Aleksi Ikkala on stage defending his thesis “Learning to Interact: Simulating Users with RL in HCI”, with Per Ola Kristensson as the opponent and Perttu Hämäläinen as the supervisor.

Prof Per Ola Kristensson / Cambridge giving a talk on how to design for the emergent properties of human-AI systems at Aalto. Per Ola is the opponent of Aleksi Ikkala who is defending his doctoral thesis on Friday, with Perttu Hämäläinen as the supervisor.

So proud of our PhD student Yue Jiang, who defended her thesis "Computational Representations for User Interfaces" last Friday, with Brian A. Smith as the opponent.

Brian A. Smith giving his talk "Computers as Partners in Human Ability" today at Aalto. Impressive work. I especially appreciate his work on creating auditory interfaces that allow blind users play real-time video games like driving. Brian is Yue Jiang's opponent and visiting us today and tomorrow.

Just presented "WigglyEyes: Inferring Eye Movements from Keypress Data" at Ubicomp/ISWC'25. It's a method that, given keypress data only, infers how users move their eyes when they type. It uses a user simulator for data augmentation. dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... github.com/quintus0505/...

Ubicomp'25 starting at Dipoli at Aalto. 793 attendees this year

This is the 2025 cohort of the Ubicomp Doctoral Colloquium. Some of the best PhD students in this area. We're standing here in front of Dipoli, the beautiful main venue of the conference. I look forward to hearing about these students as they move on after their PhDs.

On Friday, @ainiputkonen.bsky.social defended her dissertation on modeling decision-making in naturalistic settings with Prof. Adam Sanborn as the opponent. It has been a joy to watch her grow and emerge as a rigorous and original researcher. Congrats Aini! aaltodoc.aalto.fi/items/cf8487...

Prof. Adam Sanborn giving a talk on Bayesian Brain without Probabilities at Aalto

John R. Platt's Strong Inference 1958 (Science) keeps giving. Reading it this morning I found this gem. To push forward HCI, we need to do the same: sit down, think, and build models that help us tease out the fundamental questions -- and only then run empirical studies. Not the other way around.

The textbook is much more comprehensive than any introductory class needs. That's why we offer recommendations in Preface for courses in different contexts: computer science, design, engineering, social sciences, and specialized courses. Preface here: introductiontohci.org

Our new textbook isn't just about the essentials of research in HCI, it also offers guidance to those who entertain HCI as their future careers. My own two favorite bits are on how to read a paper critically and selecting HCI problems that matter. academic.oup.com/book/60808

Thrilled to share our #UIST2025 research! We investigate how the decomposition principle can improve human feedback for LLM alignment. In a 160-participant study, our tool DxHF increases feedback accuracy by +4.7% 👉 sdq.github.io/DxHF Furui Tino @oulasvirta.bsky.social @elassady.bsky.social

@acmuist.bsky.social #uist2025 program is out: programs.sigchi.org/uist/2025/pr... ... lots of interesting papers to look forward to, see you there

With the CHI deadline fast approaching, I'm resharing our lab's resource on making figures for HCI papers: docs.google.com/presentation... New content suggestions always appreciated. Don't be shy to promote your own work!

OUP now offers not only one mammoth PDF but each chapter as its own file: academic.oup.com/book/60808

📢The open access version of our book is available now via OUP's site: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

It's amazing to have the book in my hand now, after several years of working on it with Kasper and Per Ola. In a nutshell, it's a new textbook for introductory-level HCI courses: ✅ 10 parts, covering the whole HCI process ✅ 864 pages and 1.9 kgs ✅ Open access (!)

🏆Anton Gasse, Alexander Lingler(@ituaustria.bsky.social), Martin Lorenz, @oulasvirta.bsky.social(@aalto.fi‬), @philwintersberg.bsky.social(@ituaustria.bsky.social) & @patebel.bsky.social won the People’s Choice Award for Best Poster @chiwork.bsky.social 2025 in Amsterdam! 🔗https://shorturl.at/D5JDO

We had a lovely summer school last week in Paris. Thirty amazing students and postdocs, a week full of keynotes and hands-on lectures on computational methods. State-of-the-art as call as classical topics, ranging from LLM agents to Bayesian inference cixschool2025.isir.upmc.fr

I work in the best university in the world, less than 3 hours from my rural hometown, yet superstar students travel here from all over the world… if we keep treating them badly, will centers of excellence move elsewhere? "If my kids excel, will they move away?" jeffreybigham.com/blog/2025/wh...

John Williamson lecturing about simulator-bases inference at the Comp Int summer school cixschool2025.isir.upmc.fr

Philipp Wintersberger giving a talk on multitasking and human-AI interaction at Aalto

Visualizing Knowledge 2025 starting at Aalto

Vera Liao giving a talk on the AI sociotecnical gap at FCAI / Aalto

Paul Strohmeier giving a talk at Aalto

Better charts and keyboards by simulating how people behave with digital interfaces: research from @oulasvirta.bsky.social & co. is where a new kind of AI meets HCI. www.aalto.fi/en/news/ai-t... ➡️ First author @danqingshi.bsky.social explains more in the thread: bsky.app/profile/danq...

I was honored to give the closing keynote at the Everyday AR through AI-in-the-Loop workshop at #chi2025 yesterday on simulated users. In a nutshell: training user models directly in simulators enables tackling more realistic problems and opens up new applications.

Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems #chi2025 are now online! dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi...

Really interesting work from @oulasvirta.bsky.social and colleagues, demonstrating that the effect size of cognitive abilities is comparable to that of previous experience when using every day user interfaces. How did this paper slip by me for 4 months: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🇫🇮💡 Wondering what the new @ellisinstitute.fi is all about and its #AI game plan? Check out the recent Acatiimi interview with Director @samikaski.bsky.social for insights on their mission, professorship investments, and Finland's AI impact. #Finland #ELLISInstitute

Annual Helsinki PreCHI event opening by @oulasvirta.bsky.social. First up, Rungjun Ma presents “Privacy Perceptions of Custom GPTs by Users and Creators.” #chi2025

Should we use LLMs 🤖 to simulate human research subjects 🧑? In our new preprint, we argue sims can augment human studies to scale up social science as AI technology accelerates. We identify 5 tractable challenges and argue this is a promising and underused research method 🧪🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2504.02234

I am happy to share that with the joint effort of the Nordic HCI community, there is a website that accommodates Nordic reception at CHI, yearly CHI accepted works, a list of contributing institutions, and pre-chi events. www.chi-nordics.eu

Want to learn how to build cognitive models using reinforcement learning? Join our course at #CHI2025: "C13: Introduction to Computational Cognitive Modeling"

#ProblemReframing: looks at whether working with #AI, namely #LLMs, benefits designers in devising high-quality problem frames. Shows how generative AI can fail at supporting realistic design tasks. 💁🏻💡🤖 #CHI2025 users.aalto.fi/~luceroa1/re... @joongishin.bsky.social @oulasvirta.bsky.social

Googling Stuff: Then v Now.

AI models are fascinating, impressive, and sometimes problematic. But what can they tell us about the human mind? In a new review paper, @noahdgoodman.bsky.social and I discuss how modern AI can be used for cognitive modeling: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Computational models of human perception have been stuck with visual saliency, which has little ecological validity. Who looks at a display with no task in mind? One reason for this fixation has been that there simply are no high quality datasets for other tasks. Well now there is for visual search:

The paper presents findings on visual search in a large dataset (N=84) including over 900 real-world GUIs. And the dataset is released too

Now this is interesting: Selder et al. ask what makes a biomechanical model 'breathe' and study the effects of reward components on emergent movement patterns: arxiv.org/pdf/2503.02571 Reward design for human models is an open problem, we need more more work like this!

📣 Our call for Principal Investigators in artificial intelligence and machine learning closes this Sunday, March 9! 👇

As a Principal Investigator at ELLIS Institute Finland, you can work with some of the world's best AI + ML students. Plus: compute + infrastructure (@lumi-supercomputer.eu) & the @ellis.eu network. Read more: fcai.fi/news/2024/11... 📣 Then apply here by March 9: www.ellisinstitute.fi/PI-recruit

Problem reframing is at the heart of DESIGN: It is about finding a new perspective to a problem to transform it. While this #chi2025 paper does not explain WHY generative AI cannot do it well, it illuminates HOW it fails in realistic design tasks. It warns against naively relying on LLMs..

Are LLMs useful when generating novel and useful ideas? Our #CHI2025 paper shows that LLMs do not help generate more novel or useful perspectives in solving problems. - Project page: joongishin.github.io/problemRefra... - Page: arxiv.org/abs/2503.01631 (1/8)

My colleagues at ELLIS Institute Finland have just launched their first call for PIs. If you’re on the academic job market and are Euro-curious and/or enjoy salty licorice, read on. (1/3)

The paper sheds new light on human error. While earlier work has shown mechanisms that cause error, it has not looked at errors in closed-loop control. In Typoist, errors are to a some degree (not fully) a choice. It gives a much richer account of speed-accuracy trade-off.

1/ Why do people make so many errors in touchscreen typing, and how do people fix them? Our #CHI2025 paper introduces Typoist, the computational model to simulate human errors across perception, motor, and memory. 📄 arxiv.org/abs/2502.03560

To all American AI-researchers (professor level): if you find the current trend in US academia problematic, the window of opportunity is now open. @ellisfinland.bsky.social is being established and we are investing big time in recruiting top talent. PS. Our politics is run by grown-ups. #MLsky

Many thanks to SIGCHI for recognizing our work and to numerous brilliant colleagues. It is a great honor to join the Academy.