Jari Varsaluoma - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Jari Varsaluoma

Routledge eBooks, Jun 7, 2023

This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts, Apr 27, 2022

2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

User experience (UX) goals are one means to describe user experience requirements and guide the d... more User experience (UX) goals are one means to describe user experience requirements and guide the design and evaluation of interactive systems in different application domains. This position paper discusses the results of a pre-workshop questionnaire for participants of a workshop on UX goals and their utilization. The domains of the case studies that participants described vary from workplace to consumer applications and education. Workshop participants defined a good UX goal as something that (1) helps in focusing the design, (2) is measurable, (3) describes positive emotions, and (4) communicates the desired experience. Furthermore, UX goals were considered useful in keeping the focus on important issues during design and development, and providing inspiration for design.submittedVersionPeer reviewe

Journal of Applied Youth Studies

Widening youth participation is recognised as essential in national decision-making processes. On... more Widening youth participation is recognised as essential in national decision-making processes. One inclusive approach to achieving this is by providing e-participation possibilities targeted towards youth. In this qualitative study, we explore a digital prototype of a virtual council of youth in Finland and ask what factors either promote or hamper the ability of educational institutions, non-governmental youth organisations and public authorities to implement e-participation tools in their daily activities. Our data comprise six expert interviews reflecting the institutional approach to considering youth e-participation from the perspective of online deliberation. Thus, this research provides an empirical understanding of the role of youth e-participation by stating that a virtual youth council can provide inclusive participation opportunity for youth in a different geographical location in an era when different digital participation channels are likely to increase. Our study also ...

Tampere University of Technology, 2018

Companies that develop digital products are increasingly interested in designing products and ser... more Companies that develop digital products are increasingly interested in designing products and services that provide positive experiences for users. User-centered approaches can support product development teams in creating products that are more likely to offer the intended user experience (UX) to the customers. Instructions and guidance based on empirical studies in reallife contexts can provide valuable information for product development teams, including UX designers and other UX experts working in the industry. User-centered design and evaluation methods are used widely. However, there is a lack of specific guidance on how to achieve and evaluate the desired UX during the product development process of digital products. This thesis explores three different approaches for supporting product development activities towards the desired user experience: setting UX goals, long-term UX evaluations, and utilizing usage data logging. This research work was motivated by the lack of empirical studies regarding the utilization of UX goals and long-term UX evaluation methods in product development of digital products. In addition, little is known about how product development teams perceive the utilization of usage data logging, especially in manufacturing industry. This thesis is based on research work conducted in five case studies and published in six scientific publications. Four of the studies were conducted in collaboration with product development practitioners from companies and included real or potential end-users (e.g., customers or company employees). Three of the studies evaluated UX of real products on the market. In total, during all the case studies, data from 185 survey responses and 20 interviews were analyzed, while log data were collected and analyzed from 61 participants. First, the elicitation process of UX goals is explored as a part of the experience design process, where the intended experiences are set as a starting point of the design. Findings from nine design cases are synthesized as characteristics of a good UX goal, instructions for defining UX goals and as a theoretical Experience Goal Elicitation Process. Second, the benefits and challenges of specific, long-term UX evaluation methods are summarized. The perceptions of product development practitioners reveal that long-term UX evaluations can 1) help in understanding change in UX over time, 2) confirm expectations based on other data sources, 3) support updating of current products, and 4) support the conceptualization and development of future products. Third, the expected benefits by practitioners for usage data logging include the following: 1) the data show what users really do; 2) data can be collected without disturbing users; 3) findings from the data can inform user interface design decisions and 4) justify more qualitative user studies. Furthermore, 5) logged usage data can provide new business opportunities for supplier companies in the manufacturing industry. The utilization of usage data logging can be supported through collaborative development of visual data analytics tools between researchers from academia and practitioners from industry. Guidelines to support such collaborative processes are provided. This research work provides theoretical contributions in the form of the Experience Goal Elicitation Process. Methodological contributions include a new understanding of benefits and challenges of long-term UX evaluation methods. Furthermore, the case study descriptions and the ii instructions for defining UX goals contribute to product development activities on a practical level. These results can support product development teams and especially UX designers investigating the feasibility of UX goals and long-term evaluation methods for their product design and evaluation activities. The expected benefits of long-term UX evaluations and usage data logging can inform UX designers and managers when considering how to utilize these approaches. The guidelines for developing visual data analytics tools can support analytics tool developers in academia and industry. Future studies should develop the studied approaches further by investigating their utilization in different consumer and business-to-business contexts. iii Preface During this journey towards a doctoral degree, I have had a privilege to work with many wonderful, inspiring and insightful people. First, my utmost thanks go to my two excellent supervisors, Prof. Kaisa Väänänen and Dr. Heli Väätäjä, whose encouragement and expertise made this work possible. Their support has been invaluable especially during the last year of the dissertation process. I would like to express my gratitude to all those colleagues from IHTE who have been working in the same research projects over the years. Jarmo Palviainen, Jani Sundström and Dr. Kati Kuusinen from sharing the experiences during my first research project at TUT from 2008. Good memories were made and studied also during the SUXES and DELUX projects, with

Behaviour & Information Technology, 2021

It is important for the sustainability of society that everyone can participate in societal discu... more It is important for the sustainability of society that everyone can participate in societal discussions. Although a plethora of services exists for digital participation, they have not proven to entice a broad range of youths to contribute. The aim of this research is to investigate how digital tools can offer inclusive ways for youth to take part in societal processes. We present a study of young people's needs for a digital service enabling societal participation. Altogether 74 young people aged 16-27 with varying backgrounds participated in six workshops. Scenarios were used as stimulus materials for eliciting participants' feedback on digital participation. The findings bring up youth's needs for such service. Needs such as having a safe environment for discussions and making the effect of participation visible were found. Finally, the findings and resulting Virtual Council prototype are presented and discussed, and their significance in advancing inclusive digital societal participation are elaborated.

This paper focuses on the role of digital services in empowering youths to participate in social ... more This paper focuses on the role of digital services in empowering youths to participate in social change. The aim is to discover what kind of potential digital services have in creating opportunities for youths of various backgrounds to be active in various processes of change at both the grassroots and policy levels. We also address questions concerning differences between distinct groups in the relationship between ICT proficiency and social participation. The key results of this paper suggest that youths can be engaged to participate by using digital services and becoming active possessors of their human rights. Nevertheless, the role played by power relations and differences in youths’ ICT skills must be acknowledged, as they affect opportunities to participate in processes of social change.

It's important for the sustainability of society that everyone can participate in societal di... more It's important for the sustainability of society that everyone can participate in societal discussions. Although a plethora of services exist for digital participation, they have not proven to entice a broad range of youths to contribute. The aim of this research is to investigate how digital tools can offer inclusive ways for youth to take part in societal processes. We present a study of young people's needs for a digital service enabling societal participation. Altogether 74 young people aged 16-27 with varying backgrounds participated in six workshops. Scenarios were used as stimulus materials for eliciting participants’ feedback on digital participation. The findings bring up youth's needs for such service. Needs such as having a safe environment for discussions and making the effect of participation visible were found. Finally, the findings are presented and discussed, and their significance in advancing inclusive digital societal participation are elaborated.

Varying contexts of use make the usability studies of mobile devices difficult. The existing eval... more Varying contexts of use make the usability studies of mobile devices difficult. The existing evaluation methods, such as Heuristic Evaluation (HE), must be redesigned in order to create more awareness of the mobile context. Through the reworking of existing heuristics and use of written use scenarios, there have already been some promising results. In this study the context of use of mobile devices was examined with written scenarios. The main target was to improve the reliability of HE by increasing the number of right predictions and reducing the number of false positives produced by the evaluators. The results seem to differ from those of a previously conducted study as the scenarios did not improve the HE regarding the numbers of false positives or accurate predictions. There is a need for more research regarding the possible benefits of different scenarios and other factors that affect the outcomes of HE.

Proceedings of the 23rd Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on - OzCHI '11, 2011

Abstract Globalization and the search for experiential aspects of technology products and service... more Abstract Globalization and the search for experiential aspects of technology products and services have increased the demand for cross-cultural user feedback. Remote methods would suit agile global data collection, but only few common practices yet exist. Thus, the ...

To enable sustainable development of societies the frameworks through which the services that fac... more To enable sustainable development of societies the frameworks through which the services that facilitate participation need to consider various human aspects. Previously created (e)participation (Electronic and non-electronic participation) frameworks have been process and system oriented. In this paper, a novel model draft to describe (e)participation is proposed. The model provides a multidisciplinary theoretical framework to support research of (e)participation and a tool to support activity planning and impact assessment for the public and 3rd sector actors.

Engaging youth in civic participation is essential for sustainable societies. Social robots, as e... more Engaging youth in civic participation is essential for sustainable societies. Social robots, as embodied and interactive entities, may be feasible tools to spark youth’s interest. To start designing persuasive interactions for this purpose, we conducted a study addressing the question, what do youth consider as appropriate behaviour for a civic robot? We developed three scenarios describing social robots as persuaders for youth’s civic participation. The scenarios were evaluated in three workshops with 51 fifteen-year-old Finnish participants. The credibility of the robot emerged as a central theme: a civic robot should emphasize its purpose and avoid any pretence—also when expressing emotions.

2017 21st International Conference Information Visualisation (IV), 2017

Analyzing data from complex production systems and processes can be used in improving existing pr... more Analyzing data from complex production systems and processes can be used in improving existing products, processes, and services, and innovating novel offerings. We report the findings from a six-month case study with a company developing flexible manufacturing systems. During a collaborative development process of a data analytics and visualization tool, our goal was to identify potential metrics, business opportunities, and challenges when utilizing logged data of end-users' human-machine interactions in development activities. Our key contributions include a characterization of the potential usage data metrics to be logged and visualized, identification of opportunities this data entails for business, and discussion about the challenges related to usage data logging in the studied context. Finally, we propose topics that should be considered in the organization before investing in usage data logging in the context of flexible manufacturing systems.

Demo Hour highlights new prototypes and projects that exemplify innovation and novel forms of int... more Demo Hour highlights new prototypes and projects that exemplify innovation and novel forms of interaction. Audrey Desjardins, Editor

In the era of mobile devices and services, researchers in the educational domain have been intere... more In the era of mobile devices and services, researchers in the educational domain have been interested in how to support learning with mobile technology in both local and global contexts. Recent human-computer interaction (HCI) research in the educational domain has particularly focused on how to develop mobile learning services and how to evaluate the learning outcomes. However, learning occurs in a local cultural context and the impact of culturally sensitive issues of the design of mobile learning needs more attention. We studied mobile mathematics learning -service in a longitudinal research with over 30 South African schools during three years. Our aim was to understand culturally dependent issues which need to be taken into consideration in the design of mobile learning services. We found subjective and objective culturally dependent issues in the content, context, infrastructure and technology of mobile learning and therefore, subjects to cross-cultural research. In conclusion...

Proceedings of the 22nd International Academic Mindtrek Conference, 2018

We present the lessons learned during the development and evaluation process for UX-sensors, a vi... more We present the lessons learned during the development and evaluation process for UX-sensors, a visual data analytics tool for inspecting logged usage data from flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Based on the experiences during a collaborative development process with practitioners from one FMS supplier company, we propose guidelines to support other developers of visual data analytics tools for usage data logging in context of complex industrial systems. For instance, involving stakeholders with different roles can help to identify user requirements and generate valuable development ideas. Tool developers should confirm early access to real usage data from customers' systems and familiarize themselves with the log data structure. We argue that combining expert evaluations with field study methods can provide a more diverse set of usability issues to address. For future research, we encourage studies on insights emerging from usage data analytics and their impact on the viewpo...

Chatbot Research and Design

The aim of this study was to gain understanding of young people's experiences and perceptions of ... more The aim of this study was to gain understanding of young people's experiences and perceptions of chatbots, and more specifically, youth's perceptions of chatbots used for civic participation. The main research questions (RQ) were: RQ1: What are youth's experiences and expectations of chatbots? RQ2: How do youth perceive the concept of CivicBots? CivicBot is a chatboteither entirely software-based or embedded in a physical social robotthat is used for supporting people in participating in various societal activities.

Proceedings of the 20th International Academic Mindtrek Conference

The rapid rise in the number of mobile phone users in developing countries has created an opportu... more The rapid rise in the number of mobile phone users in developing countries has created an opportunity to research and develop new mobile learning services. However, designing mobile learning services that are both motivating and provide positive user experiences is crucial for being successful in mobile learning markets. In this paper, we study the motivational factors for studying mathematics and using mobile mathematics learning service Microsoft Math in South Africa. The relationship of learners' motivational factors, UX, math skills and behavioral intentions are studied. No significant relationships were found between UX and motivational factors. As a result, we provide 1) the summaries of the identified motivational factors for studying mathematics and for using mobile mathematics learning services, 2) UX goals for designing mobile learning services for developing countries, and 3) implications for conducting remote mobile surveys in developing countries.