Among various materials used for structures, TRIP steel has attracted the interest of the scientific community because TRIP steel indicates better performances such as formability, toughness and energy absorption as well as strength and ductility than other kinds of advanced high strength steel because of strain-induced martensitic transformation. From a microstructural point of view, two mechanisms are usually considered to explain the high performances: the Magee and the Greenwood-Johnson effects: however, it has not been proven yet. On the other hand, even though TRIP steel shows the excellent energy absorption under the high-speed deformation, the amount of martensite is very small by an influence of the heat generation with plastic transformation. In order to solve this paradox and explain macroscopic performances from the microscopic deformation mechanism, a concept of a spatio-temporal multiscale should be introduced. In this paper, research works done by the one of the authors on the mechanism of high functionalization in TRIP steel from the viewpoint of a spatio-temporal hierarchy are summarized with reviewing some related papers.