Dongwon Hong - Art Director

Dongwon Hong is an art director who specializes in design and claims that Hangul (Korean type) is his obsession. From the beginning of the 20^th century, Koreans have experienced great progress with IT technology. Hong delivered a fascinating presentation on the design of keyboard layouts and the intensity of each finger we use when typing on a keyboard. We use our second and third fingers with our thumb the most as these fingers have been “assigned the most text.” Think about how we are now using our thumbs more than ever when texting from a mobile phone.

Hong asked the audience to hold their hands up and try to move each finger individually. For many, the thumb, index finger, middle finger and ring finger could be moved quite easily, except for the little finger. He also made the point that, “If you were falling off a cliff, you wouldn’t use the little finger” as he tried to make the point that we seldom use the little finger when typing.

He believes that there will be an opportunity in the near future that we can develop a new cell phone layout. For newer generations, we would need a new way of typing Korean characters. He touched on how Koreans have adopted the western keyboard layout without making many changes to it.

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