Research (to be updated)
Two most recent or ongoing projects:
1) LOCO (2010-2014), in which we focus on hyperlocal content production by citizen photojournalists and reader reporters for a hyperlocal news provider (Sanoma News) as well as study the user experience of mobile news sites on tablets (Keski-Pohjanmaan Kirjapaino). This research is part of Next Media SHOK programme by TIVIT and funded by TEKES.
2) UXUS (2011-2015), which focuses on "User experience and usability in complex systems" in metals and engineering industry. UXUS SHOK programme by FIMECC is funded by TEKES.
Under preparation
3) Data4Value - use of IoT data for company's R&D and service development activities.
Next Media - LOCO: Hyperlocal Content Production and Community Management
We are currently involved in the Next Media programme in two workpackages.
In WP1 - eReading we study user experience of mobile news sites on tablets as well as user experience related to authentication and payment.
In WP3 the research is related to hyperlocal news content production and community management. We study the UGC productionfrom the point of view of citizen photojournalists and reader reporters.
This work is done in close collaboration with Sanoma News and Aalto Media Factory. During the first year of the Next Media programme we also had close collaboration with Tampere Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication (COMET) and Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.
In 2013 we also cover themes related to eReading in collaboration with several news publishers as well as VTT and Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.
Our research topics include
- participation motivations
- user experience
- new crowdsourcing based content production processes, e.g.
- mobile tasks (assignments)
- privacy issues in location-based crowdsourcing
- quality attributes of high quality UGC and methods to support and guide to high quality contributions
- user experience of authentication and reading of news on mobile tablets
Publications
Jumisko-Pyykkö, S., Väätäjä, H., Jaakola, M. 2014. Quality management of user-generated content in participatory journalism. Proc. OZCHI '14, Dec. 2-5, 2014, Sydney, Australia. [draft]
Väätäjä, H., Vainio, T., Sirkkunen, E., and Salo, K. 2011. Crowdsourced news reporting: supporting news content creation with mobile phones. In Proc. MobileHCI '11. ACM, 435-444. [pdf]
Väätäjä, H., Vainio, T., and Sirkkunen, E. 2012. Location-based crowdsourcing of hyperlocal news - Dimensions of participation preferences. In Proc. GROUP 2012, Florida, Oct. 2012. ACM.
Väätäjä, H., Sirkkunen, E., Ahvenainen, M. 2013. A field trial on mobile crowdsourcing of news content - Factors influencing participation. Proc. INTERACT 2013, Springer. [pdf]
Väätäjä, H. 2012. Readers' motivations to participate in hyperlocal news content creation. In Proc. GROUP2012, Florida, October 2012, ACM. [pdf][poster]
2 M.Sc. theses expected in 2013
2 B.Sc. theses - 2012, 2013
PhD thesis - 2014
UXUS - User experience and usability in complex systems
We study user experience and usability in real-life contexts of using complex systems in metal and engineering industry (MEI).
Our research focuses on:
- the quality of experience and factors contributing to user experience in using the complex systems (e.g. a longitudinal study of an FMS system)
- supporting user activity and user experience with novel interaction techniques and
- understanding the context dimensions and factors affecting user experience in the cases.
Our first publication in this project:
Publications:
Väätäjä, H., Seppänen, M., Paananen, A. 2014. Creating Value through User Experience: A Case Study in the Metals and Engineering Industry. International Journal of Technology Marketing. [pdf]
Väätäjä, H. , Janhunen, J. 2012. Supporting mobile maintenance work - Needs and requirements. Industrial session at NordiCHI2012, Copenhagen, Denmark.
H. Väätäjä, A. Paananen and M. Seppänen
"Competitive advantage with user experience - Findings from three MEI companies",
ISPIM 2012. Spain: Barcelonal (June 17-20, 2012)
Mobile news journalism (PALTI, MOJODIPx2, PhD Thesis work)
I had a great opportunity to be the project manager for PALTI project (2007-2009) which was funded by Finnish Ministry of Education.
Through my previous colleagues at NRC, I bumped into a really interesting topic of mobile news journalism as the main theme of this project and accompanying MOJODIP projects.
We carried out several studies on using smartphones in news content creation and delivery, as well as looked at new mobile working processes. This completely took my PhD thesis work to this track. LOCO project presented earlier on this page is a natural continuation to this work.
We have two mobile news journalism related M.Sc. theses from PALTI and MOJODIP and a number of peer-reviewed academic publications. In addition, the findings have been used in practical development work.
More details on the PALTI project are presented in the following page
Publications:
Väätäjä, H. 2012. Mobile Work Efficiency – Balancing between benefits, costs and sacrifices. International Jounal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI), 4(2), 67-87, 2012. [pdf]
Väätäjä, H., and Egglestone P. 2012. Briefing news reporting with mobile assignments – Perceptions, needs and challenges. In Proceedings of the CSCW 2012. ACM. [pdf]
Wigelius, H. and Väätäjä, H. 2009. Dimensions of Context Affecting User Experience in Mobile Work. In Proc. INTERACT 2009. IFIP, Springer-Verlag, 604-617. [pdf]