Elina Vartiainen

Senior Researcher, User Experience
Helsinki

Background

I joined Nokia Research Center in 2004 after receiving my M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Helsinki University of Technology. My background is in computer science with a special interest in user interface design and user research. The topic of my doctoral thesis was "Design implications for mobile user interfaces of Internet services".

Research Interests

Internet services are becoming essential in people’s daily lives. In addition to accessing them on a PC, Internet services offer functionality and content that are also relevant for mobile use. At the same time, mobile devices of today are technologically sophisticated enabling online access anytime, anywhere. The remaining challenge is to utilize the capabilities of a mobile device in a way that offers people a positive user experience when they are using Internet services on the go.

My goal is to research how Internet services can be supported on a mobile device in the user interface level. This research question was also the topic of my doctoral thesis.

Research Projects

During the first two years in the Nokia Research Center I was involved in a project eveloping the Minimap Web browser. My responsibilities included implementing and designing user interface solutions for the browser and conducting user evaluations and user needs studies. In 2007, I moved to the Internet Consumer Services team and have been participating in concepting and designing the Image Exchange Internet service. In addition, I continued conducting user needs studies and evaluations for Image Exchange.

You can check my past and current research projects on the Web:

Publications

Vartiainen, E. and Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, K. User Experience of Mobile Photo Sharing in the Cloud. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM '10), Limassol, Cyprus. 2010.

Vartiainen, E. Designing a photo sharing service for mobile: a phone number as the key enabler. In Proceedings of the 12th international Conference on Human Computer interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '10), Lisbon, Portugal. 2010.

Vartiainen, E. Design implications for mobile user interfaces of Internet services. Doctoral dissertation, Helsinki University of Technology. 2009.

Vartiainen, E. Improving the user experience of a mobile photo gallery via supporting social interaction. International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI). 2009.

Vartiainen, E., Strandell, T., Kaasalainen, J. Fully service-integrated mobile application for photo-sharing. Proceedings of The 12th IASTED International Conference on Internet and Multimedia Systems and Applications (IMSA 2008), Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, USA. 2008.

Vartiainen, E., Kaasalainen, J., Strandell, T. Designing user experience for a mobile imaging application. Proceedings of IADIS International Conference Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction, Amsterdam. 2008.

Vartiainen, E., Roto, V., Kaasalainen, J. Graphical History List with Multi-Window Support on a Mobile Web Browser. Proc. Third International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (ICIW'08), Athens, Greece. 2008.

Vartiainen, E., Roto, V., Popescu, A. Auto-update: A concept for automatic downloading of Web content to a mobile device. Mobility Conference. 2007.

Roto, V., Popescu, A., Koivisto, A., Vartiainen, E. Minimap: a web page visualization method for mobile phones. Proc. of ACM CHI 2006.

Roto, V., Geisler, R., Kaikkonen, A., Popescu, A., Vartiainen, E. Mobile Browsing User Experience and Data Traffic Costs. MobEA III workshop in conjunction with WWW2006 conference. 2006.

Grassel, G., Geisler, R., Vartiainen, E., Chauhan, D., Popescu, A. The Nokia Open Source Web Browser for S60. MobEA III workshop in conjunction with WWW2006 conference. 2006.

Popescu, A., Geisler, R., Vartiainen, E., Grassel, G. Mini Map - A Web page visualization method for mobile phones. Proceedings of XTech 2006.

Patents

Co-inventor of 1 granted and 9 pending patents.