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Antti Oulasvirta, PhD

Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Department 4: Graphics
Center of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction
Campus E1 7, Room 2.03
66123 Saarbrücken
Germany

Email: Get my email address via email

Short Bio: Antti Oulasvirta is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction, where he leads the Human-Computer Interaction group. He received his doctorate in Cognitive Science from the University of Helsinki in 2006, after which he was a Fulbright Scholar at the School of Information in UC Berkeley in 2007-2008 and a Senior Researcher at HIIT in Finland in 2008-2011. During his postgraduate studies in 2002-2003, he was an exchange student at UC Berkeley's Neuropsychology Lab and did an internship at T-Labs in Berlin in 2006. Dr. Oulasvirta is an associate editor of International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, and he serves as a subcommittee chair for the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. He was awarded the Best Paper Award at CHI in 2011, the Best Paper Nomination at CHI in 2009 and 2008 at CHI, and the Best Note Award in 2011 at MobileHCI. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for Computing and Communication at University of Copenhagen.

Research Interests

Human-computer interaction
User interface design
Human performance

Recent technological advances have vastly expanded the means for constructing user interfaces, but we still see limited progress in overcoming the traditional interfaces like the qwerty and mouse. My mission is to identify and exploit optima of joint human-computer performance. The scientific approach is based on the formulation of interface design as an optimization problem, information theoretical measurement of sensorimotor performance, predictive modeling of user performance, and computational search for interface designs that maximize performance. Whereas previous work in human-computer interaction has been largely based on trial and error, this approach allows aggressive exploration of design spaces. The outcomes are demonstrated as novel user interfaces and variants of existing interfaces. Please visit our group page for more information.

Open Positions

We are always looking for outstanding Postdocs and PhD candidates (Doktoranden). Applications for summer internships in 2013 are rolling. For more information, please see the group homepage for instructions.

Recent Publications

Complete publication list 2002-2013

Improving two-thumb text entry on touchscreen devices.
Proc. CHI'13, (full paper) to appear in
Oulasvirta, A., Reichel, A., Li, W., Zhang, Y., Bachynskyi, M., Vertanen, K., Kristensson, P-O.
Information capacity of full-body movements.
Proc. CHI'13 Best Paper Honorable Mention, (full paper) to appear in
Oulasvirta, A., Roos, T., Modig, A., Leppanen, L.
Multi-touch rotation gestures: Performance and ergonomics.
Proc. CHI'13, (note) to appear in
Hoggan, E., Williamson, J., Oulasvirta, A., Nacenta, M., Kristensson, P-O.
Biomechanical simulation in the analysis of aimed movements.
Ext. Abst. CHI'13, works-in-progress.
Bachynskyi, M., Oulasvirta, A., Palmas, G., Weinkauf, T.
The clash of privacy and automation in social media.
IEEE Pervasive Computing, to appear in.
Vihavainen., S., Lampinen, A., Oulasvirta, A., Silfverberg, S., Lehmuskallio, A.
Dynamic tactile guidance for visual search tasks.
Proc. UIST'12 (full paper)
Lehtinen, V., Oulasvirta, A., Salovaara, A., Nurmi, P.
Rethinking experimental designs for field evaluations.
IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2012
Oulasvirta, A.
How real is real enough? Optimal reality sampling for fast recognition of mobile imagery.
ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, 2012.
Oulasvirta, A., Nurminen, A., Suomalainen, A.
Long-term effects of ubiquitous surveillance in the home.
Proc. UbiComp'12 (full paper)
Oulasvirta, A. et al.

Previous Positions

Senior Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT: 2008-11
SICSA Distinguished Visiting Fellow, University of Glasgow and University of St. Andrews: 2011
Visiting Scholar, Florida State University: 2010-11
Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Berkeley: 2007-8
External Consultant, Nokia Design: 2007, 2010
Research Intern, T-Labs Berlin: 2006
Graduate Exchange Student, University of California, Berkeley: 2002-3
Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT: 2002-6

Education

PhD (cognitive science), University of Helsinki, 2002-2006
MA (cognitive science), University of Helsinki, 1998-2001

PhD Supervision

Myroslav Bachynskyi, Saarland University, 2012-
Srinath Sridhar (co-supervised with Prof. Christian Theobalt), Saarland University, 2012-
Joanna Bergstrom-Lehtovirta (with Prof. Samuel Kaski), Aalto University, 2011-
Airi Lampinen (with Prof. Coye Cheshire and Prof. Anna-Maija Pirttila-Backman, University of Helsinki, 2009-2013
Eeva Raita, University of Helsinki (co-supervised with Prof. Anna-Maija Pirttila-Backman and Prof. Niklas Ravaja), (on maternity leave)
Antti Salovaara (co-supervised with Prof. Kai Hakkarainen), University of Helsinki, 2006-2012

Misc

Twitter: Follow @oulasvirta
Instructions and templates for the Multimodal Flexibility Index
Software for data collection on Android and Symbian smartphones: ContextLogger