The KAIST Industrial Design Department’s homepage won the Best Webpage Award at the 10th Quacquarelli Symonds – Asia Pacific Professional Leaders in Education (QS-APPLE) conference. The conference, which was hosted by Quacquarelli Symonds, a British company that annually publishes its world university rankings, took place between November 11 and 13 at the Taipei International Convention Center, Taiwan.

The QS-APPLE conference promotes the globalization of Asia-Pacific universities by providing networking and exchange opportunities and offering a platform for discussion on recent developments in higher education. Every year the organizers award creativity accolades for design in the following categories: webpages, video, advertisements, and international student recruitment brochures.

United Arab Emirates University was asked to be the judge for the competition in order to ensure fairness and impartiality for all. The KAIST Industrial Design Department’s webpage happened to receive the highest points for each criteria of the marking scheme: content relevance, design, user interface, and accessibility. It was therefore no surprise that the homepage received the design award, in recognition of its user-friendly interface and its use of English as the default language. A total of 39 universities from the Asian-Pacific region competed for the Best Webpage Award, with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in second place and Hong Kong Baptist University in third place.

Professor Kyung-won Chung from the KAIST Department of Industrial Design said, “The department’s homepage has become very effective at being readily accessible thanks to its user-friendly design – that is, user-friendly to a global audience.” He believes that KAIST will become more international-friendly as a result of receiving this award.

The KAIST Department of Industrial Design, established as part of the Korea Institute of Technology back in 1986, is Korea’s first design department established in science and engineering institute. Since then, it has grown to be one of the best design departments in the country and the world. In 2009, the department was ranked as one of 30 best design schools in the world by BusinessWeek magazine.