Category: English (Page 2 of 13)

A Research Visit That Sparked New Insights and Collaboration

2 February 2026 / guest

Last December, Sita Vriend was given the opportunity to visit Uppsala University through support from the Equal Opportunities Fund.

My research focuses on human-centered uncertainty visualization, an area concerned with how uncertainty, which is all around us, is communicated through visual representations. Common examples include weather forecasts that show the probability of rain or storm predictions that visualize the possible paths a storm might take. The goal of my work is to better understand how users perceive such visualizations and how they can be designed more effectively. Along the way, I have become something of a data and statistics enthusiast. I enjoy the process of exploring data and creating clear, compelling figures.

Hence, I got asked to collaborate with Åsa Cajander and Jonathan Källbäcker to analyse data collected as part of TARA project (The Impact of Automation, Robotization and AI on the Work Environment of Airport Ground Staff). While I am experienced in data analysis and visualization, I was less familiar with the specific application context. This made the collaboration particularly valuable, as it provided opportunities to discuss unexpected patterns and oddities in the data. Jonathan was able to contextualize these findings by drawing on insights from interviews conducted during earlier research.

Our collaboration is ongoing. Additional data will be collected, and the analysis is still in progress, laying the groundwork for continued joint research in the future.

Sita Vriend, M.Sc.
Doctoral Researcher
Visualization Research Center (VISUS)
Weiskopf Group

Fem skäl till att vädret påverkar bagagehanteringen på flygplatser / Five reasons why the weather affects baggage handling at airports

30 January 2026 / Jonathan Källbäcker

Det jobbigaste i arbetsmiljön är väl egentligen när det är dåligt väder.

– Lastare på stor svensk flygplats.

Det finns vissa saker som kommer tillbaka årligen i svensk medial diskussion. Melodifestivalen i all ära, men framförallt återkommer diskussioner kring den eviga kampen mot snön och hur det kan komma sig att snön påverkar vår trafik så pass mycket som den gör i vårt land. Nu i början av nådens år 2026 manifesterades detta fenomen inte minst på landets flygplatser, inte minst på Arlanda, och inte minst på bagagehanteringen. Ena kanalen efter den andra rapporterar om kaoset [1,2] och opinionstexter skrivs för att peka på problemet [3].

Givet att mitt främsta forskningsprojekt har varit med fokus på just markarbete på flygplatser och hur tekniken påverkar deras arbete, och speciellt eftersom väderförhållanden har varit ett återkommande ämne i vårt projekt, vill jag nyansera bilden lite och ge mina topp 5 komplimenterande perspektiv till varför vädret kan ha påverkat denna gång (och kan komma att göra i framtiden). Det ska sägas att det här är inte ett exakt facit kring varför det blev så denna gång och att det inte är något en specifik person på Arlanda har sagt om just denna situation, utan mina bedömningar gällande vad som mycket väl kan ha påverkat.

Fundamental teknik blir långsammare. Bagaget lastas in i flygplanet med hjälp av så kallade lastband. På grund av hur de är konstruerade blir det segare i kyla, adderar stress och kan göra arbetet långsammare. Överlag hjälper dessa hjälpmedel mycket med arbetet och den fysiska arbetsmiljön. Det är mycket bättre att använda dem än att lasta från marken, så att inte ha det för att det blir svårare i snö är inte ett argument.
Jobba med skärmar är svårt i snöstorm. Många flygbolag kräver idag att bagage scannas innan det lastas. Säkerhet och möjligheten att underlätta att hitta bagage som ska plockas bort om någon inte dyker upp är återkommande argument för detta. Att använda skärmteknik i snö med allt krångel det kan komma med kan mycket väl bidra till extra försiktighetsåtgärder och behov att dubbelkolla att scanningen har genomförts på ett korrekt sätt.
Många roller ska samsas på liten yta. Mat, avlopp, tankning: alla roller har sina utmaningar med vädret. En tankare beskrev det en gång som att de skulle kunna kvalificera sig till curling VM givet hur mycket snö de behöver skotta för att få tag på brunnarna med bränsle. Snön försvårar för flera och kan påverka koordinationen mellan roller och smidigheten i processen som helhet.
Bagagevagnarna väger flera hundra kilo, speciellt med all skidutrustning och allt vad folk kan tänkas behöva ha med i sina vinterresor. Lägg till snö och behovet att justera dem för hand lite då och då. Tyngre, jobbigare, långsammare i snön.
I slutändan handlar allt om säkerhet, flygplatsernas modus operandi. Verksamheten kräver försiktighet överlag. Teknik som krånglar kan skapa osäkerhet för personal, resenärer och utrustning, speciellt i svåra väderförhållanden. Säkerheten blir därmed extra viktig.

En beskrivning av industrin jag gillar är att flygplatserna jobbar med ”minutlogistik” – och med vädret som det kan vara här i norr leder det till lager på lager av försvåringar – vilket påverkar hanteringen minut efter minut. Allt som allt adderar detta stress till system och människor, vilket kan leda till att aktioner tar längre tid.

När teknik utvecklas bör alltså inte kontexten (och vädret) glömmas bort och alltid vara i riskanalysen och kravspecifikationerna. Förseningar som vädret är med och bidrar till kan inte endast tillskrivas denna eviga boven i dramat ”den mänskliga faktorn”. Framför allt är bagagehantering en mycket mer komplex arbetsuppgift än vad man kan tro, och kräver långt mycket mer än endast en bagagevagn.

“The toughest part of the work environment is really when the weather is bad.”

– Ground handler at a major Swedish airport.

There are certain things that return annually in Swedish media discussions. Melodifestivalen by all means, but above all, the recurring debates about the eternal struggle against snow and how it’s possible that snow affects our traffic as much as it does in this country. Now, at the beginning of 2026, this phenomenon manifested itself at the nation’s airports, especially at Arlanda, particularly within baggage handling. One media channel after another reports on the chaos [1,2], and opinion pieces attempts to point out the root of the problem [3].

Given that my main research project has focused specifically on ground operations at airports and how technology affects their work, and especially since weather conditions have been a recurring topic in our project, I want to add some nuance and offer my top five complementary perspectives on why the weather may have caused issues this time (and may continue to do so in the future). It should be said that this is not an exact explanation of why things happened as they did in this particular case, nor is it something any specific person at Arlanda has said about the situation. Rather these are my assessments of what could very well have contributed.

Fundamental technology becomes slower. Baggage is loaded into the aircraft using so‑called belt loaders. Due to how they are constructed, they become sluggish in the cold, which adds stress, and can slow down the workflow. Overall, these tools greatly support the work and physical work environment. They are far better than loading straight from the ground, so not using them because they become more difficult in snow is not a viable argument.
Working with screens is difficult in a snowstorm. Many airlines now require baggage to be scanned before loading. Safety and the ability to locate baggage that needs to be removed if a passenger doesn’t show up are recurring reasons for this. Using screen‑based technology in snow – with all the complications that come with it – can easily lead to extra precautions and the need to double-check that the scanning has been done correctly.
Many roles have to share a small space. Catering, sewage, fueling – every role has its own challenges in bad weather. A refueler once described that they could probably qualify for the curling world championship given how much snow they have to clear just to reach the fuel pits. Snow complicates things for many roles and can impact coordination and overall workflow.
Baggage carts weigh several hundred kilos, especially with all the ski equipment and whatever else people need to bring on winter trips. Add snow, and the occasional need to manually adjust or realign the carts. Heavier, tougher, slower in the snow.
In the end, everything comes down to safety, the airport’s modus operandi. Operations require caution in general. Technology that malfunctions can create uncertainty for staff, passengers, and equipment, especially in harsh weather conditions. Safety therefore becomes even more critical.

One description of the industry that I like is that airports work with “minute logistics” – and with the kind of weather we get up here in the north, which leads to layer upon layer of complications, the process is affected minute by minute. All in all, this adds stress to both systems and people, which can make tasks take longer.

Therefore, when developing technology, context (and weather) must not be forgotten and should always be part of risk analyses and requirement specifications. Delays that the weather contributes to cannot be attributed solely to that constantly reoccurring villain “the human factor.” Above all, baggage handling is a far more complex task than one might think, requiring much more than just a baggage cart.

References:

[1]: Bagageförseningar på Arlanda i snökaoset | SVT Nyheter

[2]: Kaos på Arlanda – bagage i högar | Sverige | Expressen

[3]: Kadhammar: På Arlanda låtsas man effektivitet

Arbetsmiljön i digitaliseringens spår – en heldag på Arlanda för transportbranschen

20 January 2026 / Jonathan Källbäcker

Under tre års tid har vi i TARA-projektet undersökt hur ny teknik påverkar markpersonalens arbetsmiljö på svenska flygplatser. Som en avslutning av projektet bjuder Uppsala Universitet och TYA in till en kostnadsfri heldag på Arlanda för chefer, skyddsombud och övriga anställda inom hela transportbranschen. Om du är intresserad finns en länk till anmälan här: Seminarium – Arbetsmiljön i digitaliseringens spår.

Inramningen för dagen är att fokusera på hur digitaliseringen kan hjälpa i stället för att stjälpa. Diskussionerna kommer att primärt handla AI och digitalisering i transportbranschen vad som händer när digitala system, AI-lösningar och automatisering rullar in i verksamheten. Vi kommer lyfta våra forskningsperspektiv kring hur man kan undvika att skapa nya risker och i stället använda digital teknik till att stärka arbetsmiljön.

Fyra fokusområden kommer att vara:

• Vad säger aktuell forskning om förändrade arbetsuppgifter, nya kompetenskrav och organisatoriska risker i digitaliseringens spår?

• Hur kan digital teknik användas för att stärka säkerhet och hållbarhet?

• Regeringens nya arbetsmiljöstrategi för 2026–2030.

• Resultat från TARA-projektet, med konkreta exempel från flygplatsmiljö som även är relevanta för andra delar av transportbranschen.

Professor Åsa Cajander kommer primärt hantera frågan om digitaliseringens konsekvenser för arbetsmiljö. Maria Normark, docent i människa-datorinteraktion kommer lyfta perspektivet om möjligheter för stärkt användarfokus i säkerhetskritiska miljöer som flygplatser. Slutligen kommer jag (Jonathan Källbäcker – doktorand i människa–datorinteraktion) prata om vad digitalisering och ny teknik innebär för risker och möjligheter för markpersonal på flygplatser, baserat på den data vi har samlat in under dessa tre år.

Välkomna till en dag om framtidens arbete!

Inbjudan TARA Download

Why EDI Matters: A New Open-Access Volume on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in European Universities

16 January 2026 / Åsa Cajander

A new edited volume from Padova University Press, Why EDI Matters: Equ(al)ity, Diversity and Inclusion in European Universities (2025), brings together contributions from scholars and practitioners across a wide range of European university contexts. Edited by Annalisa Oboe, Věra Sokolová, and Helena Wahlström Henriksson, the book positions EDI not as a “nice-to-have” add-on, but as a core issue for universities’ legitimacy, resilience, and democratic role in society. You find the book here.

Importantly, the book is published under a Diamond Open Access model, with the explicit aim of making current debates and evidence on EDI widely accessible.

How the book is structured

The volume is organised into three sections: education and curriculum; discrimination and violence; and institutional change through policy and practice.

A chapter authored by Åsa Cajander

Åsa Cajander is one of the book’s chapter authors. Her chapter with Beni Suranto, Tony Clear, and Ramesh Lal is titled:

“Overlooked by Design: Challenges and Opportunities of Incorporating Human-Centred Perspectives and EDI in IT Development During the AI Boom.”

The chapter addresses a recurring tension in digital development: technological progress and rapid deployment often outpace inclusive, human-centred practices. It argues that integrating EDI into IT development becomes even more complex in the context of contemporary AI systems, where issues such as bias, opacity, and uneven impacts on marginalised groups are well-documented concerns. The chapter frames “integrating EDI into AI” as a deliberate, end-to-end commitment from data and design decisions to stakeholder engagement and governance rather than a late-stage “ethics checklist.”

Why this collection may be helpful to read

One of the strengths of Why EDI Matters is that it does not treat EDI as purely abstract. Across chapters, the emphasis is on the everyday realities of implementation: what universities actually do, what kinds of resistance or trade-offs arise, how policies land in practice, and what can be learned from concrete cases across national and institutional contexts.

For readers working in higher education leadership, teaching and learning, research management, digitalisation, or workplace environment roles, the book offers a multi-voiced snapshot of where EDI efforts currently stand, and why they remain central to the future of universities.

Designing with Nature: Biomimicry as an Interaction Design Practice(New Publication)

12 January 2026 / guest

By Karin (Catharina) van den Driesche, KADEN DESIGN and University of Amsterdam

I’m happy to share that recent collaborative research with Åsa Cajander and Shweta Premanandan (Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University) will appear in an upcoming Springer volume on Academic and Professional Practice in Interaction Design. The work grew out of two Biomimicry for HCI workshops held at Uppsala University exploring how nature can inform future forms of interaction beyond screen design. The paper was also presented at the Academic Research and Professional Practice in Interaction Design (ARPIDD) conference in London (10–11 July 2025), where researchers and practitioners exchange perspectives on design, technology, and professional practice.

In this blog post, I want to reflect on what the paper Biomimicry: A Transdisciplinary Approach for Human Computer Interaction means in practice: what happens when designers begin to integrate inspiration from living systems, where the workshop participants encounter friction and surprise, and why these matters for how we design technologies in a time of ecological uncertainty.

Exploring Biomimicry in Interaction Design Practice

Biomimicry, learning from nature’s strategies and processes, has long been applied in fields such as architecture, materials science, and engineering. In interaction design, however, its potential is only beginning to unfold. As interfaces move away from screen displays toward spatial, embodied and sensor-rich environments (i.e., scene-based design), designers increasingly need new ways of thinking about perception, adaptation, responsibility, and long-term impact.

At the same time, HCI does not exist in isolation from global challenges. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource pressures call for design approaches that move beyond purely human-centered perspectives. Interaction design increasingly needs to acknowledge nonhuman needs, ecological impacts, and long-term systemic consequences.

Biomimicry offers a way to bridge these challenges. By studying how living systems regulate, adapt, cooperate, sense, and evolve, designers can translate biological strategies into interaction principles that support resilience, sustainability, and regenerative thinking.

Biomimicry for HCI workshops
The Biomimicry for HCI workshops invited participants to experience biomimicry as a way of thinking and relating to strategies found in nature. Participants moved between learning biomimicry principles, abstracting biological strategies, and transposing those insights into speculative interaction scenarios. These scenarios helped move the focus away from surface resemblance toward deeper structural understanding, how systems adapt, how information flows, how materials respond, and how organisms coordinate with their environment over time.

Importantly, this way of working opened new perspectives on the role of nature in the design process. For some participants, nature became something to observe closely, learn how nature offers solutions. For others, nature functioned more indirectly, guiding the way problems can be re-framed and how consequences were anticipated. In both cases, the scenarios extended towards scene-based interactions that could benefit both human and nonhuman environments.

What I found particularly valuable was how the workshops created space for dialogue across disciplines and experiences. This distributed way of working mirrors the interconnectedness found in ecological systems themselves, reinforcing the idea that meaningful innovation rarely emerges from isolated perspectives.

The illustration for the blog post shows a workshop sketch of participant ideation exploring shape change as an interaction principle (author’s own material).

Adopting biomimicry as a design practice therefore benefits from cross-sector collaboration between academia, industry, and societal actors. Its value lies not only in generating new concepts, but in cultivating a way of working that aligns technological imagination with ecological responsibility, long-term thinking, and relational awareness.

Nature’s New Possibilities for HCI
Nature rarely offers neat or isolated answers, it operates through layered relationships, long timescales, and continuous interaction with its environment and relational context. One of the notable aspects of the workshops was not the ideas themselves, but the cognitive effort participants experienced while working with biological principles. Abstracting and transposing living systems into interaction concepts requires stepping away from familiar design habits. Bringing that analogical mindset into design thinking takes practice.

At the same time, moments of clarity emerged when participants began focusing on structural relationships rather than appearances: how shapes distribute information, how materials respond to pressure, how feedback loops stabilize or transform behavior. These moments often unlocked grounded ideas, helping participants bridge biological insight with technological imagination without losing integrity along the way.

Another aspect became visible between ecological ambition and practical constraints. Designers wrestled with questions of feasibility, cost, accessibility, and technical maturity. How can a nature-inspired idea remain meaningful when translated into scalable systems? How do we avoid creating concepts that sound visionary but cannot responsibly be implemented?

What this revealed is that biomimicry is not a shortcut to innovation, it is a discipline of analogical thinking. It demands careful observation, critical interpretation, and collaborative sense-making across domains. It also calls for design education and professional practice to cultivate stronger analogical thinking skills, ecological literacy, and long-term responsibility.

What became clear during the workshops is that biomimicry doesn’t replace existing HCI methods, it adds another way of thinking. It offers structure, but also leaves room for exploration, helping designers engage more deeply with biological principles.

For me, this is where biomimicry becomes more than a method. It becomes a way of slowing down design enough to notice what kinds of relationships we are creating between humans, technologies, and the natural world.

Explore the Biomimicry Method Yourself
If you would like to experiment with biomimicry in your own teaching, research, or design practice you can download the worksheet: Biomimicry using Nature’s Shape Change for Interaction Design. This worksheet supports abstraction, analogical translation, and scenario development, and can be used in education, co-creation workshops, and early-stage concept development.

Download the worksheet Biomimicry using Nature’s Shape Change for Interaction Design (PDF): https://kadendesign.nl/images/KD_Worksheet_Biomimicry_Shapechange_June2024.pdf

If you’re interested, you can find (March 2026) the paper “Biomimicry: A Transdisciplinary Approach for Human Computer Interaction” here: DOI:10.1007/978-3-032-15516-0_3.

The publication contributes to ongoing conversations within HCI, design research, and organizational studies about how technology can be shaped in generative ways that respect both human and nature. Importantly, the paper also explores how biomimicry can be aligned with industry roadmaps and organizational strategies, helping companies develop responsible innovation pathways while reducing unintended ecological consequences. This creates space for new forms of collaboration between researchers, designers, communities, engineers, and domain experts.

For collaborations and exploring ideas in Biomimicry for HCI, please reach out to me at c.j.h.m.vandendriesche@uva.nl or info@kadendesign.nl.

Karin van den Driesche

Special issue: People, Robots and AI at Work

19 December 2025 / Åsa Cajander

HTO is involved in organising a special issue in Information Technology & People on People, Robots and AI at Work. The special issue examines how automation, robotics, and AI are reshaping work, job roles, and worker well-being, including questions of meaning, autonomy, cognitive load, participation, and competence development.

The guest editors are Erik Billing, Åsa Cajander, Rebecca Cort, Jessica Lindblom, and Virpi Roto.

The issue welcomes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods contributions that critically examine the design, introduction, and use of AI and robots in contemporary work environments.

Manuscript submission is open from 17 December 2025 to 31 May 2026.

Full call for papers and submission details:
https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/calls-for-papers/people-robots-and-ai-work

Software Sustainability as a Framework

3 December 2025 / jenn

As a researcher on software sustainabilty, I first tried to search for a definition of the term. But software sustainability turned out not to behave like a simple term. It crosses multiple dimensions and domains. It evolves over time in an unclear time period which can change depending on which aspect is being talked about. Software sustainability considers people, organizations, ecosystems, and technologies. I kept wondering, am I missing something in how I’m choosing my definition of software sustainability? As software and software development practices continually change and new technology developed that then reshape our environment, how could any single definition fully encompass this?

I have now been researching software sustainability for a couple of years, and the problem I faced on day one is the same problem I feel today: What is software sustainability? When people ask me this question, I pause longer than I should. Even though I have answered this question many times, I still get stuck on the best way to describe it. My current research explores industry perspectives on software sustainability, and those perspectives vary widely depending on context, priorities, and organizational concerns as well.

Ergonomic professionals may suggest other work conditions.

Then one day, I tried thinking of sustainability not as a definition but as a framework, and I realized that trying to force software sustainability into a definition may have been the real issue.

Why a Definition Doesn’t Quite Work

Oxford describes definition as ‘a statement of the exact meaning of a word, especially in a dictionary,’ It creates boundaries and clarifies meaning. But definitions are reductive by design, they compress ideas into something succinct.

One of the dimensions identified in sustainability!

This works well for concepts like “protocol” or “algorithm,” but software sustainability is different. Any attempt to define it quickly requires further definitions: Are we talking about making a system more sustainable through the software? Or about the sustainability of the software itself? Or the sustainability of the socio-technical environment around it?

A single definition cannot hold all of this without a lot of explanation on how the term is being used.

Software Sustainability as a Framework

A framework provides structure. It breaks a concept into components or dimensions that can be examined, measured, and discussed. A framework explains how to think about a concept, not just what it is. It can also highlight the limitations of its own structure by making explicit what is included and what is not.

There is one framework that I know of that has been developed towards identifying software’s impact across five dimensions called sustainability awareness framework (SUSAF) which has had multiple publications identifying the usefulness of a framework for sustainability in education and industry.

A definition cannot as directly be used in this same way to develop, structure, or operationalize a concept.

Why Frameworks Work Better for Sustainability Research

Thinking of software sustainability as a framework gives researchers several advantages:

It avoids oversimplification. The complexity of sustainability is preserved rather than reduced away.
It aligns more easily with research goals. The specific elements relevant to a project can be made explicit.
It fits naturally with software engineering. Software engineering already relies on structured models (e.g. quality models, architectural models, lifecycle models) and sustainability integrates well when expressed similarly.
Frameworks can be validated. Their components can be tested, refined, and supported by evidence.
Frameworks are adaptable. They can evolve as technologies, practices, and sustainability challenges change.

Thinking of sustainability as a framework acknowledges that it is complex and multidimensional. It touches code, infrastructure, people, organizations, and the planet. It changes as software evolves and as its impacts unfold.

A definition indicates understanding.
A framework enables action and analysis.

For researchers in software engineering and software sustainability, shifting the question from “What is sustainability?” to “How is sustainability structured?” makes the concept more usable and meaningful.

Användbarhet är lika aktuellt idag som för 25 år sedan

13 November 2025 / Åsa Cajander

Inför World Usability Day som infaller andra torsdagen i november varje år påminns vi om varför frågan fortfarande är brännhet. I vardagen använder vi runt 25 system parallellt på jobbet. Små brister i ett system spiller snabbt över till nästa. Det som ser bra ut i en prototyp kan fallera i verklig drift med tidspress, kyla, bländande ljus och många handovers.

Samma kärnfråga kvarstår som för 25 år sedan: fungerar det för rätt användare, med rätt mål, i rätt situation. Idag är beroendena tätare, regelkraven fler och upphandlingar gör lokala justeringar svårare. Därför räcker det sällan att flytta en knapp. Vi behöver se hela arbetsmiljön: fysisk miljö, socialt klimat, kognitiv belastning, organisation, digital kvalitet och känslor. AI är nytt, men principerna är desamma. Otydliga mål, ansvar och stöd gör tekniken till ytterligare en belastning.

Tre saker som hjälper i praktiken:

Delat ansvar tidigt mellan roller som kompletterar varandra vid IT-införanden
Fokus på hela arbetsmiljön, inte bara gränssnitt
Skyddad tid för användare att prova, lära och justera

World Usability Day handlar om just detta: att göra tekniken användbar i verkligheten.

World Usability Day påminner oss om vardagens verklighet: teknik blir användbar först när den fungerar i sitt sammanhang!

Embodied Knowledge on the Rails: Presenting Research at the Swedish Transport Research Conference

3 November 2025 / Rebecca Cort

Last week, the Swedish Transport Research Conference 2025 (STRC2025) took place at Linköping University, Campus Norrköping. This annual event gathers researchers from across Sweden who study transport systems in national or local contexts. The conference offers a platform for interdisciplinary exchange, covering all modes of transport and topics ranging from technology and design to planning, policy, and human factors. It is a very nice meeting point where engineering meets social science, and where both established and early-career researchers contribute. The conference was an inspiring and enjoyable event with many interesting presentations showcasing ongoing research within the Swedish transport community.

At this year’s conference, I presented my contribution titled “Train Driving as Embodied Practice: An Ethnographic Approach.” The paper addresses a critical question in today’s rapidly evolving railway sector: what remains uniquely human in the increasingly automated landscape of train operations? With the growing interest in automation and driver-assisting technologies, understanding the human contribution to train driving becomes essential not only for safety and efficiency but also for preserving forms of knowledge that machines cannot easily replicate.

The study builds on 2.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork in the system for Swedish railway operations, involving participatory observations and contextual interviews with experienced train drivers. Rather than focusing on formal procedures, the research explores the situated and embodied aspects of the train driver’s work, i.e., the tacit, sensory, and bodily knowledge that shapes everyday decisions and reactions on the rails.

The findings illustrate that train driving is far from a purely cognitive or rule-based activity. Drivers are constantly attuned to the train and its environment through a subtle interplay of sound, vibration, and movement. For example, one driver could identify a braking issue simply by hearing a faint difference in rhythm that to an observer sounded like ordinary background noise. Others described how they could “feel” when the tracks were slippery, a sensation difficult to verbalize yet instantly recognisable to those with years of experience. This sensitivity, developed through practice, enables drivers to detect irregularities and respond proactively, often before technical systems register any issue.

From a theoretical perspective, the study draws on frameworks of situated, distributed, and embodied cognition. It shows that knowledge in train driving is not confined to the mind but distributed across the body, the locomotive, and the physical railway environment. The train becomes an extension of the driver’s body, and operating it involves a form of bodily reasoning that combines sensory awareness with technical expertise, which challenges the assumption that human knowledge can be fully codified or automated.

By making these embodied practices visible, the research contributes to ongoing discussions about automation and human–machine collaboration. While automation offers many benefits, it also risks overlooking the non-verbal, experiential, and embodied dimensions of skilled work. Understanding these dimensions is crucial for designing systems that complement rather than replace human capabilities.

STRC2025 was an engaging event and I appreciated the opportunity to present my work and to exchange perspectives with researchers from a wide range of disciplines.

Stepping Out and Coming Home: Being a Visiting PhD Student at the HTO Research Group

24 October 2025 / janas

Hi! I’m Jana-Sophie, a PhD student from TU Dortmund University in Germany, where I research sociotechnical work systems and how to meaningfully involve people with disabilities in developing suitable technologies for those systems.

This autumn it’s the first time that I actually step out of my own work system to explore a new one. I’m spending three months here at Uppsala University’s HTO Research Group. A perfect opportunity to experience another work environment and academic culture first-hand.

Now, a few weeks in, some early reflections are already taking shape. What better place to share them than here, as temporary part of the HTO research group and its blog?

The experience of arriving here was immediately both stepping out and coming home.

Stepping Out

Coming from rehabilitation sciences, my daily work in Dortmund usually revolves around teaching, supervision and research on inclusion – always with a focus on how technology can support participation at work. For three months, I’m now stepping out of that familiar academic setting and immerse in a new one. Being here at the HTO research group, where user involvement in technology design is a given, allows me to experience what it feels like when the disciplinary embedding shifts: While my subgroup at home adds an HCI view to rehabilitation research, here rehabilitation and inclusion perspectives become embedded in HCI. This change of perspectives makes the idea of interdisciplinary research much more tangible.

After two years in the German academic system, this visit feels like a rare and valuable opportunity to step back from usual daily tasks, challenge my assumptions and habits, and experience new ways of thinking and collaborating.

Coming Home

With a personal background in Human Computer Interaction (master studies), returning to its core theories, discussions, and methods feels both familiar and inspiring. Reconnecting with HCI and exchanging ideas with people who speak the same “research language” brings a sense of belonging and curiosity at the same time.

Beyond these broader concepts of leaving one’s habitual environment while immersing in a familiar disciplinary setting, there are also some more concrete aspects that I currently find especially rewarding:

Inclusive Design or Non-Excluding Design? HCI or HMI? Coffee breaks or fika? 😊
It’s been a minute since I reflected on basic concepts I use and once defined in the very beginning of my PhD process. These terminologies and grounding concepts get challenged the second you leave your usual environment and that’s a good thing! It broadens my perspectives and sharpens my arguments.
Time and opportunity to look up from my tiny research niche:
Having this time abroad with fewer responsibilities (or distractions?) is a wonderful chance. Usually, I’m deeply immersed in my daily tasks and my very specific research focus, involving people with disabilities and neurodivergent people in industrial development to improve accessibility in work-related technologies. Here, the freedom to present myself, my topic, and my project makes it easy to see connections to almost every person and project around me. It’s tempting, exciting… and also a challenge to define and stay true to my own path.
Joining a PhD course, something that’s not part of my PhD journey at home, has been a refreshing experience. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve really dug into theories again, revisiting ideas I was once introduced to, had almost forgotten, and now see in a new light. It also helps me reflect on how my research is situated within HCI (or is it HMI?). Plus, meeting other PhD students here is definitely a big bonus.

So far, this visit feels both grounding and energizing: a mix of revisiting familiar ideas and exploring new perspectives that already inspire me and my research. I’m curious to see how the next weeks will unfold, which collaboration opportunities might arise, and how my idea of coffee as a quick caffeine fix might slowly turn into coffee as a proper fika moment.