Kari Rönkkö
Starting from an understanding what a method is and could be, together with usability-related questions, his research expanded over the years to also include user experience, participatory design, ethnographically informed ethnomethodology, action research, cooperative method development, organisational issues influencing human-centered design efforts, design of ICT school solution for developing countries, effects from social media and wearables in work life, as well as pedagogy in higher education. Lately, he has delved into what artificial intelligence (AI) means and could mean for a human.
Rönkkö's main research interest is to understand the limitations and strengths of the human when confronted with digital artifacts and AI - to challenge conventional practices and pieces of knowledge and seek creative design alternatives.
He is one of the initiators and research leader of the research environment Design A* Research Collaboration – DARC at Kristianstad University.
Publications via Search in the Diva Portal
Ongoing Research Projects
Carbon-efficient community building process for sustainable urban development - climate-smart Näsby
The project will help to reduce the climate impact of urban development projects. The goal is to provide planning conditions for a more carbon dioxide-efficient societal development in Näsby, a sub-area in Kristianstad, with a focus on reducing the climate impact from the construction process and transport. The project will be carried out in collaboration between Kristianstad Municipality, Krinova Science & Incubator Park and Kristianstad University.
Activities and sub-goals include establishing a local partnership with strategic actors, developing tools and incentives in the community building process for a reduced climate impact, and providing conditions for active and lasting civic engagement (which is our responsibility at HKR, design and research team: Kari Rönkkö, Michael Johansson, Daniela Argento and Özgün Imre ). The business community is involved through the local partnership and test bed Näsby, which contributes to developing relationships and stimulating joint learning and new business. Increased competence in climate impact strengthens important players and builds competitiveness in an issue that is expected to become increasingly relevant.
The model for the Näsby district that the project is developing is planned to form the basis for future urban development projects in Kristianstad and inspire other municipalities and regions. In the long run, this will mean a reduced climate impact from construction and transport, two of the sectors that contribute with the highest emissions in Sweden. The project will take place in the period 2020-01-01 to 2023-02-28, with a total budget of 7 728 000 SEK, funded by the European Regional Development Fund, our HKR part is also co-financed by Kristianstad University, Forskningsplattformen Verksamhetsutveckling i samverkan.
Literature study in AI and tools for digital design
AI tools for digital design 2020-2021, funded by Kristianstad University, Forskningsplattformen Verksamhetsutveckling i samverkan. In collaboration with Kristoffer Åberg and companies in the region.
The project explores how applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of intelligent design tools can expand the intellectual capabilities of digital designers. The project covers:
- A literature study, founded in research on design intelligence in man, machine, and human-machine system, in which existing research on intelligent design tools are explored and analyzed, and conclusions are drawn for the designer's practice.
- A technology study in which a selection of existing intelligent design tools is evaluated for the possibilities and limitations of the designer's practice.
- A user study framed by an action research approach on the designer's actual practice and mapping of experiences, needs, and requirements in relation to the use of intelligent design tools.
The project forms the basis for seeking continued funding for research applications targeting innovation around tomorrow's intelligent design tools.
Promoting students' readiness for change in working life: AI in higher education at HKR
2020, financed by Kristianstad University, Quality-enhancing projects in education. In collaboration with Kristoffer Åberg Dept. for design; Anna Åhlander and Helena Axelsson Dept. for Work science; Felix Terman and Frida Persson Dept. for Business.
Within the Faculty of Economics, we have identified the need to prepare our students for tomorrow's changes in working life regarding digitalization and especially Artificial Intelligence (AI). The project aims to increase knowledge and preparedness for how AI can affect and change the working life in the near future, ie 3-10 years, for those who are currently studying Digital Design, Business and Work Science. The project will experiment with different forms to disseminate knowledge about AI in different program areas, and evaluate these together with students and teachers. The project will also elaborate knowledge of what these upcoming changes entail for common challenges across several program areas, and specifically within these, regarding students' need for knowledge and preparedness, and forms of teaching to meet needs. A significant part of this knowledge will also be disseminated to other program areas at HKR.
Digital tool for joint assessment of learning outcomes
2019-2020, funded by Kristianstad University, Quality-enhancing projects in education. In collaboration with the members of the research environment DARC.
The project has developed a digital solution for criterion-based assessment that promotes student-teacher agreement, as well as teachers and teachers - regarding where students are in their learning in relation to the course learning outcomes. Assessing students' achievements is a special challenge in the field of Digital Design where much knowledge is 'silent' and created and expressed through design. The learning outcomes that are to be met are often presented as goals early in the course. However, the goals are perceived as too abstract and many students find it difficult to understand what is actually required of them. It is only later on in the course that the goals are understood via performed practical tasks. Therefore, we have developed a digital tool that offers recurring common opportunities for visual reflection of achievements made in relation to the learning outcomes. The project also wants to influence how our own teacher's college looks at and works with learning objectives. During the fall of 2019, we have developed an IT solution that we will evaluate during spring and autumn 2020.
Selected projects
2012-2017, Educating girls in Myanmar, a Connect to Learn industrial development project, in which I participated in the roles of Lead Designer and Chief Technical Officer, in the development of a child-friendly technical solution designed to include the values from UNICEF's Convention on the Rights of the Child. Project partners: Ericsson AB, UNESCO, Earth Institute at Columbia University, Finja Five, Qualcomm Incorporated och EduEval, (see Girls Education in Myanmar). DFID funded £ 3.7 million and a corresponding amount was matched by the participating industrial partners.
2015-2017, Digital technology and social work: to motivate socially vulnerable young people with the support of motivational apps and wearables, research project in Helsingborg within the social service. (see Rönkkö 2018 and Rönkkö et al 2017), financed by the City of Helsingborg, HKR and LU.
2013-2016, Social media in professional organizations, research projects in Landskrona City within libraries, schools and social services. (see Rönkkö et al. 2017), SEK 4,130,000 funded by FORTE.
2010-2014, Organizational barriers to implementation of user-centered methods. (see Winter and Rönkkö 2010-2014), funded by ABB Corporate Research and BTH.
2008-2010, Webis, industrial method development project in innovation and usability together with the Telecom cluster in Karlskrona. (See Lyssna på kunden), SEK 2,500,000 financed by Vinnova, plus matching financing from the telecom industry.
2002-2008, Blekinge Engineering Software Qualities (BESQ), SEK 80,000,000 project to build research environment at Blekinge Institute of Technology. In 2005, I was invited to run the usability track immediately after my dissertation, and also led my own research group at BTH (see publications 2000 - 2008), funded by the KK Foundation and matched by the participating industrial partners.
2000-2002, What happens in large distributed software development projects? Study at Ericsson AB (see Rönkkö 2002 and Rönkkö et al 2005), funded by Ericsson and BTH.
Publications
Recent
Åberg, K., Johansson, M., Wetterstrand, M., Ådahl, K., Faraon, M., Mello, A., Rönkkö K., (2020) Experiences from formative learning assessment supported by digital tools, accepted at the 12th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, 6th and 7th July 2020.
Faraon, M., Rönkkö, K., Wiberg, M. & Ramberg, R. (2020). Learning by coding: A sociocultural approach to teaching web development in higher education. Education and Information Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10037-x
Rönkkö, K. (2018), An Activity Tracker and Its Accompanying App as a Motivator for Increased Exercise and Better Sleeping Habits for Youths in Need of Social Care: Field Study, Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) Mhealth Uhealth, Dec. (6)12, p. e193. https://mhealth.jmir.org/2018/12/e193/
Journals
Faraon, M., Rönkkö, K., Wiberg, M. & Ramberg, R. (2019). Learning by coding: A sociocultural approach to teaching web development in higher education. Education and Information Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10037-x
Rönkkö, K. (2018), An Activity Tracker and Its Accompanying App as a Motivator for Increased Exercise and Better Sleeping Habits for Youths in Need of Social Care: Field Study, Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) Mhealth Uhealth, Dec. (6)12, p. e193. https://mhealth.jmir.org/2018/12/e193/
Winter. J., Rönkkö, K., Rissanen M. (2014), "Identifying organizational barriers: A case study of usability work when developing software in the automation industry", In the Journal of Systems and Software, 88, 54-73.
Stefan Larsson, Måns Svensson, Marcin de Kaminski, Kari Rönkkö, Johanna Alkan Olsson, (2012) "Law, norms, piracy and online anonymity: Practices of de-identification in the global file sharing community", Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Vol. 6 Iss: 4, pp.260 – 280
Winter, J. and Rönkkö, K., (2010) SPI Success Factors within Usability Evaluation, Journal of Systems and Software, (ed.) Hans van Vliet, (guest ed.) Abrahao, S., Hornboek, K., Juristo, N., and Stage, j. special issue: Interplay between usability Evaluation and Software Development, July, 2010. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2010.04.066
Winter, J. and Rönkkö, K., (2009) Satisfying Stakeholders' Needs - Balancing Agile and Formal Usability Test, e-Informatica Software Engineering Journal, Vol 3 Issue 1, pp. 119-138, 2009.
Dittrich, Y., Rönkkö, K., Lindeberg, O., Erickson, J. and Hansson, C., (2008) Cooperative method development: Combining qualitative empirical research with method, technique and process improvement, In the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering, 13(3), pp. 231-260 (Jun. 2008), DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10664-007-9057-1
Rönkkö, K., (2007) Interpretation, interaction and reality construction in software engineering: An explanatory model. In the Information Software Technology 49(6) (Jun. 2007), pp. 682-693.
Rönkkö, K., Dittrich, Y. and Randall. D., (2005) When Plans do not Work Out: How Plans are Used in Software Development Projects, In the Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 14(5).
Book chapters
De Kaminski, Marcin; Svensson, Måns; Larsson, Stefan; Alkan Olsson, Johanna, Rönkkö Kari (2013). Studying Norms and Social Change in a Digital Age: Identifying and Understanding a Multidimensional Gap Problem, Chapter 18 in Baier, Matthias (Ed.). Social and Legal Norms: Towards a Socio-legal Understanding of Normativity, 309 - 330: Ashgate Publishing.
Rönkkö, K., (2010) Ethnography, In Encyclopedia of Software Engineering (ed.) Phil Laplante, Encyclopedia Program, Taylor and Francis Group, New York.
Rönkkö, K. Hellman, M., Kilander, B., and Dittrich, Y., (2006) Story from the Field: Do you have a "Shadow Persona"? In (eds.) Pruitt, J., and Adlin, T., The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People, In Mind Throughout Product Design, Elsevier, pp. 93-94.
Eriksson, J., Rönkkö, K., and Kågström, S., (2005) Chapter 2 – Customer/User-Oriented Attributes and Evaluation Models, In L. Lundberg, M. Mattsson and C. Wohlin, (eds.) Software quality attributes and trade-offs, (2008-12-01)
Rönkkö K., (2002) "Yes - What Does That Mean?" Understanding Distributed Requirements Handling. In Y. Dittrich, C. Floyd, R. Klischewski, (eds.) Social thinking – Software practice. MIT Press, pp. 223-241.
Peer reviewed conferences
Winter, J. and Rönkkö, K., Ahlberg, M., and Hotchkiss, J., (2008) Meeting Organisational Needs and Quality Assurance through Balancing Agile & Formal Usability Testing Results, Proceedings of the 3rd IFIP TC2 Central and East European Conference on Software Engineering Techniques CEE-SET, Brno, Czech Republic, Oct. 13-15.
Petersen, K., Rönkkö, K., and Wohlin, C. (2008) The impact of time controlled reading on software inspection effectiveness and efficiency: a controlled experiment. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM-IEEE international Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (Kaiserslautern, Germany, October 09 - 10, 2008). ESEM '08. ACM, New York, NY, pp. 139-148. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1414004.1414029
Rönkkö, K., Hellman, M., and Dittrich, Y., (2008) PD Method and Socio-Political Context of the Development Organization, Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Participatory Design: Experiences and Challenges, Bloomington Indiana USA, Oct 1-4.
Rönkkö, K., (2005) An Empirical Study Demonstrating How Different Design Constraints, Project Organization and Contexts Limited the Utility of Personas. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Track: End users in information systems development, Island of Hawaii, January 3-6.
Rönkkö, K., Hellman, M., Kihlander, B. and Dittrich, Y., (2004) Personas is not Applicable: Local Remedies Interpreted in a Wider Context, Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference, PDC '04, Artful Integration: Interweaving Media, Materials and Practice, Toronto, Canada, July 27-31, pp. 112-120.
Johansson, C. and Rönkkö, K., (2004) Using Commitment as the underlying principle for learning, Proceedings of the 6th Joint Conference on Knowledge-Based Software Engineering, JCKBSE, Protvino, Russia, August 25-27, pp. 129-138.
Rönkkö, K., Lindeberg, O. and Dittrich, Y., (2002) Bad Practice or Bad Methods: Are Software Engineering and Ethnographic Discourses Incompatible?, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, Nara, Japan, 3-4 October, pp. 204-210.
Research reports/Peer reviewed workshop/Other
Rönkkö, K., Bergman, A., Svenson, M., Danielsson, P., Rosengren, F., Åström, F., Lundin, T., (2017) Digital teknik och social arbete: Att motivera socialt utsatta ungdomar med stöd av motivationsappar och hälsoarmband, Kristianstad University Press 2017:2. ISBN: 978-91-87973-14-7, 46s.
Rönkkö, K., Svennson. M., Svensson, L., Carlsson, H., (2017) Empirisk studie av sociala medier i professionella organisationer, 2013-2016, Kristianstad University Press 2017:3, ISBN: 978-91-87973-15-4, 113s.
Rönkkö, K., Urinboyev, R., Svennson. M., Svensson, L., Carlsson, H., (2017) Literature Review of Social Media in Professional Organisations 2013-2016, Kristianstad University Press 2017:4, ISBN: 978-91-87973-16-1, 72p.
Jia Tan, Kari Rönkkö and Cigdem Gencel, (2014) A Framework for Software Usability & User Experience Measurement in Mobile Industry, Joint Conference of the 23rd International Workshop on Software Measurement and the 8th International Conference on Software Process and Product Measurement, IWSM-MENSURA.
Winter, J., Rönkkö, K., and Hellman, M., (2009) Reporting Usability Metrics Experiences, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering May 17, 2009, CHASE '09, on 31st International Conference on Software Engineering, Vancouver, Canada, May 16-24, 2009.
Rönkkö, K., Winter, J., and Hellman, M., (2009) Inside Information 2, Usability and User Research: Eight years of research and method development cooperation, under BTH internal review process, Technical Report, Blekinge Institute of Technology, 2009.
Hellman, M. and Rönkkö, K., (2008a) Controlling User Experience through Policing in the Software Development Process, Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Interplay between Usability Evaluation and Software Development I-USED'08, co-located with the 2nd Conference on Human-Centred Software Engineering (HCSE 2008), Pisa, Italy, September 24.
Hellman, M. and Rönkkö, K., (2008b) Is User Experience supported effectively in existing software development processes? Proceedings of the 5th COST294-MAUSE Open Workshop Meaningful Measures: Valid Useful User Experience Measurement (VUUM 2008), Reykjavik, Island, June 18.
Rönkkö, K., Winter, J., and Hellman, M., (2008) Reporting user experience through usability within the telecommunications industry. Proceedings of the 2008 International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (Leipzig, Germany, May 13 - 13, 2008). CHASE '08. ACM, New York, NY, pp. 89-92.
Winter, J. Rönkkö, K., Ahlberg, M., Hineley, M, and Hellman, M., (2007) Developing Quality through Measuring Usability – The UTUM Test Package, Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Software Quality at the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering 20-26 May 2007, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Dittrich, Y., Rönkkö, K., Lindeberg, O., Erickson, J. and Hansson, C., (2005) Co-Operative Method Development revisited, International Conference on Software Engineering, Proceedings of the 2005 Workshop on Human and social factors of software engineering, St. Louis Missouri, 15-21 May, (30)4, pp. 1-3.
Rönkkö, K., (2000) Ethnography and Distributed Software Development, In the Workshop proceedings at the 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Beg, Borrow or Steal: Using Multidisciplinary Approaches in Empirical Software Research, Limerick, Ireland, 4-11 June.
Lindberg, O. and Rönkkö, K., (2000) 'Bad Practice' or 'Bad Methods': Software Engineering and Ethnographic perspectives on software development, Proceedings of the 23rd Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia IRIS 23, at Lingatan, Sweden.
Dittrich, Y. and Rönkkö K., (1999) Talking Design - Co-Construction and the Use of Representations in Software Development, Proceedings of the 22nd Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia, IRIS 22, Keuruu, Finland, 7-10 August.
Rönkkö, K., (2000) The Use of Process models in Software Development, In Social Thinking - Software Practice. Approaches Relating Software Development, Work, and Organizational Change, In Y. Dittrich, C. Floyd, R. N. Jayaratna, F. Kensing, R. Klischewski, (eds.) Dagstuhl-Seminar-Report 250, 5.-10.9.1999 (99361), Germany, Wadern: IFIB.
Thesis
Rönkkö, K., (2005) Making Methods Work in Software Engineering: Method Deployment - as a Social Achievement, PhD Thesis, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Dissertation Series NO 2005:04. http://bth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:838425/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Rönkkö, K., (2002) Software Practice from Inside Ethnography Applied to Software Engineering, Licentiate Thesis, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Dissertation Series NO 2002:3, http://bth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:837155/FULLTEXT01.pdf