Research at Applied IT

At the Department of Applied Information Technology research of high quality is conducted with high relevance for industry, public administration and society at large. The research is often conducted in collaborative projects with companies or public organizations, and is often multi disciplinary in its nature.

The research at the department is applied in the meaning that it is focusing on:

• IT-usage: developing innovative IT-use, and understanding consequences of IT-use at individual, organizational and societal level
• IT-artefacts and applications: innovative and experimental design of IT-artefacts
• Software development processes and methods for developing IT-artefacts, e.g. software engineering and IT-management
• Specific application areas: IT-usage in specific areas as e.g. learning, art, music, logistics, transportation, healthcare

The department as whole has a tradition of doing qualitative empirical research, based on case studies or ethnographical field studies, even though quantitiative approaches are also represented. Theoretically much of the research has a socio-cultural ground. There is also a strong tradition of industrial cooperation based on action research and collaborative practice research.

Three key milieus

The research at the department is by nature multi disciplinary, among the employees many research disciplines are represented as informatics, computer science, cognitive science, law, ethnology, communication, linguistics, pedagogy, fine arts, music, economy, and higher education.

The organization of research is supported by the complete milieus, with clusters of different groups and subunits of different character. The milieus are:

• Informatics
• Learning
  
• Visualization