It is not enough to want to make a better world. First you need to find out what better is, then how to get there.

Katja  M. Battarbee katja (at) battarbee . com katbat (at) gmail . com update 11 Aug 05

a b o u t I am an industrial designer with a doctorate degree and a fascination with user experience and social interaction. See my short resume or research portfolio. I have earned all my design degrees at the University of Art and Design Helsinki.  Since getting my MA in 1998 I have worked at the Design research group, which was earlier called the Smart Products research group. The group has grown over the years and its research topics are growing ever wider. The list of published books is also growing, both in Finnish and English. My research topics have included but are not limited to developing communication concepts for children, mobile multimedia messaging, design issues for context aware and proactive technology for the homes, accessibility and design for all at the work place and methods development for user studies and self documentation toolkits for participants. And, of course, co-experience. -- I have a green card and live in Mountain View, California. My freetime projects are mostly created with readily available materials (wood, fabric, paint, etc.) and range from about an inch to twelve meters across. -- Books that have made lasting impressions: Paul Dourish: Where the Action Is (2001) Erving Goffman: Interaction Ritual (1969/ 1982) Antonio Damasio: The Feeling of What Happens (2000) Patrick Jordan: Desinging Pleasurable Products (2000) Winograd (Ed.) Bringing Design to Software (1996) Margolin & Buchanan (Eds.) The Idea of Design (1995) Christian Heath & Paul Luff: Technology in Action (2001) Lucy Suchman: Plans and Situated Actions (1987) Alan Cooper: The Inmates are Running the Asylum (1999) Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton: The Meaning of Things (1981) Henry Dreyfuss: Designing for People (1955/1974) Tony Dunne & Fiona Raby: Design noir (2001) Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point (2002) -- The name "Katja" is pronounced "KAH-tyah". The fine and rather rare family name of Battarbee originates from my father´s family in Yorkshire, England, where it can be traced back a couple of centuries of creative spelling and where its origin, the tiny village of Battersby, still exists. My mother´s  family and their Lautamäki name hail from the lakes and forests of Parkano in central Finland.

p u b l i c a t i o n s Battarbee, Katja & Esko Kurvinen (forthcoming) Supporting creativity - co-experience in MMS. In: Haddon, L. (ed.) Innovatory Users and Information and Communication Technologies (Working title), Springer-Verlag. Battarbee, Katja & Anne Soronen (forthcoming) Lemmu in the Wild – a true story. In: Ylirisku, S., Buur, J. (eds.) Designing with Video. Fulton Suri, Jane, Katja Battarbee & Ilpo Koskinen (2005) Designing in the Dark - empathic exercises to inspire design for our non-visual senses. In: Proceedings of INCLUDE 2005. [pdf] Battarbee, Katja & Ilpo Koskinen (2005) Co-experience: user experience as interaction. In: Scrivener, S. (ed.) CoDesign - International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 1(1), Taylor & Francis, 5-18. [available upon request] [info] Battarbee, K. (2004) Co-experience: Understanding user experience in social interaction. Doctoral dissertation. Series ILMARI A51, University of Art and Design Helsinki. [info, pdf] Forlizzi, Jodi & Katja Battarbee (2004) Understanding Experience in Interactive Systems. Proceedings of DIS 2004, Cambridge, MA. ACM, pp. 261-268. [pdf] Battarbee, Katja, Anne Soronen & Frans Mäyrä (2004) Living in a Zoo - bringing user experiences with technology to life. In: Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction, Tampere Finland. ACM, pp. 373-376. [pdf] Battarbee, Katja (2004) The Group Connection: How Understanding Co-Experience Can Help Design Better Products. In: User Experience Magazine, UPA [info] Battarbee, Katja & Tuuli Mattelmäki (2004) Meaningful Product Relationships. In: McDonagh, Hekkert, van Erp & Gyi (Eds.) Design and Emotion - The Experience of Everyday Things, Taylor&Francis, pp. 337-343. [pdf] Battarbee, Katja (2003) Defining Co-experience. In: Proceedings of Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, ACM, 23-26 June, Pittsburgh, USA [pdf] Battarbee, Katja (2003) Co-experience - the Social User Experience. In: Proceedings of Computer Human Interaction CHI´03 Extended Abstracts, ACM [pdf] Koskinen, I., Battarbee, K. & Mattelmäki T. (Eds.) (2003) Empathic Design. User Experience in Product Design. IT Press, Helsinki. p 168. [Amazon.com,  Amazon.co.uk] -- Koskinen, I. & Battarbee K. Introduction to User Experience and Empathic Design. p 37-50. -- Battarbee, K. Stories as Shortcuts to Meaning. p 107-118 Battarbee, K. (2003) Making Inclusive Design Work: Design Empathy. Cumulus Working Papers TALLINN, Publication series G, University of Art and Design Helsinki, 58-61. [proceedings] Battarbee, K., Kurvinen, E. (2003) Supporting creativity - co-experience in MMS. In: proceedings of the Good, the Bad & the Irrelevant - the user and the future of information and communication technologies COST269 conference, 3-5 September, Helsinki, Finland. [pdf] Battarbee, Katja, Nik Baerten, Martijn Hinfelaar, Paul Irvine, Susanne Loeber, Alan Munro and Thomas Pederson (2002) Pools and Satellites - Intimacy in the City. In: Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems DIS2002, London, England, 2002, ACM, pp. 237-245. [pdf] Mattelmäki, Tuuli & Katja Battarbee (2002) Empathy Probes. In: Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference, 23-25.6 2002, Malmö Sweden. [pdf] Battarbee, Katja & Simo Säde (2002) Emotional responses to virtual prototypes in the design evaluation of a product concept. In: Green & Jordan (Eds.) Pleasure with Products: Beyond Usability. Taylor&Francis, pp. 247-256. [info] Säde, Simo & Katja Battarbee (2001) The Third Dimension in Paper Prototypes. In: Branaghan, R. (ed.) Design by people for people: Essays on usability, Usability Professionals' Association, Chicago, IL, ISBN 0-9702272-0-5, pp 203-209. [info] Kuutti, Kari, Katja Battarbee, Simo Säde, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Turkka Keinonen, Topias Teirikko, Anne-Mari Tornberg (2001). Virtual prototypes in Usability Testing. In: Proceedings of 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS.34) Vol.5, p. 5029. [info] Mattelmäki, Tuuli & Katja Battarbee (2000) Elämykset muotoilun lähtökohtana. In: (Keinonen, T. ed) Miten käytettävyys muotoillaan? Taideteollinen Korkeakoulu publications B-61, 2000, pp 142-163. Mattelmäki, Tuuli & Katja Battarbee (2000) Feeling Good - a case study of empathic design methods. In: Proceedings of the First Nordic Human Computer Interaction Conference, 23-25 October, Stockholm. Battarbee, Katja, Tuuli Mattelmäki & Anu Mäkelä (2000) Design for user experience – method lessons from a design student workshop. In: Proceedings of the First Nordic Human Computer Interaction Conference, 23-25 October, Stockholm. [pdf] Säde, Simo & Katja Battarbee (2000) Bridge for buttons: A GUI design methodology applied in non-GUI consumer product design. In: Designing Interactive Systems DIS'2000 Conference Proceedings 17-19 August, New York. [pdf] Battarbee, Katja, Simo Säde, Kari Kuutti, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Turkka Keinonen, Topias Teirikko & Anne-Mari Pöyhtäri (1999) Internet-based usability testing using 3D virtual prototypes. In: Proceedings of the 4th Asian Design Conference, Nagaoka, Japan 30th –31st Oct, 1999. Säde, Simo, Katja Battarbee & Heikki Salo (1999) Applying Interaction Design Techniques in an Industrial Design Firm. In: Proceedings of the 4th Asian Design Conference, Nagaoka, Japan 30th –31st Oct, 1999 Kuutti, Kari, Simo Säde & Katja Battarbee (1999) Virtual prototypes in usability testing. In: New Product Development based on Virtual Reality Prototyping – Tuotesuunnittelu virtuaalimaailmassa. MET-Julkaisuja 13-99, p. 68-74. Mäkelä, Anu & Katja Battarbee (1999) It is fun together. In: Personal Technologies. Special issue on "Computers and fun" based on workshop in York, UK 3.12.1998. [request a paper copy][also in here pp.105-112] Mäkelä, Anu & Katja Battarbee (1999) Applying Usability Methods to Concept Development of a Future Communication Device – Case in Maypole. Human Factors in Telecommunications - 17th International Symposium in Copenhagen, Denmark, May 4 - 7, 1999. HFT’99 Conference proceedings. [pdf]