Pontus Wärnestål (Ph.D) is an award-winning Service Designer and Human-Computer Interaction researcher, with 20 years of work experience in the fields of Interaction, User Experience, and Service Design.
During his Master studies in Cognitive Science, Pontus designed and developed a spoken dialogue AI system for Nokia Home Communications. The work transformed into his Ph.D dissertation on design and development of user-adaptive spoken recommender systems. After finishing his Ph.D, Pontus did Interaction and UX Design consultancy work for various clients, including Volvo Cars and web agency Daddy, before joining digital creative agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky Europe where he spearheaded the UX department as Director of User Experience.
In 2012, Pontus joined the Informatics department at Halmstad University, researching and teaching as Assistant Professor/Senior Lecturer in HCI. Pontus' focus on Health Service Innovation led to award-winning research on peer support for children cancer-survivors (SIGCHI Honorable Mention Award 2014, Livestrong Innovation Prize Winner 2014, Svenska Designpriset nominee 2015). Pontus created and directed the Bachelor program Digital Design and Innovation given at Halmstad University, where he received the Accomplished Teacher Pedagogical Merit degree in 2014 and Excellent Teacher Pedagogical Merit in 2019.
Since 2016 Pontus works as Director of Service Design and Human-Centered AI at design agency inUse in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, alongside with academic research on Human-Centered AI and Smart Cities at Halmstad University. Pontus earned the Associate Professor (Docent) degree in June 2018 and he is currently developing design resources and education programs in the intersection of Service and UX Design and Artificial Intelligence.
Here are initiatives, resources, and thoughts from the past couple of years when it comes to Human-Centered Design and Artificial Intelligence. The resources here are a mix of Swedish and English.
At Halmstad University we are doing research in several projects where AI and Design intersect. I am leading the Service Design synergy project in our future-oriented mobility service initiativ called OSMaaS (Open and Sustainable Mobility as a Service).
I teach at Master Level (e.g. courses like Intelligent Services) at the Digital Service Innovation program, as well as on Bachelor level in the program Digital design och innovation which I co-created and managed 2013-2016.
I work with AI and Service Design and innovation in professional education and life-long learning.
In particular, we give the course Service Design Based on Data Analytics since 2019, which aims at connecting Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and Human-Centered Service Design.
In order to spread the knowledge in the interesting intersection of AI and Service Design, I led a VINNOVA project with the aim of producing a MOOC in the form of a podcast.
The result is the podcast Human-Centered Machine Learning which consists of 13 episodes. The podcast can be found on all major podcast platforms, such as Spotify.
Listen to the introduction eposide here:
Our work on the podcast has been published in a paper in the Proceedings of the HCI International Conference in 2020:
Jag blev intervjuad om Högskolan i Halmstads kursutbud inom AI i podcasten Digitalsamtal:
As Design Director at inUse I work with how to practically make sense out of digital service innovation using Service Design, UX Design, and AI. Below are some video clips and blog posts on that work:
Design at AFRY 2021 – inUse is in the business of making impact - English
Director of Human-Centered AI på InUse (del 1) - Swedish
Director of Human-Centered AI på InUse (del 2) - Swedish
Human-Centered AI at InUse part of AFRY - English
My talk on design tools on From Business To Buttons 2018 - English
InUse är en del av AFRY och i det nätverket finns enorm kompetens inom maskininlärning och Data Science. Här är en episod av Tekniksnacket där InUse och AFRYs väg mot människo-centrerad AI är i fokus.
Alternativ länk: Så påverkas teknikonsulterna av AI
Framtagning och genomförande av kurser inom Service Design och AI:
Våren 2020 genomfördes ett webinar på Halland Tech Meet på temat AI och design i hälso- och sjukvård:
På Interaction19 hade jag förmånen att få presentera AI.m-modellen och de designverktyg vi tar fram inom ramen för programmet.
"Get Your Gear in Order - Service Design Tools for AI Platforms" Pontus Warnestal - Interaction19 from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
AI.m Del 1
AI.m Del 2
AI.m Del 3
Here are some articles published on popular platforms (English):
And, some of my own writing on the subject (Swedish and English):
All my scientific writing is listed below.
Design Director for strategic digital projects involving adaptive AI-powered functionality.
As Director at inUse, I am developing the design discipline internally and externally by public speaking, running workshops, as well as teaching and developing courses for inUse Academy. I am also coaching my colleagues to develop value-creating design using various aspects of AI, such as Machine Learning.
Researching and teaching UX design and Service Innovation with a research focus on health innovation and urban development/smart cities. I designed and implemented the interaction design-oriented Digital Design and Innovation bachelor program and worked as Program Director.
See my list of published research.
Leading the UX and interaction design discipline at Crispin Porter + Bogusky Europe with my skilled colleagues. Working with methodology development, contextual inquiry, analyzing user mental models and behavior patterns, deriving information architectures, laying out digital ecosystems, wireframing, prototyping, and doing usability testing for both local and international clients.
My work also involves presenting interaction design concepts for global and local clients, evangelizing the UX field and giving guest lectures and workshops.
Consultant in Interaction Design, UX, and Usability Analysis at clients such as Volvo Cars, AxTech GPS/GSM-enabled alarm systems, and digital advertising agency Daddy.
Doctoral research in Language Technology. Design and implementation of conversational recommender systems with spoken and typed interaction. Multimodal interaction design and implementation (gesture and speech). Publication and oral presentation of research papers at international conferences. Graduate course work, and teaching at university level.
Design and development of electronic program guides for TV set-top boxes with spoken interaction. Java, Speech recognition (Nuance), dialogue system development and usability evaluation. Contextual analysis (qualitative analysis and affinity diagramming) and Interaction Design concepting that lead to academic publications.
Some slide decks are temporarily available for download.