Alley Bookstore Connects with Customers... UNIST Wins 'Top 1%' Design Award

A mobile app design connecting alley bookstores and customers received a top 1% design award.

The team of Professors Kim Hwang and Lee Heeseung at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) won the Best of Best design award in the Communication category at the 2023 Red Dot Design Award, one of the world's top three design awards. This award is given only to the top 1% in each category.

Professors Kim Hwang and Lee Heeseung's team received this award for their mobile app Booklet design. This app is a digital platform designed to support communication between small cultural spaces such as alley bookstores and potential customers.

Using the app, alley bookstore operators can easily handle complex tasks such as location marketing, content organization, and audience recruitment, while potential customers can find desired locations at a glance.

The app design work was led by Jang Sungwon and Kim Byunghun (UNIST Design Master's graduates) from Professors Kim Hwang and Lee Heeseung's team. To reflect the needs of actual users in the app design, qualitative design research, in-depth interviews, and focus group interviews were conducted with current bookstore managers and users.

The participating researchers said in their acceptance remarks, "We hope the developed app encourages communication between demand and supply, activates cultural social gatherings utilizing the space of local bookstores as 'micro hubs' of culture and knowledge, and helps create a rich local culture."

The Red Dot Design Award is considered one of the world's top three design awards along with Germany's iF Design Award and the United States' IDEA. It is organized by the Red Dot Award Foundation in Germany and Singapore and selects winners in three fields: product design, brand & communication, and design concept.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.