Kathy
Cheng

I am a 4th year PhD candidate in Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. I am co-advised by Professor Alison Olechowski from Ready Lab and Professor Shurui Zhou from FORCOLAB. Previously, I received a BASc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto and completed my PEY (Professional Experience Year) at Scotiabank as a Technology Consultant, where I won the PEY Co-op Student of the Year Award.

My research focuses on advancing collaborative practices in distributed hardware design teams through the use of 3D CAD (computer-aided design) tools. We use a variety of methods (interviews, data mining, analysis of digital trace data) to uncover the challenges of collaborating with CAD and identify solutions to address these challenges — often taking inspiration from collaborative software development insights. Our past work has explored how branching and merging can facilitate concurrent work and version control in CAD, which was presented at CSCW 2023. We have also investigated collaboration practices in open-source hardware contexts to identify best practices and design implications for open-source platforms.

I am currently seeking full-time opportunities in HCI or UX research in industry!

CV

News

08/2024:
I was an invited presenter and panellist at the Trove of CAD Informatics: Acquiring and Analyzing CAD Data for Design Process Insights and AI Applications workshop at IDETC 2024.
06/2024:
I gave a talk on Open-Source CAD Collaboration at the Machine Agency Reading Group at the University of Washington.
06/2024:
Our paper about Personas in CAD Collaboration was published in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
04/2024:
I was awarded a Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral from NSERC.
04/2024:
Our paper about Open-Source Hardware was accepted to CSCW 2024.
03/2024:
Two of our papers were published in the Journal of Mechanical Design Special Issue: The Role of Design Artifacts in Design.

Selected Publications

"A Lot of Moving Parts": A Case Study of Open-Source Hardware Design Collaboration in the Thingiverse Community
Kathy Cheng, Shurui Zhou, and Alison Olechowksi
CSCW 2024 ● PDF ● OSF

The Personas of Cloud CAD Collaboration: A Case Study of a Team of CAD Professionals
Chuma Asuzu, Kathy Cheng, and Alison Olechowksi
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 2024 ● PDF

Analysis of Collaborative Assembly in Multi-User Computer-Aided Design
Kathy Cheng and Alison Olechowski
Journal of Mechanical Design 2024 ● PDF

Designing Together: Exploring Collaborative Dynamics of Multi-Objective Design Problems in Virtual Environments
Debrina Roy, Nicole Calpin, Kathy Cheng, Alison Olechowski, Andrea P Argüelles, Nicolás F Soria Zurita, and Jessica Menold
Journal of Mechanical Design 2024 ● PDF

User Perspectives on Branching in Computer-Aided Design
Kathy Cheng, Phil Cuvin, Alison Olechowski, and Shurui Zhou
CSCW 2023 ● PDF

In the Age of Collaboration, the Computer-Aided Design Ecosystem is Behind: An Interview Study of Distributed CAD Practice
Kathy Cheng, Michal Davis, Xiyue Zhang, Shurui Zhou, and Alison Olechowski
CSCW 2023 ● PDF

Communication patterns in engineering enterprise social networks: an exploratory analysis using short text topic modelling
Sharon Ferguson, Kathy Cheng, Lauren Adolphe, Georgia Van de Zande, David Wallace, and Alison Olechowski
Design Science 2022 ● PDF

Some (Team) Assembly Required: An Analysis of Collaborative Computer-Aided Design Assembly
Kathy Cheng and Alison Olechowski
IDETC 2021 ● PDF

Contact

kathy.cheng@mail.utoronto.ca
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