Parempaa bittiä episode 1: With feeling! Ft. Professor and researcher Virpi Roto
Produced by Haallas, Parempaa bittiä (‘Better bits’) is a podcast that examines design, digital service design, and UX design from different perspectives. The podcast itself is in Finnish, but the episode highlights are translated into English and available in a blog format.
The podcast’s first episode featured Professor of Design at Aalto University Virpi Roto as a guest. Virpi is a renowned and widely cited researcher of user experience who studies experience design of systems and services used in industrial contexts.
In this episode, podcast host Matti Linna, Head of Design at Haallas, discusses the topic of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with Virpi. This is an established field of research, which is also Virpi’s home ground. At present, research in this field is particularly focused on artificial intelligence and the opportunities it offers for service design and experience design.
Eliminating problems is not enough to create a hit product
Virpi started her career at Nokia Research Center in 1995. Back then, the world of HCI research was completely different to how it is today. Over time, the focus has shifted from the usability of equipment and software to the user experience, UX.
“In addition to usability alone, we’ve started to consider how computers and other digital devices and services can provide a variety of experiences.”
However, Virpi thinks that all too often people believe that improving user experience means simply removing negative feelings or problems with usability. Her ideal would be for the user experience to include an emotional dimension.
“Today, when we talk about user experience, the emotional dimension mostly means eliminating negative feelings, such as feelings of frustration,” she says.
Virpi says that you cannot create a hit product simply by eliminating the problems – the product must also offer emotional value. She mentions Apple as an example of how comprehensive an emotional experience can be. Apple’s brand experience is built so well that possible problems in usability or privacy issues are easily forgiven. Obtaining a new device is always an exciting moment.
“One good example is the slow opening of the packaging. The majestically slow pace at which the cover opens has nothing to do with speed or ease of opening; rather, this is designed to strengthen the feeling of excitement.”
People appreciate an emotional experience in digital services
Finnish B2B companies (business-to-business, i.e. companies that sell products or services to other companies) have also begun to wake up to the fact that services must be designed specifically for the user, as this provides longer-lasting value for the company’s products. After all, the same rules apply to both companies and consumer products.
“People value experiences that offer them emotional value. At work, these experiences support the feeling that you’re a professional and appreciated. Digital services can try to create these experiences by giving feedback to employees when they perform well, for example”, Virpi muses.
At the moment, service design is a hot topic of discussion everywhere, and this has increased companies’ interest in human-oriented design. Virpi says that this interest is largely inspired by the fact that service design extends all the way to the strategic level in terms of planning, as it is rooted in business. Nevertheless, service is designed for the user, which, in a way, encourages companies to engage in human-oriented design.
Don’t touch the AI!
One newer area of interest in HCI research are artificial intelligence (AI) systems. AI has been under development for decades, and it is now entering the same phase that computers reached in the 90s: the systems are becoming more common, but only a few of them are designed with user experience as a priority.
“In HCI, we’re now considering the same questions with AI systems as when computers were first introduced at workplaces. At the time, no one understood what to do with them or how to interact with them,” Virpi says.
Currently, the aim is to make AI systems more easily understandable, transparent, ethical, and fair. Virpi says that there is still much work left to be done. One problem is the exclusivity of systems.
“There is a sense that, now that we have this precious AI system in the building, don’t touch it or you’ll mess up the system,” she describes.
As AI systems become more common, the industry is realising that they must be designed with a more human-oriented approach.
AI is too complicated for consumers
The design of a good AI system is still in its infancy. This is because the systems currently used by companies require the user to understand how AI learns and acts in order to understand and monitor the systems.
If the systems were designed for humans from the beginning, more people could work with them without requiring extensive training.
This is what we are heading towards; the same thing happened with the birth of computers. At first, only a few chosen people knew how to use them, whereas now, decades later when personal computers have become common, there are computers on the market that anyone is able to use.
“And now computers even support people’s well-being. When will we reach the same point with AI?” Virpi wonders.
She hopes that the process will not take as long as it did with computers.
Design is rooted in people’s basic needs
When it comes to AI, one of the greatest problems yet to be solved is how we will interact with AI systems in the future.
“The current situation is similar to when we switched from punched cards to graphical user interfaces. The path to finding a way for people to easily interact with digital services was extremely long,” Virpi says.
Instead of only operating when asked like traditional computers, AI is always doing something in the background. Virpi says that the interaction with an AI system must therefore be based on interventions, i.e. people should be able to influence how the AI operates. However, this is also an ethical question.
“How can we make this interaction work so that people know what the AI is doing at any given time?” Virpi muses.
She says that all good experiences are based on people’s basic psychological needs. Everyone wants to feel competent, and everyone wants to be able to act independently and also to interact with others.
“If the design process uses these types of basic psychological needs that we all have as the starting point, it’s highly likely to result in good experiences.”
Experts:
Virpi Roto
Virpi Roto works as a Professor of Practice in Experience Design at Aalto University. Virpi has a long background in experience design research in both the private and public sectors, working e.g. 15 years at Nokia Research Center as Principal Scientist. Virpi is also the founder and chairman of the global Experience Research Society.
Matti Linna
The podcast is hosted by Haallas' Head of Design Matti Linna. Matti has more than ten years of experience in UX design and service design in various industries in the public and private sectors. At the heart of Matti's design thinking are insights gained through in-depth user and customer understanding that can be used to create useful, functional, and easy-to-use digital services. In his free time, Matti can be met at the Crossfit Hall or on the mountain bike trail.
