Strategic Game UX Designer and Researcher

I’m an accomplished user experience leader, with a decade in commercial video game and digital product development. Passionate about experiences, I’m equally proud of the experiences I’ve crafted for players in beloved games such as Nine Parchments, Trine 4, and Starbase, as well as the developer experiences I’ve helped shape through UI pipelines and style guides, to modernized, timely, and effective research methods and teams, to inclusive and positive company cultures where knowledge sharing, transparency, and camaraderie are the norm.
As a child, I loved playing video games and wanted to make them when I grew up. This led me to study software engineering at University, where I stumbled upon Human Computer Interactions, which completely blew my mind and UX became my grown-up dream job. After several years working in software engineering, software integration, and robotic process automation, I found a way to fulfill both dreams and became a game UX designer and researcher.
Over the years I’ve had the pleasure to work as an individual contributor and team lead in both game and tools teams, led feature design efforts, give guidance on overall player experience to teams of various sizes, and help shape company cultures to be open, positive, and inclusive.
I’m a keen believer in community and sharing knowledge and do so by running and speaking at conferences and events, actively participating in numerous game and UX related communities, as well as write and create graphics for @expquest account on Instagram.
Speaking and events
- A talk on how to Turn Your Research Into Action with a Workshop at #gamesUR Summit 2023 (May 2023)
- Guest speaker on UX Processes in Game Development at Georgia Tech (February 2023)
- Guest speaker on Game UX Processes at Masaryk University (October 2022)
- Guest lecture on Basics of Game UX at Aalto university for the course Thinking Practices in art & Media (September 2022)
- Guest lecture on Game UX Work in Practice for the joint HCI program at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences and the University of Salzburg (June 2022)
- A talk on Why doing the boring stuff you think is not your job, really is your job at #gamesUR Summit 2021 (May 2021)
- Appeared on Happy Market Research podcast and talked about the Rise of Esports and how Consumer Insights can Help (September 2020)
- A talk on the basics of UX and UR in games at IGDA Finland event (in Helsinki, March 2020)
- A workshop on creating visual listening guides (February, 2020)
- A workshop on the basics of Games User Research (February, 2020)
- Appeared on the Game UX Podcast (recorded at the Game UX Summit ’19)
- A talk on Prototyping in Trine 4 at the Game UX Summit ’19 (October, 2019)
Other professional milestones
- Content creator at @expquest on Instagram
- Organizing networking and knowledge sharing lunches for Games User Researchers at the Helsinki area
- Building and leading the GRUX Finland group into a vibrant and active community
- Co-Chair of the Industry Track at the Academic Mindtrek Conference in 2022 and 2023
- Steering Committee member at the Games Research and User Experience Special Interest Group (GRUX SIG) of the IGDA
- Chair of GRUX Online 2020 and GRUX Online 2021
- Chair of the Industry Track at CHI PLAY 2021