Business from technology

Marja Liinasuo

Current position at VTT

As Research Scientist at Human activity and systems usability team Marja Liinasuo evaluates and is involved in designing usable tools and working practices in domains that are technically challenging and/or are safety critical.

Research background and current research topics

Research interests:
Systems usability
Activity-centred design
Human factors in complex environments.

Current major research projects at VTT

Common Operational Picture Exploitation - COPE
Operator Practices and Human-Systems Interfaces in Computer-Based Control Stations - O’Practice

Education

Marja’s education continued after M.A. degree (psychology) first with adult education studies (cum laude level) and thereafter, doctoral studies about visual perception at the University of Helsinki, resulting in PhD degree (psychology) on 2008.

Doctor in Psychology University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology, 2008
Master of Arts in Psychology University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology, 1986
Adult education studies (cum laude) University of Helsinki, Department of Adult education 1990-1993
Periodical doctoral studies University of Helsinki, Institute of Biomedicine 1992–1998 University of Helsinki, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences 2003–2006.

Work history

Marjas’s working experience has the same trend from mental health care via training to research.

During studying, she worked in mental hospitals and prison and continued as prison psychologist after graduation. Thereafter she started teaching, mainly psychology, in various contexts, ranging from training in educational institutes aiming to some profession to crammer and evening studies based on students’ general interest. Training continued in the form of training coordination in Siemens Osakeyhtiö where working area comprised not only of training coordination but instruction production about technical devices and software applications to end users, teaching the use of various applications, and taking part as project member or project manager in new software implementation and upgrade projects, from the perspective of know-how support for Siemens employees.

Having studied visual perception she started working in Nokia in subjective display evaluation. The evaluation was mainly conducted as laboratory-type experiments and was focused on user experience. This study is now widened by both focus of interest and by methods to be used to include systems usability in VTT.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland: Research Scientist, since 2006
Nokia Oyj, NRC: Research Engineer, 2005-2006
Siemens Osakeyhtiö: Training Coordinator, 1998-2005
Provincial Government of Uusimaa: Psychologist, 1996-1997
University of Helsinki, Institute of Biomedicine, Department of Physiology: Scientist, 1993-1995
College of Social Services in Helsinki: Psychology Teacher, 1988-1990
Valmennuskeskus (WM-data): Psychology courses preparing for university entrance examination in psychology and medicine, 1988-1991 (part time)
Eastern Helsinki Institute: Trainer in psychology courses, 1987-1994 (part time)
Helsinki Custody Prison: Psychologist, 1985-1987
University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology: Research Assistant 1983-1984 (part time).

Selected publications

Kojo, I., Liinasuo M., and Rovamo J. Spatial and temporal properties of illusory figures. Vision Research 1993, Vol. 33, No 7, pp. 897-901.

Liinasuo M.E., Kojo, I.V., and Rovamo J.M. Effects of spatial configuration and number of fixations on Kanizsa triangle detection. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 1996, 38, 12, 2554 – 2565.

Liinasuo, M., Kojo, I., Häkkinen, J. & Rovamo, J. Neon colour spreading in three-dimensional illusory objects in humans. Neuroscience Letters 2000, 281, 119 - 122.

Liinasuo, M., Kojo, I., Häkkinen, J., Rovamo, J. Visual completion of three-dimensional, chromatic, moving stimuli in humans. Neuroscience Letters 2004, 354, 18 - 21.

Salmimaa, M., Häkkinen, J., Liinasuo, M., Järvenpää, T. 2009. Effect of number of views to the viewing experience with autostereoscopic 3-D displays. Journal of the Society for Information Display, Vol 17(5), 449-458.

For complete list of publications, see Marja Liinasuo’s publications in VTT Publications Register.