This week, members of the HTO research group are taking part in NordiCHI 2026 in Vaasa, Finland. NordiCHI is one of the main Nordic conferences for Human Computer Interaction and brings together researchers working with the relationships between people, technology, organizations and society.
For us, there is also a nice sense of continuity. The previous NordiCHI conference was held in Uppsala in 2024. This time, we have travelled to Vaasa as participants, contributing to several different parts of the programme.
Åsa Cajander and Viktoria Rubin are among the organisers of the workshop Empowering Users in Public Procurement: User Involvement, Work Environment, and AI in Practice, together with Marta Larusdottir, Johanna Viitanen, Torkil Clemmensen, Lilja Jóhannsdóttir Petersen, Maral Babapour Chafi and Laura Moll Meldgård.
The workshop connects closely to our research in AI PROCARE, a Nordic research project studying the procurement of AI systems in healthcare. The project asks how decisions made during procurement influence healthcare professionals’ future work environment. AI may change clinical decisions, administrative work, professional autonomy and the distribution of responsibility. This means that usability, user involvement and work environment issues need to be considered before a new system reaches the workplace, not only after implementation.
Jonathan Källbäcker is presenting the paper The Association Between User Involvement and Workload in Technology Use: A Survey of Technology Implementation Across Ground Staff and Managers at Swedish Airports. The study builds on our research on digitalisation and automation in airport ground operations. In the TARA project, we have studied how new technologies affect the everyday work of ground staff, including questions of workload, control, communication and opportunities to influence the technologies they use.
HTO is also contributing to other parts of the conference programme. Åsa Cajander is chairing the research paper session Taking Care of Ethics and participating in the panel Is AI Making Researchers’ Work More Meaningful?. The panel raises a question that is becoming increasingly relevant as generative AI becomes part of everyday academic work. AI can help with many research tasks, but efficiency is not necessarily the same thing as meaningfulness. What happens to the parts of research that we care about, such as relationships with colleagues and students, intellectual curiosity, creativity, and the careful work of producing high-quality research?
Taken together we have had a great conference!