University of Joensuu

- Human computer interaction research  

The Usability research Group studies the interactions between the users and interfaces. They study among others things, how different users from different cultural backgrounds use and interact with computers, or how the mental processes of users working with an interface are reflected in the protocols we record. The current efforts aim at development of usability methodologies focused on special groups of interfaces and users, considering their experience, age, culture and other background.

Cognition Laboratory http://cs.joensuu.fi/pages/coglab/english.html at the Department of Computer Science provides equipment for the research in psychology of programming, usability and cognitive science. In addition, they also carry out tailor-made usability testing and evaluation of customers’ software products.

In the area of eye-tracking, focus have been on:

• Investigating the attention shifts of computer programmers in debugging or comprehending a program using some software environment;
• Experimental tools and methodologies used to investigate cognitive processes of participants during problem solving tasks. The Tobii Eye Tracker have been used in the research to provide us new information about these cognitively challenging tasks.

Markku Tukiainen
Group leader, PhD.

Roman Bednarik
Researcher, MSc.