her creative work at international conferences in London, Newcastle, Sheffield, Belgium, Catalonia, Eindhoven, Helsinki, Borås and Seoul.  She has been a member of the Designing Quality in Interaction (DQI) group, at the Department of Industrial Design, in the Netherlands since 2012.  She is also a member of Crash, Collaborative Research in Art, Science and Humanity, at Curtin University, WA since 2009.