The autumn seminar and World Usability Day event will be arranged on Friday 13.11. at 12:00-15:00. The theme of the seminar is “The many faces of sustainability in HCI”.

Sustainability, sustainable development, and all forms of approaches designed to hinder global warming, climate change, and interrelated ecological challenges, have been in focus with the worlds of human-computer interaction (and technology), design, commerce and societal development for decades. We often hear of novel solutions to reduce or re-shape the impact of human behaviour on the environment, and somehow treat the various sectors of sustainable development as separate entities – with a high level understanding that there are interconnections. This SIGCHI autumn seminar focuses on designer, consumer and user perspectives of sustainability from the inside out. It will give an overview of different understandings of sustainability, and highlight how even micro factors and decisions in the everyday can have substantial impact on either the design for, or success of, systems, artefacts and services that keep ecological consciousness in mind.

The event is organized online and is free to everyone interested in the field. Some of the presentations are in English, and some in Finnish; the language is indicated in the title.

Register for the event by Wednesday 11.11. Click this link to register!

12:00-12:10 Event opening (EN)
Rebekah Rousi, SIGCHI Finland

12:10-12:30 Announcing the winner of SIGCHI Finland Thesis competition 2026 and Winner´s speech
Joni-Roy Piispanen, SIGCHI Finland Thesis Competition Coordinator 2026

12:30-13:00 Are we there yet? Running into sustainable design barriers as an academic, designer and consumer (EN)
Pekka Murto, Senior product designer @ Vend Marketplaces

13:00-13:15 Break

13:15-13:45 TBA (FI)
Nina Wessberg, University of Vaasa

13:45-14:15 Generative AI and Sustainability (FI/EN)
Erkki Mervaala, Senior Researcher, Syke

14:15-14:45 TBA

14:45 Loppusanat / Closing Words
Johanna Silvennoinen, SIGCHI Finland

Speakers:

Pekka Murto

Pekka Murto is a Senior Product Designer at Vend marketplaces, where he works as a design lead for internal platform products and services. He is approaching two decades of experience in a broad variety of roles in design, ranging from UX and service design to industrial product design, and from academic research to teaching. He holds a doctoral degree in design from Aalto University, with research on how design integrates into complex systems.