See the Norwegian page. You can use som Translation Tools to the language of your taste;)
Academic interests
I have a background in human-machine interaction and philosophy, and in my position at the Department of Informatics I have particularly worked on developing research and teaching on Universal Design, accessibility and Inclusive Design.
The interest in relationships between humans and machines, i.e. the relationship that arises, is and develops over time between users and the tools or implements we use in different situations, forms the basis for both research and teaching. How does the relationship between users and technology arise? How can we describe, analyze and find out more about the interaction between us humans and technologies? How can the interaction be investigated? How can insights and knowledge about this interaction be used constructively in design? How to avoid new barriers and exclusion from arising, and how to make technologies accessible and usable? How to include people in various processes for the analysis and design of this interaction?
The understanding of digital technology and use stems from a socio-technical system perspective for me. This is about looking at how people and technology interact and influence each other in a system. And that within different systems, there are real people who are all both completely unique - and thus different - from some perspectives, and completely the same from other perspectives. When technologies and people interact, the relationship between us and technology develops over time. What opportunities exist for a greater degree of inclusion and accessibility? And what opportunities for exclusion and barriers exist that we can work to avoid?
Currently, I am particularly interested in expanding the understanding of use, interaction, interplay and relationships between us humans and technology along three tracks. First, what theoretical frameworks and perspectives exist to observe, describe and analyze this interaction? Phenomenology (early Martin Heidegger), Biology (Jakob Johann von Uexküll), ecological psychology (James J. Gibson) provide some frameworks for understanding the interaction. Secondly - in a more practical direction - what transitions between the use of non-digital technologies (such as pen and paper, gramophone, telephone, radio, books and television) and digital variants of this do we see - and what consequences of transformation for use and user do we as designers and developers need to take into account? What is being continued for the user, what is being lost for the user, what new things are emerging for the user? Thirdly, in what ways will orality in dealing with digital technologies play out - and interact with written dealings with digital technologies.
Teaching
I teach and supervise students in the bachelor's and master's programs in Design, Use and Interaction. In addition, I have some teaching for all bachelor's programs at the Department of Informatics.
IN1030 - Introduction to design, use, interaction (from 2017)
IN2000 - Software Engineering with project work
IN5480 - Interaction with AI and autonomous systems
A very central part of the teaching has been - and is - supervision. List of PhD projects - and master's projects.
Background
Short version: Engineering education in Telematics from 1984-1988 at NTH, Worked at Ericsson 1990 - 2003, PhD thesis 2007, research and teaching at IfI/UiO from 2008 to present.
In the period 2010 - 2016 I led the research project RHYME, funded by NFR. RHYME in Norwegian means both rhyme and the verb "to rhyme", the act of creating rhymes according to rhythm and structure. The name expresses something of the essence of the project; social co-creation according to communicative, narrative and musical principles. The goal of the RHYME project was to study and improve the health and quality of life of people with disabilities - and their families and loved ones. This was done through the development and use of "co-created tangible things". Through the use of these things we saw increased activity, reduced passivity and isolation, and enhanced health and well-being. The RHYME project was a collaboration between the Department of Design, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo and the Centre for Music and Health, Norwegian Academy of Music.
In the period 2016-2022 I was responsible for part of the NFR project MECS, Multimodal Elderly Care Systems, which was led by Jim Tørresen at the Robin group at IfI. Here, several fellows, master's students and researchers worked together with elderly residents, including at Kampen Omsorg +, to investigate the use of robots in the home and the opportunities that arise.
In recent times, I have had several projects funded by HKDIR in the field of universal design and inclusion. Diana Saplacan established a project on universal design and feedback UDfeed universal design for learning and instruction: What tools do we use for supporting feedback from students. A project that looked at Universal Design in the field of informatics, with a focus on AI UD(X)=?. Most recently we have had a project with Signo Competence Center on podcasts and universal design and most recently PUD - Podcast and Universal Design. These have been projects where several master's students have worked on various challenges related to Universal Design.
I have also participated in a number of projects, together with master's and PhD students, under the auspices of Universell.no and MediaLT. Effective UU testing, Challenges and opportunities for the visually impaired with visual collaboration tools, Artificial intelligence and sensor technology.
As a PhD fellow at the Information Systems Design group at the Department of Informatics until 2007, I studied how bicycle messengers and bicycle police interacted and used radios, mp3 players, mobile phones and other equipment. A central question in the thesis was in what ways the technologies in use were visible to the user, and what challenges and opportunities it presented to be on the bicycle using this type of technology. The study was carried out in Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, London and Oslo - to make participant observation of different practices. Perspectives from early Heidegger about situated actions with Zeug (tools and equipment), Befindlichkeit (state of mind) and Umzicth (consideration, wisdom) were used.
Before this I worked at the company Ericsson, with programming, user-centered system development, product management, training, debugging and support in the period 1990 to 2003ish. In the period 1991 to 1995ish I was based in Singapore, and got to work with users and technologies in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines and New Zealand. An industry research project in 1997 led by Sintef on the Internet and Web was the springboard to the project KnowMobile - which was about the use of various mobile tools for students in Medical Education at UiO, as well as the Studio Apertura led I-Tema- identity and belonging project and later MOSCITO - Mobilizing Social Capital in global ICT based organizations. The Marathon Man project at MIT Media Lab explored the use of various body-worn technologies during the 1997 New York Marathon. Measurement data was streamed in real time to medical experts at Yale University.
Before that, from 1984 to 1988, I studied engineering at NTH - Norwegian Institute of Technology, and at Lund University. It culminated in a diploma thesis with the now archaic title: Wireless Connection to Stationary Networks - and People Communicate. The GSM system, a European digital mobile communications system, formed the technical component, and studies in the use of various communication technologies in an international company formed the empirical part.
And in 1984 I took the examen philosophicum at the University of Tromsø. That is about 42 years ago at the time of writing. 42 years can also be represented as 2184 weeks, or 15347 days, or 367,920 hours, or a staggering 1.32 billion seconds. And the number 42 represented in the 16-digit system can be written as 2A, i.e. 2*16 + 10. A lookup in the ASCII table for 2A yields the glyph *, also known as a "wildcard" symbol or a joker. Coincidental? Hardly.