Iikka Pietilä
Publications
Pietilä, I., Kortesuo, K., Pohjalainen, U., & Tuominen, M. (2024). Shift in intelligence issue ownership: Conceptualizing CITINT – Intelligence conducted by citizens. Frontiers in Political Science.
Pietilä, I., Kortesuo, K., Pohjalainen, U., & Tuominen, M. (2024). Kansalaisten tekemä CITINT ja sen vertautuminen valtiolliseen tiedusteluun. In Isokangas, J. & Rantalainen, M-L. (Eds.) Tiedustelun maailma: Tiedustelu ja yhteiskunta: Tiedusteluanalyysi I -kurssin raportteja. Informaatioteknologian tiedekunnan julkaisuja. 102/2024. Jyväskylän yliopisto.
Link to publication.
Varsaluoma, J., Pietilä, I., Väänänen, K., & Rättilä T. (2023). Experimenting with youth-centred e-participation: The case of the Virtual Council. In Honkatukia, P. & Rättilä, T. (Eds.), Young People as Agents of Sustainable Society: Reclaiming the Future (pp. 59 - 74). Taylor & Francis. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003345114-4
Doctoral dissertation: Pietilä, I. (2022). Studies of Digital Solutions Supporting Societal Participation of Youths. Tampere University.
Pietilä, I., Lähde, M., Varsaluoma, J., & Väänänen, K. (2022). EParticipation for Supporting Societal Participation Self-efficacy and Lowering the Thresholds of Societal Participation: Case Virtual Council. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI EA '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 31, 1–8. Link to publisher.
Albrecht, E., Pietilä, I., & Saarela, S-R. (2022). Public Perceptions on the Procedural Values and Proposed Outcomes of the Finnish Climate Change Act Amendment. Frontiers in Climate. 3:657241. Link to publisher.
Pietilä, I., Meriläinen, N., Varsaluoma, J., & Väänänen, K. (2021). Citizen-centric socio-cognitive model for societal participation. Short paper. EGOV2021 – IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART 2021 conference and in Proceedings of Ongoing Research, Practitioners, Posters, Workshops, and Projects at EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2021 co-located with the IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2021. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, CEUR-WS.org 2021.
Pietilä, I., Kallio, J., Varsaluoma, J., & Väänänen, K. (2021). Youths’ digital participation in the early phases of COVID-19 lockdown. EGOV2021 – IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART 2021 conference and Proceedings of the Electronic Participation 13th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference, ePart 2021. Link to publisher. Winner of the best paper award.
Pietilä, I., Meriläinen, N., Varsaluoma, J., & Väänänen, K. (2021). Understanding the youths’ user needs for inclusive eParticipation. In European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2021 (ECCE 2021). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 38, 1–5. DOI / Link to publisher.
Pietilä, I., Meriläinen, N., Varsaluoma, J., & Väänänen, K. (2021). Understanding youths’ needs for digital societal participation: towards an inclusive Virtual Council. Behaviour & Information Technology. DOI / Link to publisher.
Ågren, S., Pietilä, I., & Rättilä, T. (2020). Palkkatyöskeskeisen ajattelun esiintyminen ammattiin opiskelevien työelämäasenteissa. In Haikkola, L. & Myllyniemi, S. (Eds.), Nuorisobarometri 2019 - Hyvää työtä! (pp. 157 - 178).
Väänänen K., Hiltunen A., Varsaluoma J., & Pietilä I. (2020). CivicBots – Chatbots for Supporting Youth in Societal Participation. In: Følstad A. et al. (eds) Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11970. Springer, Cham.
Pietilä, I., Varsaluoma, J., & Väänänen, K. (2019). Understanding the Digital and Non-digital Participation by the Gaming Youth. LNCS Volume 11747, 2019, p. 453-471. Presented at 2019 IFIP TC13 INTERACT 2019.
Meriläinen, N., Pietilä, I., & Varsaluoma, J. (2018). Digital services and youth participation in processes of social change: World Café workshops in Finland. Presented at 2018 ECPR General Conference Universität Hamburg.
Master’s thesis: Alpha frequency discrepancy and trait anxiety, activation, and inhibition in states of anxiety and mindfulness, 2018.
Conference presentations and other texts
Pietilä, I. (2021). Nuoret mukaan kunnissa – käyttäjä- ja kansalaiskeskeinen suunnittelu tukee nuorten digitaalisia osallistumismahdollisuuksia ja purkaa osallistumisen esteitä. Demokratiaverkosto 21 - "Osallistavat kaupungit - avain osallistavaan kasvuun?" Tausta-aineisto Kokkolan Chydenius-seminaariin. Link to publisher.
Albrecht, E., Pietilä, I., & Saarela, S-R. (2020). Participation for effective and legitimate legislative drafting: Citizen perceptions on Finnish climate act revision. Presented at the Finnish Society for Environmental Social Sciences (YHYS) Fall Colloquium: Measuring and valuing sustainability, 19–20 November 2020.
Meriläinen, N., Pietilä, I., & Varsaluoma, J. (2020). "So My Views Actually Matter in the Democratic Processes?” - How Did Various Youths Experience the Design and User Research Workshops of an eParticipation Platform. Presented at the ECPR conference.
Meriläinen, N., Pietilä, I., & Varsaluoma, J. (2020). "So My Views Actually Matter in the Democratic Processes?” - How Did Various Youths Experience the Design and User Research Workshops of an eParticipation Platform. Presented at the Annual Conference of the Finnish Political Science Association 2020.
Pietilä, I. & Varsaluoma, J. (2019). Young people’s ideas on ‘digital participation’. Presented at the XVII Annual Conference of Youth Studies 2019.
Reviews of conference and journal papers
• Obrana a strategie (Defence & Strategy) 2025
• The eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government (JeDEM) 2021
• Interacting with Computers (IWC / Oxford Academic Journals) 2021
• Interacting with Computers (IWC / Oxford Academic Journals) 2018
Education
2018 - 2022: PhD. Doctoral Programme of Computing and Electrical Engineering and Doctoral Programme of Humans and Technologies. Human technology interaction, user psychology, user research. Tampere University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences.
2021 - 2022: MEng. Master's Degree Programme in Information Technology. Metropolia UAS.
2020 - 2021: Pedagogical qualification. Professional teacher education (AmO), 60 ECTS. HAMK UAS.
2020 - 2021: MSc. studies (21 ECTS) in Master's Degree Programme in Human Neuroscience. University of Turku, Faculty of Medicine.
2016 - 2018: MSc. Master's Degree Programme in Cognitive science. Computer science, cognitive neuroscience. University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Information Technology.
2010 - 2015: BA. Therapeutic recreation, media studies & usage of media in pedagogic settings, NGO and development. HAMK UAS.
2005 - 2010: Media assistant. Vocational qualification in audio-visual communication. Audio-visual productions, project management, digital communications, photography, video, web development.
Professional experience
From 03/2022: Systems specialist / Researcher. Undisclosed employer, technical R&D.
03/2022-12/2022: Visiting researcher. Tampere University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences.
01/2018 – 02/2022: Doctoral researcher. Tampere University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences. Multidisciplinary research project "ALL-YOUTH" funded by The Strategic Research Council (SRC) at the Academy of Finland.
- User research: Planning, designing, coordinating, and implementing a large-scale user study for an eParticipation platform collaborating with ministries of justice and environment, educational settings and 3rd sector partners. Communicating findings for prototype development as user needs and service requirements.
- Prototype test study: eParticipation platform prototype large-scale test study planning, designing, coordinating, and implementing. Collaborating with i.a. Ministry of environment and multiple educational and 3rd sector instances.
- Developing methods: Multidisciplinary research methods, data acquisition, and analysis pipelines development in collaboration with a network with researchers from various fields.
- Teaching: Teaching on course Basics of user experience . 2-3 weekly excercise workshop facilitating, lecturing on interaction modalities and accessibility. Group assignment counseling and evaluating.
10/2017 – 01/2018: Technical Assistant. University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Psychology.
- Research project Neurofeed funded by the Academy of Finland. Working in a multidisciplinary brain research laboratory (CIBR). Technical support, co-designing study settings, testing. Test and test subject preparations, supporting in analyses.
03/2017 – 09/2017: Project coordinator. Music Against Drugs RY.
- Coordinating an online gaming community project for youth. Setting goals, evaluation, creating tools for assessment and evaluation. Developing new methods for online counselling, gamification. Planning of activities, executing workshops, communications. Developing new protocols for the organisation information management.
05/2017 – 08/2017: Research assistant. University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Information Technology.
- Designing and implementing a movement data study. Analysis and reporting. User research of a mobile application related to driving safety. Other assistive tasks.
05/2016 – 08/2016: Research assistant. University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Information Technology.
- Designing and implementing a movement data study. Analysis and reporting. User research of a mobile application related to driving safety. Other assistive tasks.
04/2015– 04/2016: Web communications officer. Kiipula vocational school.
- Internal and external communications. Planning and developing of communications. Teaching and training ICT to personnel and students, participation in intranet renovation, executing user research and definitions. Web administration.
12/2013– 02/2015: Adviser, counselling and wellbeing. Student union HAMKO (Student union of HAMK UAS).
- Development of counselling and teaching in higher education setting. Planning and executing seminars and training events. Communications and personnel coordination and management. Developing new means for online counselling. Co-designing study feedback processes.
01/2013 – 06/2013: Teacher (Substitute). HAMK UAS.
- Teaching media tools to BA students. Lecturing and workshops regarding video, editing and blogging. Designing course contents, pedagogical solutions, grading and feedback.
Positions of trust and volunteering
• 2021: Doctoral student representative. Planning group for the Doctoral Programme of Humans and Technologies.
• 2013-2023: Realtime compo organizer. Assembly Organizing.
• 2013-2014: Secretary. Hämeenlinna city civil council.
• 2012: Vice president of the board. HAMK UAS Student union.
• 2011: Board member. HAMK UAS Student union.
• 2006-2008: Sports compo organizer. Assembly Organizing.
"th3rd" (GitHub, Instanssi)
Realtime demo executed with Python, ModernGL, GLSL, and FL in collaboration with plive. Placed 2nd in Instanssi-demo competition in Instanssi 2023 event. Git repository includes the single file executable bundled with pyinstaller and a zip file containing source code and resources. The source code can be used as an example and basis for experiments such as intro and demo projects.
Petri Dish Game (GitHub, Youtube)
This is a game for three players. The main goal is to create a better virus than the other two players have created. A better virus is able to cover more area in a petri dish without breaking out. Each player is asked to enter their player name and their custom DNA sequence for their virus. The DNA sequence requires eight characters and can include only characters a, t, c, and g. Each character may be used as many times as wanted and not all of the characters are required to be used. DNA sequence can be for example any of the following: "aattccgg", "aaaattgg", or "ccccccct". The game gives a visualisation of the virus growth and plots the key figures for easy comparison. The four bases: ATCG, adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine are the four nucleotides found in DNA.
Sample distribution sandbox (GitHub, Youtube)
This is a Python tool that can be used in for example statistics education and examplification. This tool enables creating populations with different kinds of distributions in a random variable and animating the sample distribution formation. Sample distribution boxplot, histogram, and QQ-plot are drawn, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk normality test results are shown. Libraries used: random, time, scipy, numpy, matplotlib, gc.
pyART (GitHub)
Python implementation of ART method (Affective Reaction Times). ART can be used to e.g. measure semantic distances between symbols or icons or to test/compare other artefacts with a priming expression. Tested on python 3.5, 3.6, 3.7. Libraries used: os, tkinter, time, PIL (aka PILLOW), random and csv.
"Comp Pimenos" (GitHub, YouTube)
Realtime demo written in Python using Pygame, OpenGL, pyaudio, struct and numpy. .py excluding music and libraries is 16KB. More than half of the demo was written during party. Released at Pulkkinen demo & lan party private event spring 2019 finishing second.
"Digital Apparatus" (GitHub, YouTube)
Wild realtime demo executed with Python on Xilinx PYNQ. Libraries used: Tut-arduino, Math, Time, Random. Digital Apparatus by nisual ft. plive - Instanssi 2019 3rd place in Summamutikka.
Step counter (GitHub)
Welcome to the step counter 2.0. This is an application made by Iikka Pietilä for a basic programming course at TUT. Goals: "To design a program with a graphic user interface and execute it with Tkinter library." By using this application user can gain insight on his/hers walking habits. Developed in Python.
"Joku Geneerinen Chomsky-quote" (Youtube)
Joku Geneerinen Chomsky-quote by nisual ft. plive - Instanssi 2016 3rd place in Summamutikka. Blender 3d, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere. Music: Plive