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Hi!

My name is Olli Savolainen.

• E-mail:
  hello ( at ) savolai.net
• Tel.: +358 41 4621345
• linkedin

User centered designer, MSc. (University of Tampere)

I am a usability practitioner with experience in designing successful software products. Latest, I founded Fluxitek with a partner in 2010. ForceProof, our materials testing software product, is now mature and commercially successful; we have a growing base of customers in Finland, Sweden and Germany.

My master's thesis on user centered design in open source was honorary mention—awarded (in Finnish) in ACM SIGCHI Finland competition.

I am endlessly curious to learn about other people's work; great design comes from empathy that is based on research and dialogue.

Skilled UI developer

Nearly ten years of experience in software development and fifteen years in web design have made me familiar with various technologies and frameworks. In addition to the usual suspects like C++ (Qt, MFC), Java and JS, I have completed projects in XSLT, MetaEdit+, Visual Basic, QML, and so on. Even in UI design, I often end up doing actual UI prototypes instead of a paper mockups for usability testing. So I understand the restrictions various different platforms place on design.

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Specialties

Requirements engineering, Virtual Learning Environments, usability testing, expert/heuristic evaluation, prototyping, open source, information visualisation, conceptual modeling, object oriented modeling, progressive enhancement

Interests

Observation, interview techniques, remote usability testing, agile usability practice, user profiling/personas, functional multidisciplinary development teams, participatory design, pedagogy, pedagogical aspects of UIs, mobile-first responsive design, empathy and role taking in drama/improvisation

Technologies

Balsamiq. C++/Qt/QML, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery and others, Java, various SQL databases, advanced CSS layouts, Sass, Bash, Flash+Flare, MetaEdit+ etc.

Loves <3

presence and active listening, Getting Things Done (& coaching people to use it), mindfulness, swimming, cycling, social constructivist learning theory, languages (English, Finnish, French, German, Swedish)

Experience

• 
  Product designer, front-end dev

  Fluxitek Oy

  2010—2012 WWW

  Materials testing desktop solution (Qt) for students and industry

  1 recommendation available on request

  • Conceptual modeling With domain experts, modeled in the Concept D language the concepts/relationships for storing materials testing data in a relational DB.
  • Requirements eng. Responsible for the user experience of the company's product. Work with domain experts of materials testing to turn their work into requirements and UI.
  • Implementation Designed the object-oriented architecture and implemented and the ForceProof Tester, DataManager and Analyst desktop applications with Qt on both Linux and Windows, using SQLite for the application databases and NSIS for the Windows installer.
  • Visual design
  • Support
  • Usability testing
  • Prototyping
  • Customer workflow
  • Paid work
• Web developer

  Salon Rakennus­kone­vuokraamo

  2012

  Responsive website layout implementation

  • Implementation Using Twitter Bootstrap, constructed the semantic structure for the HTML and created a grid-based mobile-responsive and progressive enhancement layout based on a graphical design that was provided.
  • Web
  • Mobile
  • Paid work
• Guest speaker

  Uni. of Tampere OSS/usability courses

  2010, 2012

  Advanced and freshman course lectures on Open Source usability practice

  • Speaking In 2010 and 2012, spoke about the Quiz Editing UI project in the master's level Open Source Software & Software Quality course in the University of Tampere. In 2012, another lecture to ~50+ first year students on the obligatory-for-all-CS-students usability intro course.
  • Paid work
• Designer, developer

  myInteractivePortfolio

  2012

  jQuery-based, responsive client-side portfolio with DOM data filtering (you're looking at it!)

  • Implementation I was unsatisfied with any of the portfolio/cv services out there. First I considered using LinkedIn's APIs, but found their data model is not rich enough. Both the tag menu and the tags in the entries themselves have HTML element class and id attributes for the filtering. Plans exist to develop this into a full-blown portfolio building service with a data entry UI. For now, the only data source and editing UI is HTML. Progressive enhancement implementation; accessible with javascript or css disabled. no mobile UI for this one though yet Technologies: jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery BBQ, Fancybox 2, git, modernizr and Sass
  • Usability testing Informal usability testing sessions with several friends. Example improvement: The fact that descriptions of individual job items can be expanded proved to be challenging. First there was only a small triangle in front of each tag with a description. Turned out users do not get it from that hint. So the expandable boxes take up full width of the job box and show a small part of the actual content text to give a hint.
  • Hobby project
  • Mobile
  • Visual design
  • Open source
  • Prototyping
  • Web
• Developer, designer

  sleepCal

  2012 WWW

  >1 thanks/compatibility reports (private due to the nature of the app)

  Circadian rhythm disorder online sleeping calendar (PHP)

  • Implementation A friend approached me with a need to track their sleeptime, since in a circadian rhythm disorder it varies, easily resulting in instability in everyday life. I decided to create a simple PHP script to help generating a sleeptime calendar.
  • Hobby project
  • Open source
  • Web
• Visual/UI redesign in QML for Nokia N900 mobile

  EvilAlarm

  2011 WWW

  Mobile alarm clock sure to wake you up

  • Hobby project
  • Mobile
  • Expert evaluation
  • Visual design
  • Implementation
  • Open source
  • Prototyping
  • Usability testing
• Voluntary usability practitioner

  Moodle.org

  2006—2011 WWW

  Usability mentoring and various design tasks

  • Expert evaluation & design Redesigned Moodle backup UI to be an actual navigable Wizard. Provided feedback on various UI designs over the years, such as the Forum search and Database module. Worked with the community to simplify the rich text editor. Designed prototypes to streamline course editing.
  • Speaking Presented in English at the Moodle iMoot online conference about usability and about how to approach the challenge of improving usability practice in the Moodle developer community. Presentation in SlideShare
  • Open source
  • Prototyping
  • Voluntary
  • Web
• Usability practitioner

  Moodle.org usability support

  2009 WWW

  Usability mentoring and various design tasks

  • Usability testing Usability tested file picker/uploader for TinyMCE, as well as the forgotten password form, created fixes and reported results.
  • Expert evaluation Provided usability consulting for different parts of Moodle: course backup, help tooltips, paint tool for rich text editor, course front page, etc.
  • Open source Adaptation of usability practice in open source processes; in practice, when projects were initiated in the Moodle community, offering evaluation and testing services for them when possible.
  • Paid work
• 
  Web designer

  Talita kuum!

  2009 WWW

  1 1 recommendation viewable on the Talita kuum! site

  Website for a local drama duo (Wordpress)

  • Implementation Together with both members of the duo, determined the goals of the project and a content strategy. I created layout suggestions which they commented on. Acquired the domain name and finally, installed Wordpress and created the site template on it.
  • Training Trained the duo to update the site themselves.
  • Prototyping
  • Web
  • Visual design
  • Hobby project
• 
  Usability practitioner

  Moodle.org: Quiz editing UI

  2008 WWW

  2 1 recommendation viewable on LinkedIn SIGCHI Finland (ACM) 2011: Honorary mention for Master's thesis (also, retweeted >60 times, counts as recommendation? :))

  Quiz/electronic exam editing for novices; redesign of a previous UI posed significant restrictions on the design

  • Support Community support related to the usability practice - learned from community feedback and reacted, but also defended UI decisions verified on users.
  • Requirements eng. Recruited and interviewed teachers about their processes with exams and quiz. Created personas and scenarios. Received continuous feedback from community. The reached goal of the project was enabling teachers to create quizzes using their processes they are already familiar with. This happened by broadening the user base of a basic tool with an expert UI to be accessible to novices.
  • Conceptual modeling Created an alternative, simplified conceptual model to enable novice Quiz builders to get started quickly. Redesigned the UI accordingly, using progressive disclosure in respect to the full conceptual model.
  • Usability testing Paper prototype tested initial prototype with teachers and other IT staff of five higher education institutions in Finland, several iterations before and after implementation.
  • Implementation I did the PHP implementation of the new UI reorganization; no new functionality and no new data structures were introduced. The new UI was added to Moodle Core in 2008 and released with Moodle 2.0 in 2010. There are some 65000 registered Moodle sites worldwide with nearly 60 million users at the time of writing this.
  • Open source The first project where I dramatically saw clashing of different user groups and their needs. I felt the pain of standing between different groups and advocating their goals to each other. Saw that UI design, usability, requirements engineering often become matters of politics, matters of ego, matters of passionate discussions where people easily get offended.
  • Prototyping
  • Customer workflow
  • Paid work
  • Web
• 
  Systems Analyst

  Uni. of Tampere: Electronic Exam System

  2006—2008 WWW

  2 recommendations viewable on LinkedIn (1 printed available on request)

  Time-independent exam taking in camera surveilled classrooms

  • Usability testing Iterative UI design on a web demo, usability testing with teachers and students as test subjects.
  • Requirements eng. Worked as usability consultant and technical advisor in a team consisting of various stakeholders from different units in the university, determining the different needs of various study disciplines for an electronic exam system.
  • Client workflow Designed the student workflow from an online exam reservation system to a physical IP cam surveilled classroom, and the teacher workflow from creating an exam to grading it and giving users feedback by email.
  • Implementation Participated in the PHP/SQL implementation of the Electronic Exam System, a pioneering Moodle-based solution for computer-based exam building and taking.
  • Prototyping
  • Visual design
  • Paid work
  • Web
• Usability practitioner

  Finnish National Board of Customs

  2006—2007

  Part of studies at Uni. Tampere

  • Usability testing Provided usability services to the development team. Paper prototype tested the database solution designed. Documented the user research and the design in a series of formal UI documents for the development team to implement.
  • Requirements eng. In cooperation with a project team and representatives of the client, worked through the needs of the client iteratively in this agile development project.
  • Prototyping
  • Implementation
  • Hobby project
• Developer, designer

  JPEG-EXIF autorotate

  2005—2007 WWW

  >20 thanks/compatibility reports viewable on app website

  Quick desktop fix for pictures taken in portrait showing up in landscape

  • Implementation Out of a personal need, came up with the idea for a small app that would integrate with Windows Explorer and automatically rotate the pixels in JPEG images based on the EXIF rotation metadata provided by digital cameras. Created a free software project for it.
  • Hobby project
  • Open source
• Developer, UI designer

  ReDash hierarchy builder

  2004 WWW

  Java desktop app - Build trees on any platform!

  • Implementation Java coursework for UI development course, tree building algorithms provided on course. Prototype was created on C++ MFC.
  • Hobby project
• Web designer, IT support

  Aleksin Ravintolat Oy

  2002—2006

  1 written recommendation by CEO Saara Sinivuori available on request.

  • IT Support It security, office application support and other consulting related to office computing.
  • Implementation Iteratively developed the corporate website, which at the time included the websites for six restaurants. Deployed and customized a simple content managemen system.
  • Training Consulted on various IT and internet related questions. Trained the employhees of the restaurants owned by the company to use the simple content management system I had deployed.
  • Prototyping
  • Customer workflow
  • Paid work
  • Web
• Website interaction designer

  Logos Ministries of Finland

  2004—2005

  Website for church youth

  • Expert evaluation & design Did usability evaluation, partly based on Nielsen's heuristics, and provided design suggestions.
  • Implementation Content proof reading and evaluation, technical implementation of parts of website together with the project team.
  • Visual design
  • Hobby project
  • Web
• Web designer, IT support

  Finnish Lutheran Mission

  2004—2005

  Website for church organisation

  • Implementation Created a website and participated in the wider design of another.
  • Training Provided training in basic computer, desktop application and Internet usage.
  • Visual design
  • Hobby project
  • Web
• Web designer, Domain Specific Modeler

  Polytechnic Metropolia (formerly Stadia)

  2004, 2005

  • Implementation Created websites for various projects. Created an XSL Transformations script to regenerate the structure of a C++ application in XML. Created a MetaEdit model and a simple code generator for an industrial software application.
  • Visual design
  • Paid work
  • Web
• Developer, UI designer

  The Great Boogie Hunt

  2003 WWW

  Flash game: Destroy boogies!

  • Implementation A small Flash-based point-and-click game.
  • Game design
  • Hobby project
• Web designer, IT support

  Fenten Oy (formerly Fennoscan Oy)

  2002—2003

  Corporate website

  WWW

  • Implementation Based on the specification from a graphic design agency, implemented (and translated from Finnish to English) the then-current corporate website with a PHP backend.
  • Prototyping
  • Translation
  • Paid work
  • Web
• Web designer, IT support

  Finnish Defence Forces

  2001

  As part of military service

  1 written recommendation available on request

  • Implementation Website administration of two sites.
  • Training Training tasks for office personnel in basic computer and Internet usage.
  • Web