Links
Areas of expertise
Biography
Born in Mäntsälä, Finland, February 20th 1959.
Education: Helsinki University of Technology, Departmentet of Electrical Engineering: Master of Science 1987, Licentiate of Technology 1993.
Work experience:
1985-1993 Helsinki University of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing laboratory: assistant, research assistant and researcher positions.
04-09/1993 Laboratory of cognitive Sciences, University of Turku: researcher designing signal analysis software for cognition studies.
10/1993 - 3/2012 Nokia Mobile Phones / Nokia Oyj, Salo: Several positions in different user interface design related organisations. Job titles: Design Engineer, Senior Design Engineer, Engineering Manager, Senior Specialist, CX (Customer Experience) Specialist, Principal Designer. At Nokia my design work consisted of user interface design tasks including prototyping, specifying, testing and concept design. I participated also in UI-related research activities of Nokia Research Center, and several Nokia internal UI concepting projects related to mobile phones. I have authored or co-authored about 40 UI-related invention reports of which a handful proceeded to granted patents. I was an expert member of the UI Patent Board at Nokia for several years.
6/2012 - present: University of Turku. I was employed as a researcher in the BID research unit, which later became Technology Research Center. The unit was research-oriented, and i participated in several research projects aimed at Augmented Reality application development, both for industrial and culture-oriented applications of the technology. The unit was then merged with IT department of the university, and became eventyally a part of the current Department of Computing in the Faculty of Technology. My current work includes both research and teaching. In teaching the main responsibility is currently a course on Usability, User Experience and Analytics. In research, I am working on a Virtual Reality pilot project, a part of the SusCon project where virtual reality is being introduced in the design review process in shipbuilding. I am also a doctoral student in the university, working on usability issues related to information systems in healthcare.
My hobbies include photography, music and reading - mostly non-fiction literature. Some areas of interest are astronomy, architecture and aviation. And in the end of the alphabet, whisky.
Teaching
Responsible teacher of Usability, User Experience and Analytics course, which is an introduction to usability research, user interface design and software usage analytics. Also accessibility issues are discussed in the course. The objective of this course is to give understanding and some basic skills in user interface analysis and design, and to demonstrate the importance of usability in all human-computer interaction.
Teacher in the Mixed Reality course, and contributed also to User Interfaces course.
Research
At the University of Turku I have been working in projects involving Mixed Reality (Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality). My interests are in the applicability and usability of these technologies in industrial as well as culture-oriented uses. The currently running SusCon project contains a VR-pilot subproject where the objective is to apply virtual reality tools in design reviews and communication between the stakeholders in shipbuilding - cruise ships in this case. The earlier projects did, among other things, apply augmented reality in museums and other cultural attractions.
My doctoral studies are aimed at usability-related problems in healthcare information systems. These complicated systems have been criticized widely about poor usability and causing a lot of work for healthcare personnel. In some cases poor usability can also cause hazards to patient safety. This is a very large and complicated problem to solve, further aggravated by the complex agreements between the system providers and customers, which often restrict the possibility of doing research work about the systems.