The Association for Information Systems (AIS) has awarded Karin Väyrynen and Arto Lanamäki the AIS Impact Award. The award was given for the societal impact in studying technology regulation in the context of the Finnish taxi industry. The award ceremony was held in the annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Austin TX in December 2021. The chair of the award committee Dr. Tilo Böhmann noted: “When someone cites your work writing to the European Commission you can be pretty proud of that.” Väyrynen and Lanamäki have studied digital transformation in the Finnish taxi industry since 2017.

Information Processing Science student guild Blanko awards INTERACT teacher Antti Juustila for excellent teaching. The award was based on student feedback. Example of the feedback:

"Paras palaute, mitä olen koskaan mistään kurssista saanut. Oppi ymmärtämään. mitä tein oikein ja missä oli parantamista."

INTERACT proudly congratulates Antti for this award!

WORLD USABILITY DAY (WUD) Finland online seminar

November 12, 2020

Theme for 2020: Human-Centered AI

Organizers:  SIGCHI Finland and INTERACT Research Unit/University of Oulu

The Annual Symposium of Computer Science in Finland (Tietojenkäsittelytieteen päivät) of the year 2020 is held on November 9^th 2020, 14.00-19.00 EET via Zoom. 

The event is organized by INTERACT Research Unit, University of Oulu with the theme is ”Empowerment through design and technology: the potential of critical design and critical Making”.

Professor emeritus Kari Kuutti receiving the EUSSET-IISI Lifetime Achievement Award in the 18th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW 2020) on June 17, 2020

Interact research unit is well represented in the ongoing ECIS conference in Sweden.

Tietotekniikan tutkimussäätiö on myöntänyt Tietojenkäsittelytieteen Seuran esityksestä vuoden 2019 väitöskirjapalkinnon filosofian tohtori Guido Giuntille hänen Marie Curie ITN CHESS -projektissa tekemästään väitöskirjasta “3MD for Chronic Conditions: A Model for Motivational mHealth Design". 5 000 €:n arvoinen palkinto luovutettiin Tietojenkäsittelytieteen päivillä Kuopiossa 10.6.2019.

Vasiliki Mylonopoulou (MSc) defends her PhD thesis MAD: designing social comparison features in health behaviour change technological interventions on June 7, 2019 at 12 o'clock in Lecture Hall L2 University of Oulu Linnanmaa campus.

Opponent: Associate Professor Jose Abdelnour Nocera, University of West London

Kustos: Professor Minna Isomursu, University of Oulu

Interested in FabLabs, maker culture or STEAM education? Interact research unit is arranging a seminar ahead of Fablearn Europe on 28.5, where educators, researchers and other members of the maker community gather together to share and discuss their experiences concerning what is happening both in formal education, and more informal context in clubs, makerspaces and fab labs.

Interact is proud to arrange the PhD course  'Conducting Research with Teens, Methods and Findings in Adolescent Online Safety' with visiting professor Pamela Wisniewski from University of Central Florida's Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. The course is funded by the Infotech doctoral programme and will be arranged 25.5.-27.9.2019.

Trainee positions and scholarships for trainees in INTERACT Research Unit, Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu, Finland) to conduct practical training for two months. The scholarship for trainees is 1500 euros. Maximum of 3 trainees will receive the scholarship hopefully leading to a master’s thesis on the topic. The applicants are asked to select 1 or maximum of 2 topics that they consider relate most to their expertise and interest.

Helena Tokkonen (MSc) defends her PhD thesis "Say, Do, Make? User Involvement in Information Systems Design" on March 15, 2019 at 12 o'clock in Lecture Hall IT116, University of Oulu Linnanmaa campus.

Opponent: Samuli Pekkola, University of Tampere

Kustos: Marianne Kinnula

We are arranging FabLearn Europe 2019 conference in University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland on May 28-29, 2019. The two-day conference brings together international researchers, educators, designers, and makers to discuss and explore digital fabrication in education, making in educational contexts, and hands-on learning for the 21st Century.

We would like to invite you to submit to the research track "HCI in a Sharing Society" at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden, June 12-14, 2019. Please forward this CFP to interested colleagues and students.

Guido Giunti (MD) defends his PhD thesis "3MD for chronic conditions : a model for motivational mHealth design" on 

 on October 5, 2018 at 12 o'clock in Lecture Hall L10, University of Oulu Linnanmaa campus.

Opponents: Professor Ilpo Koskinen, University of New South Wales, Australia and Professor Kirsikka Kaipainen, Tampere University of Technology

Kustos: professor Minna Isomursu

Check out the workshop organized by Vasiliki Mylonopoulou in Mindtrek 2018 conference!

For two weeks during 4 - 15.6.2018 we have had two highschool students doing their summer traineeship in the UX Lab where they worked on a game under the supervision of Joni Rajala and Mikko Rajanen. Read more.

As part of our BCI (Brain-Computer Interaction) research initiative, on 8.6.2018 we have presented a "mind reader" Emotiv demo at Nokia. The demo was invited and hosted by Juha Hannula at the Open Day event at Nokia Oulu Garage facility. Emotiv is a commerical BCI system. It consists of a wireless EEG headset with 14 channels and a gyroscope. It can detect facial expressions, psychological states and conscious thoughts. Using the BCI feature the system is able to respond to up to four trained thoughts such as to interact with an object on the screen or a remote device. During the demonstration, the following commands have been trained and used: move upwards (lift), move down, move left, move right, make disapper, rotate clockwise, rotate counter-clockwise, pull and push.

INTERACT is one of the research units to receive funding through Academy of Finland profiling of universities. See the news piece and information about the GenZ project

INTERACTin tutkijatohtori Heidi Hartikainen Oulun Ylioppilaslehden haastattelussa lasten nettiturvallisuustaidoista!

INTERACT has established a center for transdisciplinary research to support inter- and transdisciplinary research within University of Oulu by

• conducting transdisciplinary research
• studying transdisciplinary research as a phenomenon
• arranging seminars and events that encourage and support transdisciplinary research

Leena Ventä-Olkkonen (MSc) defends her thesis "The characteristics and development of urban computing practices. Utilizing practice toolkit approach to study public display network" on December 8, 2017 at 12 o'clock in Lecture Hall L10, University of Oulu Linnanmaa campus.

Opponent: professor Sampsa Hyysalo, Aalto University

Kustos: professor Netta Iivari

Heidi Hartikainen (Phil.Lic) defends her thesis “Malice in Wonderland: Children, Online Safety and the Wonderful World of Web 2.0” on December 5, 2017 at 12 o'clock in Lecture Hall IT115, University of Oulu Linnanmaa campus.

Opponent: professor Ole Sejer Iversen, Aarhus University

Kustos: professor Netta Iivari

SIGCHI Finland organizes this year's World Usability Day (WUD) in Oulu together with Interact Research Unit.

The event takes place at University of Oulu, Linnanmaa Campus, TellUs stage on 9th of November time 12.15 - 16.00.

The theme of this year WUD is Inclusion Through User Experience.

Hosted by INTERACT:

• Transformational Sociotech Design, November 30 - December 1, at University of Oulu main campus

Eija Halkola and Dorina Rajanen received grants for post-doctoral studies from Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foudation:

• Eija Halkola: Opettajien rooli kouluverkon infrastrukturoinnissa - teknologiavälitteisen opetuksen kehittäjinä
• Dorina Rajanen: Climate change in the news: a study of how media messages impact the perceptions, emotions, attention, and behavior

Congratulations!

The paper "UX Professionals’ Definitions of Usability and UX – A Comparison between Turkey, Finland, Denmark, France and Malaysia" by Dorina Rajanen, Torkil Clemmensen, and Netta Iivari et al. has been awarded the Reviewer's Choice Award of INTERACT 2017. This award is granted to 15% of accepted full papers submissions based on reviewers’ ratings for review. Congratulations Dorina and others!

INTERACT Research Unit, Center for Ubiquitous Computing and Martti Ahtisaari Institute, University of Oulu arrange a seminar on Digital fabrication for business and education 15.11.2017, 9.00-16.00 at University of Oulu, Linnanmaa Campus

Hosted by INTERACT:

• Quality-of-Life as a Transformative Framework for Human-Centered Design, October 30, 2017, at TellUs Stage, University of Oulu main campus

Hosted by INTERACT:

• Business Model Development Driven by Radical Circles – examples from the video game industry and beyond, October 4-6, 2017, in University of Oulu main campus

A paper written as a result of a Master’s thesis project of Information Processing Science student MSc Juha Häikiö in supervision of Prof. Minna Isomursu has been nominated as the most impactful paper of ACM MobileHCI 2007 at the MobileHCI conference in Vienna, 7th September. The paper is called ”Touch-based user interface for elderly users.” It presents and evaluates implementation of meals-on-wheels service for old adults, which used touch-based user interface technology. The research was carried out in the context of ITEA SmartTouch project in collaboration with VTT.

Tietojenkäsittelytieteen Seura ry palkitsi kunniamaininnalla FM Petteri Ponsimaan (Oulun yliopisto, INTERACT-tutkimusyksikkö) pro gradu -työn Discovering value for health with grocery shopping data.

Vasiliki Mylonopoulou's paper nominated as one of the best papers in the 30th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems conference in Thessaloniki, Greece, June 22-24

LUNO - Lukiolaisista nostetta ohjelmistoalalle - project: Battling the gender segregation on our field by making IT field more interesting for female senior-highschoolers by teaching them programming and designerly thinking as well as giving them more information about our field in general

Vasiliki Mylonopoulou's paper in video form!

Gentile, V., & Mylonopoulou, V. (2017, June). Exploiting social comparison using pervasive displays and mobile notifications for reducing energy consumption. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays (p. 22). ACM.

Hosted by INTERACT:

• CHESS Summer School 2017, June 12-16, 2017, in University of Oulu main campus

Check out the videos produced by our PhD students who work hard in CHESS project.

Hosted by INTERACT:

• Intensive course: Game Design Thinking for Healthcare, November 24-25th 2016, in University of Oulu main campus, at TellUs Stage
• Connected Health Winter School, November 28-30, 2016, in University of Oulu main campus

From field to desk: A transdisciplinary qualitative method course facilitated by INTERACT, October 3-4, 2016 at Ice Breaker Stage, TellUs Innovation Arena, University of Oulu, Finland

Petteri Ponsimaa's Master's Thesis the best of 2017 in SIGCHI Finland Master's thesis competitio

Call for Connected Health Winter 2016 Training School applications is now open!

New publications for Leena Ventä-Olkkonen, Arto Lanamäki, Netta Iivari and Kari Kuutti!

Our people are on the move and presenting papers: UK (Manchester/IDC, Preston/FabLearn), Turkey (Istanbul/ECIS) and also here in Oulu (PerDis). Kari Kuutti got a paper accepted in 4S/EASST in Barcelona, in August 2016.

Arto Lanamäki, Netta Iivari and Kari Kuutti participate in the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP) in Trento, Italy. Jouni Lappalainen participates the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (ICSE) in Austin, Texas, USA.

Netta Iivari and Marianne Kinnula got a paper accepted in Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems (SCIS).

Our group members got papers accepted in the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP), in the Interaction Design and Children conference, and European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2016).

Minna Pakanen defending her PhD thesis 18.12.2015 on "Visual design examples in the evaluation of anticipated user experience at the early phases of research and development". Eija Halkola defending her PhD thesis 9.12.2015 on "Participation in infrastructuring the future school - A nexus analytic inquiry".

Inforte course on Value-Oriented Design for Children and Young People on November 25th-26th at Oulu University. World Usability Day 2015 event on November 12th, 2015 at University of Oulu, Auditorium GO101.

Mikko Rajanen has two presentations in Germany, first at Interact 2015 Conference in Bamberg, Germany, and then he talks at FAU, Computer Science Department, Open-Source Software Research Group, in Erlangen-Nurenberg.

Karin Väyrynen and Arto Lanamäki participated at the Int'l Summer School on CSCW in Como, Italy. Two papers were accepted at HICSS 49 Conference: Dorina Rajanen et al. (2016) and Arto Lanamäki et al. (2016). Netta Iivari and Minna Isomursu spoke at Inauguration of Professors at University of Oulu. INTERACT research group co-organized the SCIS 2015 conference and IRIS38 workshop in Oulu.