Publications

• Bakırlıoğlu & Kohtala (2019) Framing Open Design through Theoretical Concepts and Practical Applications - Yekta Bakırlıoğlu & Cindy Kohtala (2019) Framing Open Design through Theoretical Concepts and Practical Applications: A Systematic Literature Review, Human–Computer Continue reading →
• Lehtonen et al. (2019) The four faces of creative industries: Visualising the game industry ecosystem in Helsinki and Tokyo - Miikka J. Lehtonen, Antti Ainamo & J.Tuomas Harviainen (2019) The four faces of creative industries: visualising the game industry ecosystem Continue reading →
• Juntunen et al. (2019) Strategies for Integrating Stakeholders into Sustainability Innovation - This study investigates stakeholder integration strategies associated with high sustainability performance of innovation. The results imply that deep organizational engagement with stakeholders is necessary for the achievement of high performance. Otherwise, the three strategies range from progressive openness to limited openness and fine-tuning.
• Two new publications from the TRIPOD-project - Murto, P., Jalas, M., Juntunen, J., & Hyysalo, S. (2019). Devices and strategies: An analysis of managing complexity in energy Continue reading →
• Hyysalo, Marttila, Perikangas & Auvinen (2019) Codesign for transitions governance - We improved the path creation toolsets and procedures of transition management to create more detailed pathways and analyses of pathway step interrelations. The system has facilitated and anchored well the discussions by participants with cross-sectoral backgrounds. Overall, the redesigned system underscores the potential that codesign for sustainability transitions holds.
• Kivimaa, Boon, Hyysalo & Klerx (2019) Towards a typology of intermediaries in sustainability transitions - We aim to bring more clarity to the topic of intermediaries in transitions by providing a definition of transition intermediaries and a typology of five intermediary types that is sensitive to the emergence, neutrality and goals of intermediary actors as well as their context and level of action. We argue that systemic and niche intermediaries are the most crucial forms of intermediary actors in transitions, but they need to be complemented by a full ecology of intermediaries.
• Kivimaa et al. (2019) Passing the baton: How intermediaries advance sustainability transitions in different phases - We integrate existing conceptual models on transition dynamics and phases and a typology of transition intermediaries to examine how intermediaries advance transitions in different phases. We illustrate our conceptual insights through examples from car clubs, heat pumps and low-energy housing. We conclude that intermediation is paramount from predevelopment to stabilisation of a transition.
• Köhler et al. (2019) An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions - This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for sustainability transitions, classified into nine main themes. The review shows that the scope of this field of research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions.
• Hyysalo, Pollock & Williams (2019) Method matters in the social study of technology - This paper outlines the basic principles of ‘biographies of artifacts and practices’ (BOAP) and its significant variations, and discusses its contribution to STS understandings of innovation, especially user roles in innovation. We finish by arguing that if STS is to continue to provide insight around innovation this will require a reconceptualisation of research design, to move from simple ‘snap shot’ studies to the linking together of a string of studies.
• Hyysalo et al. (2019) Developing Policy Pathways: Redesigning Transition Arenas for Mid-Range Planning - We redesigned the TA process in the context of energy system change in Finland by 2030, focusing on interim goals, mid-range change pathways and developing a new notation system that allows participants to directly create the pathways. The resulting renewed TA process results in more specific and detailed mid-range pathways that provide more concreteness to how to implement long-term transition goals.
• Silvast et al. (2018) Who ‘Uses’ Smart Grids? The Evolving Nature of User Representations in Layered Infrastructures - Qualitative accounts given by European technology developers and experts reveal how they understand the final use and social impacts of these technologies. The article analyzes these accounts and compares the UK’s smart meter rollout with experiences from other European countries, especially Finland, to provide insights into the later adoption stages of smart energy and how its impacts have evolved.
• Hyysalo & Juntunen (2018) User innovation and peer assistance in renewable energy technologies - We review innovation by citizen users in the early phases of small-scale renewable energy technologies (S-RET) development and examine user innovation and peer assistance in the later phases of S-RET diffusion. Further, we assess research user motivations, diffusion pathways, and peer intermediation while paying particular attention to how the forms of innovative citizen energy communities are changing.
• Mäkinen, Hyysalo & Johnson (2018) Ecologies of user knowledge: linking user insight in organisations to specific projects - We develop a representational template based on ecologies of knowledge mapping and discuss its potential through applying it to a comparative study on two social media web service projects of the Finnish National Broadcasting Company.
• Hyysalo, Juntunen & Martiskainen (2018) Energy internet forums as acceleration phase transition intermediaries - Citizen users play important roles in the acceleration phase of energy transitions. Widespread diffusion requires not only the adoption, but also adaptation, reconfiguration and intermediation of S-RETs. New Internet-based energy communities have emerged and have come to act as key user-side transition intermediaries, helping to expand the markets for S-RET beyond enthusiasts and environmentalists to mainstream consumers.
• Hyysalo & Hyysalo (2018) Mundane and strategic work in collaborative design - We address the design issue of mundane and strategic work in collaborative design through an examination of a series of participatory design activities in building a flagship library of the future. Both strategic and mundane work are found to permeate the processes, results, and further uptake of collaborative design outcomes.
• Mok & Hyysalo (2018) Designing for energy transition through Value Sensitive Design - Sustainability transitions research presents a new kind of context for strategic design engagements. We explore this in the context of advancing solar photovoltaics in heritage. Value Sensitive Design framework is used to illustrate how a working compromise can be found among the seemingly conflicting values involved in advancing solar in culturally sensitive ways.
• Hyysalo et al. (2018) Catalysing pathway creation for transition governance. - Finnish energy and climate policy already features wide experimentation, visioning and long-term roadmaps. Yet transition arenas could help connect these existing instruments, particularly if redesigned for a mid-range timescale. We improved the path creation toolsets and procedures to create more detailed pathways and analyses of pathway step interrelations.
• Jalas et al. (2017) Everyday experimentation in energy transition: A practice-theoretical view - In this paper we elaborate on how practice theories can inform the discussion of experimentation, report specific modes of experimentation and innovation, and derive suggestions for effective policy interventions. We also bring forward a set of generic suggestions for more sensitive, appreciative and effective public policies on sustainability transitions and cast experimentation in a particular and partial role in such policies.
• Hannukainen, Mäkinen & Hyysalo (2017) Organisational adoption of the lead user method: A follow-up study… - We examine the reasons why lead user method (LUM) is not adopted in an organisation after a successful pilot project. We use rich, longitudinal data from two case companies and find that despite stated intentions and enthusiasm, LUM is not applied repeatedly. The specific reasons for this as well as the requirements for successful LUM adoption are discussed.
• Hyysalo et al. (2017) The diffusion of consumer innovation in sustainable energy technologies - Consumers support the proliferation of sustainable energy technology in contexts where institutions and technology characteristics are not yet fully developed for the wide proliferation. We investigated how consumer created technology solutions diffused. We found that a over one third of projects were part of “innovative peer diffusion” adaptations and further modifications carried out among peers.
• Heiskanen et al. (2017) Small streams, diverse sources: Who invests in renewable energy… - We address the investment gap in renewable energy sources. Examining the case of Finland, which introduced policy measures to diversify its renewable energy portfolio, we analyse the development of investments in renewable heat and power in response to new policy measures and contextual factors during the downturn period 2009–2013. In spite of a severe financial recession, we find an emergence of new sources of investment.
• Hyysalo et al. (2016) The New Production of Users - The New Production of Users traces the history of designer-user relations from the era of mass production to the present days. Its focus lies in elaborating the currently emerging strategies and approaches to user involvement in business and citizen contexts. It analyses the challenges in the practical collaborations between designers and users, and it investigates a number of cases, where groups of users collectively took charge of innovation.
• Usenyuk, Hyysalo & Whalen (2016) Proximal design: Users as designers of mobility in the Russian North - By examining mobility in remote Arctic areas, we analyze how challenging environmental conditions, while affecting technology performance, evoke people’s creativity and efforts as technology users. Based on historical materials and ethnographic observations of user inventiveness in the transport sector in the Russian North, we define and document a phenomenon of “proximal design” in three different modes.
• Hakkarainen & Hyysalo (2016) The Evolution of Intermediary Activities - Innovation intermediaries play an important role in open innovation endeavors. Our longitudinal case study captures the variety and evolution of work tasks and roles of user-side innovation intermediaries during and after a four-year technology project in a living lab.
• Helminen et al. (2015) Designing user innovation toolkits - The aim of this paper was to explore the interrelation of the module library and the solution space by using a user innovation toolkit in the context of shopping center design. This preliminary exploration suggests that in order to ensure that users communicate their own individual needs, both the solution space and the module library should be opened up.
• Jalas & Juntunen (2015) Energy intensive lifestyles - In this paper, we use time use data to model the direct and indirect energy use of households. From this, we present a decomposition analysis of the changes in the embedded and direct energy consumption of Finnish households from 1987 to 2009. We examine the relevant questions that arise from our analysis and suggest that time use approaches require a more explicit theorization of time.
• Juntunen & Hyysalo (2015) Renewable micro-generation of heat and electricity - Science and technology studies (STS) have revealed a wide variety of different “configurations” of renewable energy technologies and the elements of social organization involved in their deployment. In this article we review current academic literature complemented with up to date documents to reveal existing socio-technical configurations of renewable micro-generation technologies.
• Hyysalo & Usenyuk (2015) The user dominated technology era - Users invent new products and product categories, but the assumption has been that manufacturers will supplant users if their innovation is of value to many. The current paper examines Russian all terrain vehicles “karakats” to discuss a case of an era of extended user dominated technology and the related dynamics of dispersed peer-innovation.
• Hyysalo et al. (2015) Intermediate Search Elements and Method Combination in Lead-User Searches - Network searches are increasingly popular in searching for rare lead users. In these searches, implicit and inexact referrals have been found to comprise a substantial number of network referrals. To aid handling such referrals during network searches, we explicate their status as intermediate referral types, and how these referral types relate to known search methods.
• Hyysalo & Johnson (2015) The user as relational entity - The purpose of this paper is to argue that equating “user” with flesh and blood “people out there” is naïve. Not only that, it closes important options in conducting human-centered design.
• Hyysalo & Hakkarainen (2014) What difference does a living lab make? - This paper reports on a rare opportunity to compare two unusually similar innovation projects, one of which relied on a living lab and the other that did not. Contrary to what one might have predicted, the living lab collaboration did not make the development paths very different, and the key challenges regarding design collaboration remained closely similar.
• Hyysalo et al. (2014) Collaborative futuring with and by makers - By drawing elements from both lead-user workshops and participatory design, we conducted a futuring workshop, which allowed us to engage the local maker communities in identifying the issues relevant for a public maker space in 2020. Particularly the information about future solutions was of high relevance, as was the opportunity to trial and elaborate activities on a rolling basis in the prototype space.
• Johnson et al. (2014) Method mixes as key emerging topic in human-centred design - Here we conducted a meta-review of five longstanding case studies that highlighted a key topic deserving attention: practitioners’ method mixes should be taken seriously. Single-method use by a project, professional, or company happens rarely (in this data, never).
• Juntunen (2014) Prosuming Energy - Jouni K. Juntunen's PhD thesis examines renewable micro-generation and active energy prosumers activities in technology domestication, user innovation and online peer to peer support.
• Mattinen et al. (2014) Energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of air-source heat pump - This article makes in-depth carbon footprint analysis for one commercialized user innovation that was found in extensive search of sustainable energy inventions in Finland, a study conducted by Inuse Research Group.
• Johnson et al. (2014) The managed prosumer - This article compares the development of, at the outset, two very different information infrastructures: a social media service and an enterprise resource planning system. Despite the differences, we found similarities in how vendors managed their service development and customer base.
• Juntunen (2014) Domestication pathways of small-scale renewable energy technologies - This study examines sociotechnical change and processes through which renewable micro-generation technologies become integrated as inseparable parts of everyday life. The analysis follows the domestication framework and asks what kinds of domestication processes are involved with resi- dential renewable energy production and use?
• Pollock & Hyysalo (2014) Business of Being a User - This article extends the concept of “user” to account for a new, more formalized role that some client organizations play in the diffusion of packaged enterprise systems.
• Hakkarainen & Hyysalo (2013) How Do We Keep the Living Laboratory Alive? - Living lab environments are often promoted as a way to engage private companies, citizens, researchers, and public organizations in mutually beneficial learning. Based on an in-depth case study of a four-year living lab collaboration in gerontechnology, we agree that successful living lab development hinges on learning between the parties, yet its emergence cannot be presumed or taken for granted.
• Heiskanen, Johnson & Vadovics (2013) Learning about and involving users in energy saving - Using previous cases and our own pilots as data, we uncover the main difficulties in understanding and working with energy users. We argue that formal user research and interaction methods are helpful, yet insufficient for project success or even genuine user responsiveness.
• Hyysalo et al. (2013) Internet Forums and the Rise of the Inventive Energy User - In this paper we bring to the fore the supporting role that user-run Internet forums provide for inventive citizen engagement with technology and the particular implications this holds in sustainable energy technologies which is the domain of our analysis.
• Johnson (2013) How Social Media Changes User-Centred Design - Mikael Johnson's PhD thesis on how social media changes user-centred design. Particular focus on cumulative and strategic user involvement and developer–user social distance.
• Hyysalo et al. (2013) User Innovation in Sustainable Home Energy Technologies - In this article we clarify how citizen users are able to invent in home heating systems. We researched inventionss that user did to heat pump and wood pellet burning systems. During the years 2005–2012 there were 192 inventions by users in Finland alone.
• Johnson & Hyysalo (2012) Lessons for participatory designers of social media - In this paper we distil lessons for participatory designers from an in-depth case study of an over decade-long service development in industry, Habbo Hotel by Sulake Corporation. We argue that the range of core issues that shape user participation in social media can be captured by three interrelated issues: 1) shifts in developer--user social distance, 2) cumulated user knowledge beyond one project, and 3) user-generated content and user-owned services.
• Helminen (2012) Advancing Lead User Methodology in the Fuzzy Front-End of Product Development - The goal of this thesis is to explore the role of lead users in product development and advance the lead user methodology. Specifically this thesis aims to further improve the concepts and means available for lead user identification, and to gain more understanding and alternative means for transferring (lead) user knowledge.