About Me
Nice to meet you! I am Zhanming /zɑːn miŋ/ Chen (陈展明). I am a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant in the Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) program and CoLab at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, advised by Professor Ji Youn Shin.
Research Focus
I focus on community-based design in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and social computing. My goal is to apply participatory design approaches that build on communities' strengths and reduce the barriers they face in daily life.
Since 2023, I have been working with an Asian ethnic minority community in the Twin Cities to support their experiences with healthcare and farming.
Research Themes
A bubble chart of the words that come up most in my papers, grouped into five themes. A bigger circle means the word comes up more often.
- Health and care: health (most frequent), patients (very frequent), healthcare providers (very frequent), communication (frequent), treatment and medication (less frequent)
- Farming: farming (most frequent), crop management (very frequent), markets and income (less frequent), land and equipment (less frequent)
- Community and culture: community (most frequent), culture (frequent), family (frequent), social capital (frequent), language and literacy (less frequent)
- Design approach: asset-based design (less frequent), prototyping (less frequent), participatory design (least frequent), everyday practices (least frequent)
- Information and tools: information tracking (very frequent), voice and visuals (frequent), health technologies (least frequent), gesture (least frequent), privacy (least frequent)
Highlights
- Papers
- First-author full papers at CHI 2025 and CSCW 2025; second-author full paper at CSCW 2026.
- Talks
- CHI 2025 in Yokohama, the 2025 Design Justice Symposium, a panel at the CSCW Northeast 2025 Meetup, and guest lectures.
Teaching and Service
As a graduate instructor, I designed and taught RM 4216: Retail Promotions in Fall 2024. I have served as a teaching assistant for three courses, and I give guest lectures to undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Design.
I serve on the board of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) UMN Student Chapter, review papers for HCI conferences, and mentor undergraduate students on their research projects.
I have also volunteered in the Twin Cities, at a farmers market and on a local farm, to understand daily life in local communities firsthand.
Experience and Motivation
My perspective is shaped by Guangzhou, my hometown, a city defined by its fascinating fusion of cultures and languages. I speak Cantonese, Teochew, Mandarin, and English. Immersed in its diversity, I developed an early interest in social equity, volunteering with low-income residents and seniors in my neighborhood. In college, I also spent a summer teaching geography to rural schoolchildren as a volunteer.
I studied marketing at Sun Yat-sen University and worked in game design and digital marketing: as a game design intern at Tencent, a digital marketing intern at NetEase Games, and a marketing specialist at Times China.
While I loved the craft of engaging users, I wanted to apply those skills in contexts the industry often overlooks, where that neglect makes daily life harder for some groups of people. Holding the spark of "tech for good," I pivoted from analyzing consumer behavior to understanding the complex relationships and dynamics in society, and the design opportunities within them. I returned to Sun Yat-sen for a master's focused on interaction design, then moved to Minnesota to pursue HCI research, designing supportive technologies for local communities.
Outside the Lab
In my spare time, I love to visit local museums and vintage shops, play guitar, and bike along the Mississippi River.
If you'd like to chat about research or work together, feel free to email me.