Ø. Haugen is focused on making better systems. In particular, he has worked in the domain of real-time systems and telecommunications. He is now leading the Research Group on cyber-physical systems. He has mainly concerned himself with the software and the languages to describe systems. He has taken part in the standardization of modeling languages SDL and MSC within ITU (International Telecom Union), and UML and SysML within OMG (Object Management Group). He has led the work on sequence diagrams both in ITU and in OMG, and an effort to standardize product line descriptions (within OMG). He has worked on methodology for engineering real-time systems as a textbook author and as a course creator.

He has been project leader in research projects as well as in industrial contexts. He was general chair for MODELS 2010 with more than 400 participants over a full week. At Østfold University College he has had work package leadership in EU projects Productive4.0 and Arrowhead Tools. He currently contributes to the modeling language SysML v2, in particular concerning sequence descriptions and language extension mechanisms.