Mika P. Nieminen

Aalto University · Department of Computer Science

This paper investigates the design of multi-user virtual reality (VR) communication and collaboration, focusing on asymmetric VR where one user is immersed in the virtual environment while the other interacts from the external world. Through an exploratory user study (n = 16), we examine how users experience different asymmetric VR communication me...

In this paper we discuss the necessity to preserve the sense of presence in virtual reality (VR). A high sense of presence has proven advantages but is also very fragile to interruptions. We outline scenarios where interaction and communication between persons inside and outside virtual environments are necessary and assess challenges for maintaini...

Lasten ja nuorten sekä heidän perheidensä potilaskokemusta on tutkittu varsin vähän. Potilaskokemus on käsitteenä moniulotteinen ja monimerkityksellinen, minkä johdosta sen määritteleminen ja mittaaminen on haastavaa. Lapsus-tutkimushankkeessa selvitetään lapsipotilaiden ja heidän perheidensä näkökulmia sairaalakäynneistä, saaduista hoidoista ja p...

Patient experience has become a crucial part of the quality of any healthcare service. Experiences and their structures are not however trivial phenomena that are easy to describe and model. Instead, subjective and dynamic experiences seem to escape definitions and measurements. In order to map the dimensions and dynamics of patient experiences of...

This paper describes the use of video diaries as a tool for understanding children's patient experience and as a potential method for directly gathering patient experience information from children. It was hypothesized that this method would uncover otherwise hidden knowledge about children ages 10-16 years with chronic illnesses. The aim of this p...

Public sector services are going through an extensive digital reformation, which intends to improve the quality of these services. A user-centered design (UCD) approach and UCD skills are required if citizens are involved in the public e-services' development. In this paper we present a study in which we utilized the UCD Competency Model. The data...

In information visualization every method performs best in its own range of plotting density. When the available area for the visualization is unknown or when the data is supplied in packages of various sizes, the best suited method cannot be chosen in advance, and the wrong choice leads to the problems of under- or overplotting. This note suggests...

In this paper we describe our experiences piloting a collaboration space DiWa that supports creative group-based knowledge work. The developed prototypes of the system were piloted at three industry and public sector partners in Finland conducting product development and city zoning and at one research institute involved in service design in Beijin...

In this paper we describe our experiences piloting a collaboration space DiWa that supports creative group-based knowledge work. The developed prototypes of the system were piloted at three industry and public sector partners in Finland conducting product development and city zoning and at one research institute involved in service design in Beijin...

This chapter describes the results from industry pilots on a prototype of an interactive collaboration space DiWa, focusing on its memory support functionality i.e. meeting capture and retrieval. The data has been gathered with questionnaires, interviews, and observations. Our findings point out that even though these functionalities are mostly see...

In this paper, we describe the requirements elicitation for a digital war room --- a group work facility to support people interacting with digital (and analog) materials. The target user group is product design teams and construction engineers/architects. Main requirements for an interactive group work space include fluent sharing of documents wit...

User-Centered Design (UCD) under the umbrella of user experience (UX) has gained momentum as the de facto standard to produce successful products and services. Use of products is seen as a highly personal and context-sensitive balancing act that derives its uniqueness from the actions and emotions of the users. While the definition of UX is still i...

In this paper we describe the design and development of the UCD HoloDeck. It is an information and communication technology (ICT) enhanced playground to support and inspire design by recreating relevant context of use and ensuing user experience based on user studies. Instead of taking the designers to the actual context of use, we bring the contex...

This paper describes idea generation activities in a user-centered concept development project when creating a new Enterprise Resource Planning system. With detailed statistics of the produced ideas we show that different creative problem solving methods are feasible to allow real end-users to generate ideas to improve their own ERP system. Our res...

This paper illustrates a series of user-centered concept development experiments where emerging mixed reality technology was used to create engaging demonstrators targeted to children for a public exhibition in a science center. There were three specific points of view that made the process both demanding and motivating: A challenging context of us...

In user-centered design user research usually produces detailed description of the users, analysis of relevant actions and the specifics of the environment and artefacts thereof. However additional step of sampling from different viewpoints is required to more efficiently kick-start user-centered product concept development. Design perspectives, ab...

This paper describes the planning and implementation of a cross-border usability test that was to be executed in five European countries. The usability evaluation was designed by the Usability Group at Helsinki University of Technology who also performed the testing for the Finnish partner. In the other countries the usability tests were to be impl...

The objective of this book is to contribute to the understanding and the improvement of an emerging new kind of multi-locational work, i.e. mobile virtual work (MVW). The starting point is knowledge work as practice – the ways in which work is actually done in different situations and contexts – as the base for design and development of workplaces,...

This paper describes a user-centered concept development process especially suitable for emerging technologies. The process consists of four phases: 1) Definition of development goals, 2) User and technology research, 3) Iterative concept development and 4) Process wrap-up. Our variation of concept development process differs from prior ones by hav...

Users and the context of use are the heart of user-centred design. If the users' tasks are irregular or varying the information gathering is difficult. In our study we used photography based artefact analysis to gather information about these kinds of problematic situations. The combination of artefact analysis and participative observations proved...

Museum Context Abstract As all museums have their unique requirements, this paper draws its experiences from the identified challenges of EU-funded AMIRE project developing MR application for the Guggenheim museum of contemporary art in Bilbao, Spain. The conducted study included interviews, a site visit and a questionnaire. This paper describes th...