Aapo Puskala
Mikonkatu 25 B 28
00100 Helsinki
Finland
Mobile +358 40 722 0706

aapo@puskala.fi

http://www.lintukoto.net/
http://www.askoracle.net/

Aapo Puskala résumé

January 20th, 2008

Profile

I am a cognitive psychologist with strong UI & IT background. In psychology I’ve concentrated on human information processing, information seeking, perception, usability and user interfaces. My UI work experience ranges from computer games and applications to websites, search engines, mobile phones, elevators and their administrative tools. My responsibilities in these projects include user studies, contextual inquiries, user observation, interviews, requirements analysis, UI design, usability testing, expert evaluations and follow-ups. I’m also an IT professional, which makes me very familiar with both sides of the coin: the device and the user.

My peers know my optimism and my ability to view common things from new angles. I do not give up on a subject until it gets done or until further research reveals fundamental flaws in it. I’m creative in developing new approaches but analytical in evaluating them. My verbal talent comes to use when ideas and suggestions need to be conveyed to various audiences in an understandable way.

A concrete result of these ambitions is my personal website Lintukoto.net (some English, mostly Finnish), which hosts my various research projects and other personal interests. The most popular page, Ask the Oracle, is availailable in English. Lintukoto.net is visited by over 10 000 people each day, serving some 200,000 pageviews (stats from Google Analytics August 2007) making it the most popular personal web page in Finland. I regularly analyze usage patterns and feedback to gain insight on what makes the users tick.

My primary professional goal is to utilize my psychology and usability skills to develop, test & evaluate easy, efficient & fun user interfaces suited for their purpose, fulfilling even those user needs which may be unrecognized by the users themselves. In short, my aim is to provide positive user experiences.

Skills

Usability & UI development	Expert evaluation (heuristic evaluation) Cognitive walkthroughs Rapid prototyping (paper and early protos) Quantitative (statistical) analysis (logs, usage patterns) Qualitative analysis (interviews, contextual inquiry) Usability guideline development
User research	Contextual inquiry, intreviews User observation Usage log analysis Personas & scenarios Card sorting
Information technology	Macintosh (20 years), Windows (15 years), Linux (8 years) HTML (10 years) CSS (5 years) PHP (8 years) MySQL (8 years) JavaScript (2 years) (basics) Web content creation (my personal homepage Lintukoto.net is visited daily by over 10,000 unique users)
Languages	Finnish (native) English (fluent) Swedish (good)

Education

1994-2002	University of Helsinki, Finland, Department of Psychology Master of Psychology. Emphasis on perception, problem solving, cognitive skills, memory. Master’s thesis Search strategies on the World Wide Web (in Finnish). Magna cum laude.
1997-2001	Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Usability Laboratory Usability & user interfaces (minor subject)
1988-1989	Exchange student, Whitehall High School, Michigan, USA

Employment

2003-current	Usability Specialist, KONE Corporation, R&D, Finland. KONE is the 4th largest elevator and escalator company in the world with about 30,000 employees Research users’ and customers’ needs Design, create and test user interfaces Internal consult in usability & user needs research Typical applications: elevator call-giving, intranet, extranet, software Managed various UI-projects and subprojects Responsible for elevator accessibility, based on official norms and own studies Granted patents (with colleagues) Elevator communication system (WO2007093665) Elevator method and call system (FI118045B, WO2007026042) Turvalaite (Security device) (FI20060640) Hissijärjestelmä (Elevator system) (FI118533B)
2002-2003	Senior Usability Specialist, Oujee Research Ltd, Finland. Oujee Resarch Ltd (later renamed Idean Research Ltd) is a usability consulting and testing company of about 40 employees. Research users’ needs and expectations of new product concepts and ideas Usability heuristic evaluations, field tests of mobile phone game usability Typical applications: companies’ WWW pages, applications, mobile phones (games) Developed usability guidelines for Nokia Series 40 mobile phone games Developed Playability evaluator, a web application for assessing guideline compliance
1999-2000	Usability Specialist, Nokia Ventures Organization, Nokia Wireless Software Solutions. Nokia is the world's leading mobile phone manufacturer Developed new WAP product concepts and their user interfaces Usability testing and interface evaluation for new mobile phone and WAP services Usability testing mostly in Hungary, teamwork with locals
1999	Usability Developer & Product Concept Analyst, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Usability Laboratory. Helsinki University of Technology is Finland’s leading technology-oriented educational institution. 6-month practical work training, part of the Master of Psychology degree Researched product concepts for real-time community interaction In collaboration with Nokia, IDEO, Vienna University (CURE), Netherlands Design Institute and Meru Research. Developed concepts for mobile devices, their usability testing and evaluated user experience
1996-1999	User Interface Developer, Byte Enchanters, Inc. Byte Enchanters was a computer game company of 5 employees. Developed the user interface for a on-line mafia game, Legal Crime. Iterative, rapid prototyping and usability testing with screenshot mockups and later with functional software Web page development and customer support

Personal details

Date of birth	May 9th, 1972	Nationality	Finnish
Marital status	Married, no children	Military service	Completed
Interests	History, psychology, bicycling, badminton, writing, ideation, PHP, net phenomena
Long-term objectives	I am interested in moving abroad and positions in foreign environments. Having lived 29 years in Finland, 5 years in Saudi-Arabia, a few months in Greece, a year in the United States and after visiting two dozen other countries I have acquired a knowledge of culture-related issues in usability and I wish to expand this expertise. I am eager to travel, but I do not rule out on-location positions.

References

Available upon request.