The design of a mobile app connecting a local bookstore and its customers won the Top 1% Design Award.


UNIST (President Yong-Hoon Lee) announced on the 26th that the research team led by Professors Hwang Kim and Heeseung Lee won the Best of Best Design Award in the Communications category at the Red Dot Design Awards 2023, one of the world's top three design awards. This award is the most prestigious award, awarded only to the top 1% in each category.

Professor Kim Hwang and Professor Lee Hee-seung's team received this award for their mobile app Booklet design.

This app is a digital platform designed to facilitate communication between small cultural spaces like Golmok Bookstores and potential customers. Using the app, Golmok Bookstore operators can easily handle complex tasks like location marketing, content creation, and audience recruitment, while potential customers can easily find the desired location at a glance.

Professor Kim Hwang and Lee Hee-seung's team, led by Jang Seong-won and Kim Byeong-heon (graduates with a master's degree in design from UNIST), led the design work. To ensure that the app design reflects the needs of actual users, we conducted design qualitative research, in-depth interviews, and focus group interviews with current bookstore managers and users.

The participating researchers expressed their hope that the app they developed would encourage communication between suppliers and demanders, facilitate the use of local bookstores as 'micro hubs' of culture and knowledge, and foster cultural gatherings, thereby contributing to the creation of a rich local culture.

Meanwhile, 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 Award. Hosted by the Red Dot Award Foundation in Germany and Singapore, winners are selected in three categories: Product Design, Brand & Communication, and Design Concept.