On June 23, 2015, Dr. Cheryl Zhenyu Qian from Purdue University gave a lecture in School of Mechanical Science & Engineering in Advanced Manufacture Building A304. The topic of the lecture was ‘A Cognitive Approach to Inspire Innovative Product Design’. She was invited by Zhijuan Zhu who is the faculty of Department of Industrial Design. Some faculties from Department of Industrial Design, several practitioners from mobile internet, teachers and students from relative majors attended the activity.
Dr. Cheryl Zhenyu Qian is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at Purdue University and developed the new Interaction Design MFA program. She received a B.Arch. from Southeast University in China, M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees of Interactive Arts and Technology from Simon Fraser University in Canada. Being a boundary crosser, Dr. Qian is interested in studying and developing cognitive interactive systems to enrich the knowledge, employing interdisciplinary research methodologies to improve the design quality, and adopting innovative technologies to better accommodate user experience. As an academic researcher, apart from winning seven IEEE VAST challenge system design awards (2010~2014), the 1st demo contest prize of I2LOR'07 and the 2nd demo contest prize of I2LOR'05, Cheryl has built up a publication list ranging from journals, conference proceedings, poster presentations, and book translations in the interdisciplinary domains of Interaction Design, Digital Learning, Computer-aided Design, Human-computer Interaction and Engineering Education.
During the activity, Dr. Cheryl Zhenyu Qian developed the topic from several aspects, such as human cognition, the relationship of human cognition and product design, what is good product design, ect. She guided the students to find the effect of cognition in innovation design by using games and videos. The interesting statistics data, magical pictures drew students’ attention and the response to this lecture was tremendous. In the end, she shared some inspiration about design and communicated with students by Q&A. This activity provided a evaluate chance for students of Industrial Design major to communicate and study with professor from abroad.
It is also known that Dr. Cheryl Zhenyu Qian communicated with faculties and students from Department of Industrial Design before the lecture about the topic of design education, study abroad, ect. Zhijuan Zhu made a comment that the lecture combined with the course of Ergonomics for sophomores very well and replenished the knowledge of students about the course.
This activity was supported by the International Corporation Promotion Plan of School of Mechanical and Engineering.
