Kari Rönkkö

Biography

Kari Rönkkö is associate professor in Informatics since 2017, and member of the Digital Design group at Kristianstad University since 2015. In the Digital Design program he teaches subjects such as: design theory in practice; user experience; knowledge sharing and networks; research methodology; and thesis research and writing.

Rönkkö started his academic carrier at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) where he successfully defended his PhD in 2005, and shortly afterwards, in 2009, he earned the Swedish title Docent (associate professor) in Software Engineering. At BTH, he was head of the research group Use-Oriented Design and Development, and was a member of the management team of BESQ Research Centre. He was platform manager for the strategic area Experience and Digital Design, working directly under the Vice Chancellor. Besides many courses he developed and headed a two-year master's program in Game and Interaction Design. Additionally, he has been director of studies and member of the educational board at the department of Software Engineering and Computer Science at BTH. Before entering academia at BTH in 1995, Rönkkö had gained more than a decade of work experience from both industry and health care, in areas such as sheet metal processing, nursing and vocational rehabilitation.

2011-ongoing Rönkkö has also been a guest researcher and teacher at Lund University (working part time, 40-75%), and is part of the interdisciplinary research entity Lund University Internet Institute. At Lund University he has successfully applied for and headed research projects, and also developed and headed the international one-year master's program called Social Innovation in a Digital Context; targeting handpicked young upcoming social and digital innovators from Middle East, North Africa and South Asia with the desire to build better societies.

During the years 2010-2017, Rönkkö has been active in the IT industry. He has been a board member in IT companies, an innovator and designer, and has headed both international and Swedish design and development work. Starting in a spin-off from research with its origin at Lund University, he recently held the industrial position of CTO, and the roles Technical Interface and lead designer, in the successful, "Connect to Learn Myanmar" project. The project, with a budget of £7.4 million, was co-funded by the UK government's department for international development (DFID), and the project partners Ericsson, Qualcomm Wireless Research, UNESCO, Earth Institute at Colombia University, and Finja5 (http://hugin.info/1061/R/1862083/653228.pdf).

Above presented developments has lead to that Rönkkö gained expertise in many fields, including: user inclusiveness and participatory design; user experience studies; validation of information technology in real world contexts; implementation and analysis of ethnographic workplace studies; understandning collaboration from a language point of view; methods for human-centered software development. He has successfully applied for, delivered in, and headed externally funded research projects, and published peer-reviewed academic publications. He has successfully supervised PhD students, and large number of master and bachelor students in the areas of Informatics, Computer Science, Work Science, Software Engineering, and Arts with emphasis on Technology and Change. He has taught user inclusiveness and participatory design in university courses and in companies since 2000. He has conducted cooperative method development and action research together with industries like Ericsson, UIQ, and ABB, and also government funded organizations. He has experience of innovation and industrial digital design, and the management of industrial digital product development.

Who I am, and what is driving me

I have always had an interest in both technology and people, which is also apparent in my choices of professions and education before I entered the academic path at the age of thirty-two. Initially I started my work life as a metalworker in industry, moved on to nursing, then back to industry, and from there to vocational rehabilitation. Together with my increased life experience, I became more and more curious about, and eager to understand, the nature of human behavior, its limitations and potentials, especially in relation to the possibilities following with technology. I am thankful to academia, which has provided me with a legitimate platform, theories, and the time needed to look deeper into this area of interest. For example, investigating user experience and social media has given me a great deal of intellectual pleasure in recent years. Then, going from understanding, to formulating my own intellectual contributions, is even more satisfying. Participatory design is another area of interest that I immediately felt committed to. One explanation can be that, as a professional worker on the shop floor in the early nineties (before entering the academia, when computerization had just begun to spread at workplaces), I experienced a terrible introduction of computers to my workplace. This could explain why user inclusiveness, cooperative design methods and action research have been natural choices for me in my research projects. I have often also chosen to use ethnography in my studies, since to my mind it is one of the best approaches for thoroughly understanding people in real world contexts. The recent years I have taken an interest in social innovation and industry where digital technology plays a key role. Informatics is about society (people in context and situations) and information technology. Having the above areas of interest and development in mind, it should not come as a surprise that I ended up as a senior teacher and researcher within Digital Design at Kristianstad University in the academic field of Informatics – an ideal environment for continued intellectual growth regarding people and technology.

Thoughts about my future

First of all I welcome anyone who feels that we might have common interests to contact me regarding potential cooperation. The first thought that comes to my mind regarding the future is that I am open to consider any new exiting idea mixing people and technology that I am not yet aware of; there are so many exciting things still waiting to be discovered. I am driven by curiosity and love to discover and find new ways to understand and explain social phenomena in a digital context. Looking ahead, I see one part of me making the intellectual journey of combining both obvious and non-obvious social theories that can be of use for digital design and innovation. The result of this will be visible in different digital design courses, and hopefully also in a future book addressing social theories useful for digital design and innovation. The second thought that comes to me is that I am senior, whereby I see myself in the role of mentor. It is time to change course and spend less time on building my own CV, and more time on helping and supporting colleagues with less experience than me, to step up in their carrier and build their own CV. Besides the academic side I also see myself involved in industrial innovation.

Publications

Recent

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.

Journals

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