Mikko’s research topics at ABB Corporate Research

Project years: 2009 - 2011

Keywords:

user experience, user-centered design, industrial automation, industrial robots.

Industrial user experience

Almost all of the scientific literature on user experience (UX) focuses on the consumer domain, e.g. design of mobile phones. Because of the lack of scientific knowledge that would be easily adaptable to heavy industry we started the academic discussion on industrial user experience, which combines software user experience and best practices of user-centered design (UCD) with industrial design, human factors and engineering in heavy industry. First we started fitting industrial development processes to suitable parts of UX design and UCD practices. We managed to identify which essential steps are missing from the current best practices when they are applied to the design of industrial robots. For instance, we developed a pragmatic approach for delivering great user experience for the dual-arm assembly robot Yumi among other ABB products.

Our human-computer interaction team at ABB and Prof. Kari Rönkkö from Blekinge Institute of Technology founded the International Workshop on Industrial User Experience (WIndUX) series in Bangalore in April 2011.

The team also developed various innovative user interface solutions such as a gesture controlled HMI for industrial control rooms.

International conference papers:

Petra Björndal, Mikko J. Rissanen and Steve Murphy. Lessons learned from using personas and scenarios for requirements specification of next-generation industrial robots. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability (DUXU), Orlando, FL, July 9-14, 2011, pp. 378-387. (LNCS 2011; 6769:378-387) Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-21675-6_44

Jonas Andersson, Lars-Ola Bligård, Anna-Lisa Osvalder, Mikko J. Rissanen and Sanjay Tripathi. To develop viable human factors engineering methods for improved industrial use. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability (DUXU), Orlando, FL, July 9-14, 2011, pp. 355-362. (LNCS 2011; 6769:355-362) Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-21675-6_41

Mikko J. Rissanen, Kari Rönkkö and Sanjay Tripathi. Understanding industrial user experience – an excerpt from 1st International Workshop on Industrial User Experience (WIndUX 2011). In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (IHCI), Bangalore, India, April 7-10, 2011, pp. 75-78. ACM. DOI: 10.1145/2407796.2407807

Invited presentations:

Mikko J. Rissanen. Industrial user experience. Industry talk at the 3rd International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (IHCI), Bangalore, India, April 7-10, 2011.

Patents:

Jens Doppelhamer, Kristoffer Husøy, Martin Hollender, Mikko Rissanen and Torgeir Enkerud. Device and method for the gesture control of a screen in a control room. WIPO International Patent Application WO 2012/139906 AI filed March 30, 2012, European Patent EP2697702B1 granted August 12, 2015, China Patent CN103492980A granted June 22, 2016.

(Plus various other invention disclosures from years 2010-2011 that have not been published.)

Sources of inspiration:

Jonathan Grudin’s Three faces of human-computer interaction inspired us to discuss and then contribute to the evolution of HCI research from the perspective of industrial automation.

Jason Hong’s Matters of design discussion had obvious parallels to our experiences of doing HCI work with engineering experts.

Kari Kuutti’s Where are the Ionians of user experience research? draws an excellent analogy from ancient astronomers’ approaches to understand and develop the theory of astronomical observations. This discussion on the lack of UX theory encouraged us to work closely with the academia on industrial UX.