Discipline
Information Systems
Supervisor(s)
- Dr Yasser Rahrovani
- Dr Rob Austin
Esther is an Information Systems PhD student at the Ivey Business School. She is fascinated by the process of innovating meaning (product’s symbolic, emotional, and sociocultural values that are beyond functions and aesthetics) with digital technologies. Her research interests include product innovation and management with digital technologies and the role of user feedback in designer-user relationship. She is hoping to apply product innovation literature like design-driven innovation to Information Systems. Her dissertation is titled, “Role of Digital Technology in Product Meaning Innovation: A Design Perspective” and focuses on how product meaning arises from designers’ use of digital technology with case studies approach.
For more information, see Esther's personal website.
Education
- Bachelor of Business Administration (First Class Honour), City University of Hong Kong, 2013 - 2017
- Exchange semester, Singapore Management University, 2016 Spring
- Exchange semester, University of Mannheim, 2015 Fall
- Dissertation title “Role of Digital Technology in Product Meaning Innovation: A Design Perspective”
Research Interests
- IT Innovation
- Designer perspective
- IT’s impact
Awards & Honors
- Brock Scholarship, Ivey Business School, 2017-2021
- Plan for Excellence Doctoral Fellowship, Ivey Business School, 2017-2022
- Championship, Microsoft (Hong Kong) GrilSpark Business Case Competition, 2017
- FANs Awards Outstanding Community Service Awards for Non-local Students, 2016
- Academic and Professional Excellence Award, City University of Hong Kong, 2014-2015
Conferences
- Gu, H., & Rahrovani, Y. (2019). Designer Adaptation: A Feedback Perspective. Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). Munich, Germany: Association for Information Systems.
- Neufeld, D., & Gu, H. (2019). Leadership Emergence and Impact on Open Source Software Project Success: A Comparative Case Study. Proceedings of the 79th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM). Boston, MA: Academy of Management
Academic Experience
- Reviewer: ICIS, ECIS, AoM, AMCIS, ASAC
- Professional Membership: AIS, AoM
- Ivey PhD Association, VP Academic, 2020 – 2021
- Research Assistant, Ivey Business School: code and analyze qualitative interview data on neurodiversity project and open source leadership project, 2018-now
- Teaching assistant, Ivey Business School: grade students’ papers in SQL language and data security in the course “Data Management”, 2019
- Participated in teaching training for more than 30-hour from the Centre for Teaching and Learning, Western University, 2018-2020
- Research Assistant, City University of Hong Kong: collect and analyze multilevel dataset on e-health project, 2016-2017; run behavioral experiments, 2014-2015
- Peer assistant-learning leader, City University of Hong Kong, give tutorials to 12 year-one students for the course "Information Management" for 32 hours, 2015
