Maria Håkansson

UPDATE July 2011: I no longer work at SICS, and am currently a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, USA. I work in the Culturally Embedded Computing group, lead by Phoebe Sengers, in Information Science, and explore IT use and design in relation to environmental and human sustainability. At Cornell, I can be reached via e-mail: mch267 at cornell dot edu

During January-March 2010 I conducted a user study of location-based services in a 'non-urban' setting, which was funded by a personal grant from Nokia Research Center Helsinki. 

During 2009 I worked at SICS in the European multidisciplinary project LIREC (Living with Robots and Interactive Companions), working with user-centred design, qualitative user studies, and ethical issues, related to robotic technologies. Among other things, we studied how families interact with and understand Pleo, a robotic toy dinosaur, during an extended period of time. Our findings pointed at issues specific to long-term interaction, and are therefore important for the design and development of robotic technologies for everyday settings such as the home. In parallel, I was also a researcher at the Mobile Life Centre, a research centre at Stockholm University that brings together academia and several industry partners to work on mobile and ubiquitous technologies.

In February 2009 I defended my PhD thesis “Playing with Context - Explicit and Implicit Interaction in Mobile Media Applications” in Man-Machine Interaction at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University. It contributes with insights into how aspects of the surrounding physical and social context can be exploited in the design of mobile media applications for playful use.

Before joining SICS, I worked during 2002-2008 in the Future Applications Lab at the Viktoria Institute in Göteborg, where I did user-centred design and qualitative user studies in a number of projects on mobile media (e.g. Push!Music, Context Photography) and ubiquitous computing (Pin&Play). During October-December 2007 I was a visiting researcher at Sony Ericsson, where I conducted an experience-centred study of young people’s impression management and self-expression through sharing media and personal information on Facebook and in mobile phones.

Research interests
Human-computer interaction, qualitative research methods, user-centred design, experience-centred design, playfulness, mobile media, ubiquitous computing, interaction design.

Contact
mch@sics, +46-(0)737-763653

Publications

Please don’t hesitate to contact me for copies of the publications below!

Doctoral thesis

Håkansson, M. (2009). Playing with Context: Explicit and Implicit Interaction in Mobile Media Applications. Doctoral thesis in Man-Machine Interaction, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden.

Peer-reviewed conference publications

Fernaeus, Y., Håkansson, M., Jacobsson, M., and Ljungblad, S. (2010). How do you play with a robotic toy animal?: A long-term study of Pleo. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children 2010, ACM, pp. 39-48.

Håkansson, M. and Gaye, L. (2008). Bringing Context to the Foreground: Creative Engagement in a Novel Still Camera Application. In Proceedings of ACM Designing Interactive Systems 2008, February 25-27, Cape Town, South Africa.

Håkansson, M., Rost, M., and Holmquist, L.E. (2007). Gifts from friends and strangers: A study of mobile music sharing. In Proceedings of ECSCW 2007, 10th European Conference on Computer-Supoorted Collaborative Work, Limerick, Ireland. September 24-28, 2007.

Håkansson, M., Rost, M., Jacobsson, M. and Holmquist, L.E. (2007). Facilitating Mobile Music Sharing and Social Interaction with Push!Music. In Proceedings of HICSS-40 2007, Hawaii, USA, January 3-6, 2007. Minitrack “Using Information: New Technologies, Ways, & Means”.

Håkansson M., Gaye L., Ljungblad S., Holmquist L.E. (2006). More Than Meets the Eye: An Exploratory Study of Context Photography. In Proceedings of NordiCHI 2006, Oslo, Norway, October 14-18, 2006.

Ljungblad, S., Håkansson, M. and Holmquist, L.E. (2005). Scheduling with Pin&Play: Augmented Pushpins as Support for Large-Scale Collaboration. In Proceedings of CollabTech 2005, First international conference on collaboration technology, Tokyo, Japan.

Journal publications

Graves Petersen, M., Ljungblad, S., and Håkansson, M. (2009). Designing for Playful Photography. To be published in New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, Special Issue on Next Generation Experience Design, Taylor & Francis, 2009.

Ljungblad, S., Håkansson, M., and Holmquist, L.E. (2007). Ubicomp challenges in collaborative scheduling: Pin&Play at the Göteborg film festival. In Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Special Issue on Ubiquitous Computing in the Real World, Volume 11, Number 7 / October, 2007, Springer London.

Van Laerhoven, K., Villar, N., Schmidt, A., Gellersen, H-W., Håkansson, M., and Holmquist, L.E. (2003). Pin&Play: The Surface as Network Medium. In IEEE Communications Magazine, April 2003, Vol.41 No.4.

Peer-reviewed short publications, workshops and popular articles

Håkansson, M. (2009). On the move - sharing music, inspiration and fun. Vodafone receiver magazine, #22 Seizing the moment, May 2009.

Håkansson, M. (2009). Studying Mobile Music Sharing. Presented at the CHI 2009 workshop on “Mobile User Experience Research: Challenges, Methods & Tools”.

Fernaeus, Y., Jacobsson, M., Ljungblad, S., Håkansson, M., and Holmquist, L.E. (2009). Contrasting Perspectives on Robots: a study among artists, researchers and the general public. Presented at the HRI 2009 workshop on “Societal Impact: How Socially Accepted Robots Can be Integrated in our Society”.

Rost, M., Bergstrand, F., Håkansson, M., and Holmquist, L.E. (2008). Columbus: Physically Exploring Geo-Tagged Photos. Presented as a demonstration at UbiComp 2008, Seoul, South Korea, September 21-24, 2008.

Gaye, L., Håkansson, M., Ljungblad, S., and Holmquist, L.E. (2007). Context Photography. In vague terrain journal, special issue locative, Toronto, Canada.

Håkansson M., Ljungblad S., Gaye L., Holmquist L.E. (2006). Snapshots from a Study of Context Photography. Presented at alt.chi, CHI 2006, Montréal, Canada.

Håkansson, M. (2006). Push!Music: Mobile Music Sharing with Media Agents. Presented at the CHI 2006 Workshop on Mobile Social Software, Montréal, Canada.

Håkansson, M., Jacobsson, M., and Holmquist, L.E. (2005). Designing a Mobile Music Sharing System Based on Emergent Properties. In Proceedings of AMT 2005, Third International Conference on Active Media Technology, Takamatsu, Japan. Presented as short paper.

Jacobsson, M., Rost, M., Håkansson, M., and Holmquist, L.E. (2005). Push!Music: Intelligent Music Sharing on Mobile Devices. In Adjunct Proceedings of UbiComp 2005, Tokyo, Japan. Demo.

Rost, M., Gaye, L., Håkansson, M., Ljungblad, S., and Holmquist, L.E. (2005). Context Photography on Camera Phones. In Adjunct Proceedings of UbiComp 2005, Tokyo, Japan. Demo.

Håkansson, M. (2005). Context Photography. Presented at the UbiComp 2005 Workshop “Pervasive Image Capture and Sharing: New Social Practices and Implications for Technology”.

Ljungblad, S., Håkansson, M., Holmquist, L.E., Bång, M., Berglund, E., and Larsson, A. (2004). Augmenting Paper Based Workpractices. In Adjunct Proceedings of UbiComp 2004, Nottingham, UK. Presented as interactive poster.

Helin, F., Höglund, T., Zackaroff, R., Håkansson, M., Ljungblad, S., and Holmquist, L.E. (2004). Supporting Collaborative Scheduling with Interactive Pushpins and Networking Surfaces. In Adjunct Proceedings of UbiComp 2004, Nottingham, UK. Presented as demo.

Gaye, L., Holmquist, L.E., Håkansson, M., Ljungblad, S., and Mihalatos, P. (2004). Context Photography. Exhibited at DIS 2004 Design exhibition, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Ljungblad, S., Håkansson, M., Gaye, L., and Holmquist, L.E. (2004). Context Photography: Modifying the Digital Camera Into a New Creative Tool. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2004, Vienna, Austria. Presented as short talk.

Håkansson, M. (2004). Finding inspiration in unconventional users of analogue cameras when exploring the future of digital photography. Presented at the CHI 2004 Workshop “Cross-Dressing and Border Crossing: Exploring Experience Methods Across Disciplines”.

Håkansson, M., Ljungblad, S., and Holmquist, L.E. (2003). Capturing the Invisible: Designing Context Aware Photography. In Proceedings of DUX 2003, San Francisco, USA, ACM/AIGA. Presented as research sketch/short talk.

Håkansson, M., Ljungblad, S., and Holmquist, L.E. (2003). Like Solving a Giant Puzzle: Supporting Collaborative Scheduling at a Film Festival. In Proceedings of Interact 2003, Zürich, Switzerland. Presented as short talk.

Håkansson, M., and Van Laerhoven, K. (2002). Collaboration with Interactive Walls and Tables: Pin&Play. Presented at the UbiComp 2002 Workshop “Collaboration with Interactive Walls and Tables”.

Selected talks

Håkansson, M. (2006). “Designing and Evaluating New Mobile Media Experiences”. Cornell SIGCHI Distinguished Lecturer Series, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. April 19, 2006. (Invited speaker)

Håkansson, M. (2005). “Is 'Simple Computing' Less Complex? Experiences from Designing a Ubiquitous Computing Prototype”. The International Forum 'Less is more - Simple Computing in an Age of Complexity' organised by Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK. April 27, 2005.

Selected media coverage

“Musikdelning via mobilen kan vara framtiden”. Swedish Radio P1 and P2, “Mitt i musiken”, April 3, 2009. In Swedish.

“Alarm bells ring as music downloads go mobile”. The Guardian, March 16, 2006.

“MP3 players swap songs with strangers”. New Scientist, January 7, 2006.

“Musiklopper - fremtidens spredning af musik og kultur”. Danish Radio P1, “Harddisken”, September 3, 2005. In Danish.

“Så ser ljud ut på bild”. NyTeknik, April 21, 2004. In Swedish