• Title/Summary/Keyword: Labor cost

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Development and Evaluation of a Nutritional Risk Screening Tool (NRST) for Hospitalized Patients (입원환자의 영양불량위험 검색도구의 개발 및 평가)

  • Han, Jin-Soon;Lee, Song-Mi;Chung, Hye-Kyung;Ahn, Hong-Seok;Lee, Seung-Min
    • Journal of Nutrition and Health
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    • v.42 no.2
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    • pp.119-127
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    • 2009
  • Malnutrition of hospitalized patients can adversely affect clinical outcomes and cost. Several nutritional screening tools have been developed to identify patients with malnutrition risk. However, many of those possess practical pitfalls of requiring much time and labor to administer and may not be highly applicable to a Korean population. This study sought to develop and evaluate a Nutrition Risk Screening Tool (NRST) which is simple and quick to administer and widely applicable to Korean hospitalized patients with various diseases. The study was also designed to generate a screening tool predictable of various clinical outcomes and to validate it against the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002). Electronic medical records of 424 patients hospitalized at a general hospital in Seoul during a 14-month period were abstracted for anthropometric, medical, biochemical, and clinical outcome variables. The study employed a 4-step process consisting of selecting NRST components, searching a scoring scheme, validating against a reference tool, and confirming clinical outcome predictability. NRST components were selected by stepwise multiple regression analysis of each clinical outcome (i.e., hospitalization period, complication, disease progress, and death) on several readily available patient characteristics. Age and serum levels of albumin, hematocrit (Hct), and total lymphocyte count (TLC) remained in the last model for any of 4 dependent variables were decided as NRST components. Odds ratios of malnutrition risk based on NRS 2002 according to levels of the selected components were utilized to frame a scoring scheme of NRST. A NRST score higher than 3.5 was set as a cut-off score for malnutrition risk based on sensitivity and specificity levels against NRS 2002. Lastly differences in clinical outcomes by patients' NRST results were examined. The results showed that the NRST can significantly predict the in-hospital clinical outcomes. It is concluded that the NRST can be useful to simply and quickly screen patients at high-nutritional risk in relation to prospective clinical outcomes.

Alpha-1,3-galactosyltransferase-deficient miniature pigs produced by serial cloning using neonatal skin fibroblasts with loss of heterozygosity

  • Kim, Young June;Ahn, Kwang Sung;Kim, Minjeong;Kim, Min Ju;Ahn, Jin Seop;Ryu, Junghyun;Heo, Soon Young;Park, Sang-Min;Kang, Jee Hyun;Choi, You Jung;Shim, Hosup
    • Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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    • v.30 no.3
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    • pp.439-445
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    • 2017
  • Objective: Production of alpha-1,3-galactosyltransferase (${\alpha}GT$)-deficient pigs is essential to overcome xenograft rejection in pig-to-human xenotransplantation. However, the production of such pigs requires a great deal of cost, time, and labor. Heterozygous ${\alpha}GT$ knockout pigs should be bred at least for two generations to ultimately obtain homozygote progenies. The present study was conducted to produce ${\alpha}GT$-deficient miniature pigs in much reduced time using mitotic recombination in neonatal ear skin fibroblasts. Methods: Miniature pig fibroblasts were transfected with ${\alpha}GT$ gene-targeting vector. Resulting gene-targeted fibroblasts were used for nuclear transfer (NT) to produce heterozygous ${\alpha}GT$ gene-targeted piglets. Fibroblasts isolated from ear skin biopsies of these piglets were cultured for 6 to 8 passages to induce loss of heterozygosity (LOH) and treated with biotin-conjugated IB4 that binds to galactose-${\alpha}$-1,3-galactose, an epitope produced by ${\alpha}GT$. Using magnetic activated cell sorting, cells with monoallelic disruption of ${\alpha}GT$ were removed. Remaining cells with LOH carrying biallelic disruption of ${\alpha}GT$ were used for the second round NT to produce homozygous ${\alpha}GT$ gene-targeted piglets. Results: Monoallelic mutation of ${\alpha}GT$ gene was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction in fibroblasts. Using these cells as nuclear donors, three heterozygous ${\alpha}GT$ gene-targeted piglets were produced by NT. Fibroblasts were collected from ear skin biopsies of these piglets, and homozygosity was induced by LOH. The second round NT using these fibroblasts resulted in production of three homozygous ${\alpha}GT$ knockout piglets. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that the time required for the production of ${\alpha}GT$-deficient miniature pigs could be reduced significantly by postnatal skin biopsies and subsequent selection of mitotic recombinants. Such procedure may be beneficial for the production of homozygote knockout animals, especially in species, such as pigs, that require a substantial length of time for breeding.

Eco-friendly Control of Whiteflies by Two-Fluid Fogging System with Natural Substances in Greenhouses (이류체 포그시스템 및 천연물을 이용한 친환경적 가루이 방제)

  • Kim, Sung-Eun;Lee, Sang-Don;Lee, Moon-Haeng;Kim, Young-Shik
    • Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.114-119
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    • 2012
  • We have conducted 4 experiments to develop the most environmental and effective use of the two-fluid fog system to prevent and exterminate whiteflies in tomato cultivation. In particular, these experiments used Vitamini tomatoes grown in stand-alone greenhouses at Buyeo Tomato Experiment Station as subjects. Each experiment utilized the fog system in a different way. The first experiment provided the control group, which was subject to the two-fluid fog system without additional humidity control. In the second experiment, the two-fluid fog system controlled the humidity level to be above 70%. The third and the fourth experiment utilized natural substances, which were 1.5 mg/L of Neem Oil and 2 mg/L of Oleic acid respectively, without additional humidity control. From the first experiment, we could observe that a simple use of the two-fluid fog system decreased the density of whiteflies in the greenhouses. This impact of the fog system on whiteflies was greater in the second experiment. By comparing the first and the second experiment, we concluded that whiteflies are more effectively prevented by maintaining a higher humidity level via the fog system's smaller water droplets that float in the air for longer time than the standard fog system in rather dry condition. In the third and the fourth experiments, the extermination level was 78% and 76.4% respectively, comparing only 53% in the first experiment without the humidity control. Therefore, using the natural substances in addition to the humidity control increases the extermination effectiveness. Considering the similar results from the 3rd and the 4th experiments, Oleic acid has a greater appeal for its lower price. Using the two-fluid fog system to both control the humidity on a daily basis and spray the substances for occasional extermination would reduce labor cost and increase production in an environmental way.

A Study on the UIC(University & Industry Collaboration) Model for Global New Business (글로벌 사업 진출을 위한 산학협력 협업촉진모델: 경남 G대학 GTEP 사업 실험사례연구)

  • Baek, Jong-ok;Park, Sang-hyeok;Seol, Byung-moon
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.10 no.6
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    • pp.69-80
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    • 2015
  • This can be promoted collaboration environment for the system and the system is very important for competitiveness, it is equipped. If so, could work in collaboration with members of the organization to promote collaboration what factors? Organizational collaboration and cooperation of many people working, or worth pursuing common goals by sharing information and processes to improve labor productivity, defined as collaboration. Factors that promote collaboration are shared visions, the organization's principles and rules that reflect the visions, on-line system developments, and communication methods. First, it embodies the vision shared by the more sympathetic members are active and voluntary participation in the activities of the organization can be achieved. Second, the members are aware of all the rules and principles of a united whole is accepted and leads to good performance. In addition, the ability to share sensitive business activities for self-development and also lead to work to make this a regular activity to create a team that can collaborate to help the environment and the atmosphere. Third, a systematic construction of the online collaboration system is made efficient and rapid task. According to Student team and A corporation we knew that Cloud services and social media, low-cost, high-efficiency services could achieve. The introduction of the latest information technology changes, the members of the organization's systems and active participation can take advantage of continuing education must be made. Fourth, the company to inform people both inside and outside of the organization to communicate actively to change the image of the company activities, the creation of corporate performance is very important to figure. Reflects the latest trend to actively use social media to communicate the effort is needed. For development of systematic collaboration promoting model steps to meet the organizational role. First, the Chief Executive Officer to make a firm and clear vision of the organization members to propagate the faith, empathy gives a sense of belonging should be able to have. Second, middle managers, CEO's vision is to systematically propagate the organizers rules and principles to establish a system would create. Third, general operatives internalize the vision of the company stating that the role of outside companies must adhere. The purpose of this study was well done in collaboration organizations promoting factors for strategic alignment model based on the golden circle and collaboration to understand and reflect the latest trends in information technology tools to take advantage of smart work and business know how student teams through case analysis will derive the success factors. This is the foundation for future empirical studies are expected to be present.

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Characteristics and breeding of a new cultivar Pleurotus eryngii, Song-A (큰느타리버섯 신품종 '송아'의 육성 및 그 특성)

  • Shin, Pyung-Gyun;Park, Yun-Jung;Yoo, Young-Bok;Kong, Won-Sik;Jang, Kab-Yeul;Cheong, Jong-Cheon;Oh, Se-Jong;Lee, Keum-Hee
    • Journal of Mushroom
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    • v.9 no.2
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    • pp.59-62
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    • 2011
  • To develop a new cultivar of King oyster mushroom(Pleurotus eryngii), G09-21 as parental strain was selected by the method of Di-mon crossing between monokaryotic strains derived from ASI 2824(Keunneutari No.2) and dikaryotic strain ASI 2887(Aeryni 3). The Pe21-51($G09-21-10{\times}2844-11$) was shown the best cultural characteristics, selected to be a new cultivar and named as 'Song-A'. The 'Song-A' was formed incompatibility line distinctly in the confrontation growth of parental strains Keunneutari No.2, Aeryni 3 and ASI 2844. The optimum temperature for mycelial growth, fruiting body development and pH arrange were $25{\sim}30^{\circ}C$, $14{\sim}16^{\circ}C$ and pH5~8, respectively. Fruiting body production per bottle was about $94.7{\pm}29.5$ g which is almost 106% quantity compared to that of other cultuvar Keunneutari No.2. And also the stip is thick and long but the number of available stipe is few. Analysis of the genetic characteristics of the new cultivar 'Song-A' showed a different DNA profile as that of the control strains, Keunneutari No.2, Aeryni 3 and ASI 2844, when RAPD(Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA) primers URP4 and 7 were used. This new cultivar 'Song-A' of Pleurotus eryngii is characterized by a small number of primordia formation and the stip is thick and long. Therefore, we expect that this new strain will save of labor and cost by without culling work.

The Effects of Female Wage on Fertility in Korea (여성의 임금수준이 출산율에 미치는 영향 분석)

  • Kim, Jungho
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.31 no.1
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    • pp.105-138
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    • 2009
  • Although the decline in fertility rate is generally observed along the history of economic development throughout the world, the continuing decline hitting below the replacement level in Korea over the recent years gathered serious social concerns on the ground that it accelerates the process of population aging. The total fertility rate in Koreareached 2.08 in 1983, and gradually fell to the levels of 1.08 in 2005 and 1.26 in 2007. The policy debate over the role of the government has been focused mainly on the level of theoretical discussion without substantial basis on firm empirical evidence and the determinants of fertility. The objective of the paper is to empirically investigate the fertility effect of the female wage, which is understood as one of the most important determinants of fertility in Koreasince 1980 focusing on one aspect of fertility, namely birth spacing. Using the Korean National Fertility Survey conducted in 2006, I estimate a duration model of first and second births taking into account individual heterogeneity, which turned out to be an important factor to control for. Compared with previous studies in the literature on the Korean fertility, the study has an advantage of using the complete pregnancy history of women in a more representative sample. Unlike the previous studies, the analysis also deals with the endogeneity of marriage by treating a certain age, rather than age at marriage, as the time in which a woman becomes exposed to the risk of pregnancy. The study shares the common problem in the literature on birth spacing of lacking relevant wage information for respondents in a retrospective survey. I estimate the wage series as a function of the basic characteristics using the annual Wage Structure Survey from 1980 to 2005, which is considered as a nationally representative sample for wage information of employees. The results suggest that the increase in female wage by 10 percent leads to a decrease in second birth hazard by 0.56~0.92 percentage points and that the increase in spouse's wage by the equal amount is accompanied by the increase in second birth hazard by 0.36~1.13 percentage points. These estimates are more precisely estimated and of smaller magnitude than those presented by the previous studies. The results are robust to the different specifications of the wage equation. The simulation analysis based on the predicted values shows that about 17% of the change in the second birth hazard over the period 1980 to 2005 was due to the change in the female wage. Although there is some limitation in data, the results can be viewed as one estimate of the role of female wage on the recent fertility decline in Korea. The question raised by the paper is not a normative one of whether a government should promote childbearing but a positive one thatexplains fertility decline. Therefore, if there is a wide consensus on promoting childbearing, the finding suggests that the policies designed to reduce the opportunity cost of women in the labor market would be effective. The recent movement of implementing a wide range of family-friendly policies including child care support, maternity leave, parental leave and tax benefit in developed countries should be understood in this context.

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Dietitians′ Perception on Usage of Cook/chill Vegetables in Institution Foodservice (단체급식 소에서의 냉장조리 채소의 이용에 대한 영양사의 인식조사)

  • 류은순;이동선
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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    • v.30 no.6
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    • pp.1293-1300
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    • 2001
  • We surveyed dietitians'perception on usage of cook/chill vegetables, The questionnaires were distributed to 245 dietitians working in elementary schools and other institutions in Busan area. According to the survey, 75.9% of the dietitians perceived that minimally processed ready -to-use vegetal)toes would be helpful for the institutional foodservice They answered that problems of vegetable usage in the foodservice mainly come from long preparation time (45.4%), a large quantity of leftover (13.1%), and a high ratio of disuse (16.0%). Degree of preparedness from raw vegetables was highest for garlic, and was in tile order of platicodcm, onions, carrots, Potatoes, Korean cabbage and radish.40.9% of the dietitians answered that it was necessary Ic develop cook/chill vegetables in their institute restaurants. The high career group ( >6 yrs.) was, however, significantly (p<0.05) negative against the use of cooHchill vegetables. The dietitians were expecting that developing cook/chill vegetables would save cooking time and processes (4.43/5.00), and reduce waste (4.53/5.00) greatly. They also estimated that focal hygiene and quality would be improved, and labor cast be reduced moderately. On the other hand, they thought that the cost of flood would not be reduced.

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An Evaluation of NURI(New University for Regional Innovation): Focusing on Changes in Graduate Employment (졸업생 취업률 변화를 중심으로 본 지방대학혁신역량강화(NURI)사업의 평가)

  • Lee, Sam-Ho;Kim, Hisam
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.30 no.2
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    • pp.157-183
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    • 2008
  • 'New Universities for Regional Innovation(NURI)' is a financial aid program designed to promote the development of universities as a major component of Regional Innovation System (RIS). In particular, this program emphasizes the role of regional universities to provide the qualified graduates for the regional economy. This paper is to evaluate the effect of NURI, focusing on the change of graduates' employment. The effect of the program can be evaluated by the quality of graduates' accumulated human capital, and graduates' employment performance represents the graduates' quality evaluated in the labor market. This is also believed to be a good performance indicator of the NURI program. We utilize the graduate employment survey of Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), and calculate the graduates' employment rates of the departments that received the financial support of NURI (treatment group). We also calculate the graduates' employment rates of the departments that applied for the support of the NURI program but were not selected (comparison group). By using difference-in-differences method, we compare the change of graduates' employment rates in treatment and comparison groups before and after the program came in effect. Compared with the employment rates in 2004 before the NURI program started, the graduates employment rates improved in both groups in 2005 and 2006. The improvement of the employment rates in the treatment group is larger than that in the comparison group. Moreover, the difference of improvement gets larger in the year 2006 than in 2005, which means those students who were affected more years by the NURI program are more likely to be employed. However, the difference is not statistically significant, and we cannot definetely conclude that NURI showed the desired effect on the quality of the college graduates. We calculate employment rates in two ways; whether to treat going on to graduate education as an employment or not. The result was qualitatively the same in both cases. We also tracked quality of employment by investigating the firm size where the graduates of the treatment group were employed. By utilizing data from the Employment Insurance Fund, we measure the firm size by the number of employees. We did not find any deterioration of employment quality between 2005 and 2006, though it deteriorates in 2007. Therefore, the improvement of employment rates until 2006, though not statistically significant, does not seem to come at the cost of employment quality. The interpretation of this result cannot help being very limited. First, this evaluation covers such a short time period. It only covers two years after the program started, 2005 and 2006. Second, the extent of the improvement in employment rates is not satisfactory considering the amount of financial support, even though it can be argued that the employment has improved since the inception of the program. Subsequent evaluation of the program is required to certify the NURI programs' longer term effectiveness.

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Factors Required to Sustain Pastoral Farming Systems and Forage Supply In Winter-Cold Zones in Canada (캐나다의 동계한냉지역에 있어서 초지개발과 조사료 공급의 활성화에 필요한 요인)

  • Kunelius, H.T.;Fraser, Joanna
    • Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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    • v.12 no.3
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    • pp.3-12
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    • 1992
  • Forage grasses and legumes ar$\varepsilon$ the mam component of livestock diets in Canada. There are over 30 million ha of grassland in Canada and there is a large, undeveloped land base in fringe areas suitable for forage production. The short growing s season limits the grassland farming to the southern p parts of Canada. The win!er season is long and in most parts of Canada cold temperatures, fr$\varepsilon$ezmg, and thawing, and diseases exert sever$\varepsilon$ stress on overwintering forage plants. The development of persistent cultivars is essential for sustained production particularly in the fringe areas with short growmg s$\varepsilon$ason. The seasonality of dry matter production is a result of high growth rates in early summ$\varepsilon$r and low dry matter accumulation in late summer and fall. Innovative management practIces a and cultivars with improved regrowth capacity are n necessary to overcome such skewed production pattern and to extend effiectlVe grazmg season l Improved pasture production is an important part of reducing costs in livestock operations and remaining competitive. It is suggested that applying available technology would increase pasture productivity and reduce d$\varepsilon$pendence on stored feeds thus improving profitability of small producers in particeular. Reducing nutrient losses during harv$\varepsilon$stmg, s storage, and feeding is essential for improved production efficiency during confinement. The devclopment of low cost and labor saving methods of ensiling is critical for improved efficiency and profitability of forage based enterprises Livestock industries must respond to consumer preferences for low fat and cholesterol foods. Research and development of entire production systems is emphasized for dev$\varepsilon$loping viabl$\varepsilon$ enterprises. It is increasingly difficult to secure resources for r$\varepsilon$search, education, and extension, and alliane$\varepsilon$s and cooperation must expand among organizations with interests in forage based livestock systems.

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Development Process for User Needs-based Chatbot: Focusing on Design Thinking Methodology (사용자 니즈 기반의 챗봇 개발 프로세스: 디자인 사고방법론을 중심으로)

  • Kim, Museong;Seo, Bong-Goon;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.3
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    • pp.221-238
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    • 2019
  • Recently, companies and public institutions have been actively introducing chatbot services in the field of customer counseling and response. The introduction of the chatbot service not only brings labor cost savings to companies and organizations, but also enables rapid communication with customers. Advances in data analytics and artificial intelligence are driving the growth of these chatbot services. The current chatbot can understand users' questions and offer the most appropriate answers to questions through machine learning and deep learning. The advancement of chatbot core technologies such as NLP, NLU, and NLG has made it possible to understand words, understand paragraphs, understand meanings, and understand emotions. For this reason, the value of chatbots continues to rise. However, technology-oriented chatbots can be inconsistent with what users want inherently, so chatbots need to be addressed in the area of the user experience, not just in the area of technology. The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents the importance of the User Experience as well as the advancement of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud, and IoT technologies. The development of IT technology and the importance of user experience have provided people with a variety of environments and changed lifestyles. This means that experiences in interactions with people, services(products) and the environment become very important. Therefore, it is time to develop a user needs-based services(products) that can provide new experiences and values to people. This study proposes a chatbot development process based on user needs by applying the design thinking approach, a representative methodology in the field of user experience, to chatbot development. The process proposed in this study consists of four steps. The first step is 'setting up knowledge domain' to set up the chatbot's expertise. Accumulating the information corresponding to the configured domain and deriving the insight is the second step, 'Knowledge accumulation and Insight identification'. The third step is 'Opportunity Development and Prototyping'. It is going to start full-scale development at this stage. Finally, the 'User Feedback' step is to receive feedback from users on the developed prototype. This creates a "user needs-based service (product)" that meets the process's objectives. Beginning with the fact gathering through user observation, Perform the process of abstraction to derive insights and explore opportunities. Next, it is expected to develop a chatbot that meets the user's needs through the process of materializing to structure the desired information and providing the function that fits the user's mental model. In this study, we present the actual construction examples for the domestic cosmetics market to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed process. The reason why it chose the domestic cosmetics market as its case is because it shows strong characteristics of users' experiences, so it can quickly understand responses from users. This study has a theoretical implication in that it proposed a new chatbot development process by incorporating the design thinking methodology into the chatbot development process. This research is different from the existing chatbot development research in that it focuses on user experience, not technology. It also has practical implications in that companies or institutions propose realistic methods that can be applied immediately. In particular, the process proposed in this study can be accessed and utilized by anyone, since 'user needs-based chatbots' can be developed even if they are not experts. This study suggests that further studies are needed because only one field of study was conducted. In addition to the cosmetics market, additional research should be conducted in various fields in which the user experience appears, such as the smart phone and the automotive market. Through this, it will be able to be reborn as a general process necessary for 'development of chatbots centered on user experience, not technology centered'.