UC Research Profile - University of Canterbury

Dr Wendy Zhang

Contact

Department: School of Product Design

Email: wendy.zhang@canterbury.ac.nz

Direct Dial: +64 3 3691259

Office: West 322

Languages: English, Chinese (Mandarin)

Embracing leading-edge design tools in education to ensure the success of our future designers in the industry.

About

Research / Creative works

Networks

Projects

Methods & Equipment

Fields of Research

Emerging Design Tools
Design Visualisation
User Experience Design
Design Practice and Education

Researcher Summary

My research pursues creative and effective implementation and evaluation of leading-edge design tools in design education and practice, i.e. 3D Printing, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and any best available technologies in the future.

Latest research interests include:
Use of Digital Sketching in product design practice
Sketching with Virtual Reality
Impact on tool-use behaviours from tool-learning experience in formal design education

Subject Area: Disciplines

Design: Design

Research/Scholarly/Creative Works

(Displaying research/scholarly/creative work for last six years)

Journal Articles

Ranscombe C. and Zhang W. (2021) What motivates and discourages designers to use digital sketching? Comparing its use to externalise ideas versus communicating with external stakeholders. Proceedings of the Design Society 1: 3441-3450. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pds.2021.605.

Ranscombe C., Zhang W., Eisenbart B. and Kuys B. (2021) Which visualisation tools and why? Evaluating perceptions of student and practicing designers toward Digital Sketching. Design and Technology Education 26 3.

Zhang W. and Ranscombe C. (2021) Embracing new visualisation tools in education: How the learning experience of digital sketching influences its use in design practice. Proceedings of the Design Society 1: 1353-1362. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pds.2021.135.

Conference Contributions - Published

Ranscombe C., Johnson KB., Zhang W., Eisenbart B. and Lauff C. (2020) Which visualisation tools and why? comparing perceptions of student and practicing designers toward digital sketching. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, E and PDE 2020.

Ranscombe C., Zhang W., Rodda J. and Mathias D. (2019) Digital sketch modelling: Proposing a hybrid visualisation tool combining affordances of sketching and CAD. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED 2019-August: 309-318. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.34.

Zhang W., Ranscombe C., Radcliffe D. and Jackson S. (2019) Creation of a framework of design tool characteristics to support evaluation and selection of visualisation tools. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED 2019-August: 1115-1124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.117.

Kuys B. and Zhang W. (2016) Elucidating perceptions of Australian and Chinese industrial design from the next generation of industrial designers. In.

Theses / Dissertations

Zhang W. (2021) An Investigation into the Use of Digital Sketching during the Early-Middle Design Phases in Industrial Design Practice. Melbourne. Swinburne University of Technology.

Affiliations

The Design Society (Professional Organisation): Design Sketching SIG Member

Future Research

Digital Design Process
Design Visualisation and Design Thinking
Virtual Reality and Product Design
Digital Sketching in Product Design Process

Key Methodologies

Adobe suite and Wacom
Rhinoceros 3D Modelling
Keyshot Rendering