Interaction design is changing as a response to new social, technological, and environmental contexts, which bring new scopes of complexity into the frame interaction designers are con-cerned with. These changes demand that established ways of designing are in need of revision, because failing to do so will inevitably lead us to reinforce established ways of designing. This thesis is a proposal of how to shift our attention from ‘what we design’ to ‘how we design’ through critical inquiry into designing itself. By using experiments as a means and facilitator of communication, I have been able to open up tensions between what designing is and what designing is becoming which inform our ways of doing. I have utilised probes to prompt fellow interaction designers to submit their vision to critical inquiry and experimented with physical experiences to facilitate awareness of embedded behaviours and thought patterns. Through my experiments, I have been able to design the constellations in which the underlying became visi-ble and tangible in ways that mere conversation cannot.Through a programmatic design research approach, this thesis work has been a journey of shed-ding light on the design program that embeds the relation to established and emergent design ideals, and experimenting with ways to make the tensions between the established and emerg-ing visible and conversational. In the process of carrying out this thesis, I have identified that the tensions between established and unfolding design ideals are often taken for granted within current design practices. Through my work, it became visible that established structures and relations within design obstruct designers from thinking beyond solutions and seamlessness. It became visible that the tensions that fiction, uncertainty and problem-framing approaches cre-ate within our current ways of doing are rarely conversational, and therefore revision of promi-nent ways of doing is lacking.  In this thesis, I am proposing an alternative design program that pushes designers to subject their practices to critical dissemination and expose collective relations to what designing is and is becoming. In my final manifestation I am proposing an activity that facilitates the type of col-lective conversation that I argue is needed to start to open up to reflecting on our current design program. By facilitating collective discussion around ‘what designing is’ and ‘what designing is becoming’, have prompted more awareness of collective relations to ‘what designing is’.In this thesis, I argue that failing to alter our design program and continuing to take ‘what de-signing is’ for granted will prevent interaction design from evolving from what it is, to what it can be, as taking what designing is for granted will lead design practices to merely solidify es-tablished ways of doing. I believe we should be doing the opposite of taking things for granted. I believe we should be actively designing interaction design(ing).

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Semantic interaction in visual data analytics allows users to indirectly adjust model parameters by directly manipulating the output of the models. This is accomplished using an underlying bidirectional pipeline that first uses statistical models to visualize the raw data. When a user interacts with the visualization, the interaction is interpreted into updates in the model parameters automatically, giving the users immediate feedback on each interaction. These interpreted interactions eliminate the need for a deep understanding of the underlying statistical models. However, the development of such tools is necessarily complex due to their interactive nature. Furthermore, each tool defines its own unique pipeline to suit its needs, which leads to difficulty experimenting with different types of data, models, interaction techniques, and visual encodings. To address this issue, we present a flexible multi-model bidirectional pipeline for prototyping visual analytics tools that rely on semantic interaction. The pipeline has plug-and-play functionality, enabling quick alterations to the type of data being visualized, how models transform the data, and interaction methods. In so doing, the pipeline enforces a separation between the data pipeline and the visualization, preventing the two from becoming codependent. To show the flexibility of the pipeline, we demonstrate a new visual analytics tool and several distinct variations, each of which were quickly and easily implemented with slight changes to the pipeline or client. / Master of Science

Technostress is an emerging and significant psychological phenomenon associated with the use of technology. It impacts human behavior and distracts from living a healthy and meaningful life. As humans increasingly encounter computational technology on a daily basis, there is a need to understand and manage the anxieties and tensions that can result from these interactions. Using the lens of critical design, this thesis explores this concept of technology induced stress and promotes reflection, personal growth and awareness through three different design research methods. It further builds on the topic of slow technology which unfolds in the form of a design fiction, design probe and design artifacts, challenging our understanding of technostress while embracing constructive discussions and creative designs to speculate the human-technology relationship. / Master of Fine Arts

Feminist self-defense is a form of victim prevention training with a plethora of positive physical, mental, and social outcomes. In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) self-defense is still a relatively under-researched topic. As such, inspired by HCI’s recent interest in feminist causes and corporeal practices, the goal of the study is to explore how embodied interaction design can empower beginner self-defense practitioners. To do so, the study was conducted via two methods: semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, and a participatory speculative design workshop with novice practitioners. This resulted in several speculative design concepts based on the use of felt experiences as a design resource. The concepts demonstrate how design can be used as a vehicle for imagining feminist technology that challenges gender norms and plays the role of scaffolding for cultivating embodied empowerment.

Spatial haptics is a fascinating technology with which users can explore and modify3D computer graphics objects with the sense of touch, but its application potentialis often misunderstood. For a large group of application designers it is still unknown,and those who are aware of it often have either too high expectations of what is technicallyachievable or believe it is too complicated to consider at all. In addition, spatialhaptics is in its current form ill-suited to interaction design. This is partly because theproperties and use qualities cannot be experienced in an application prototype until asystem is fully implemented, which takes too much effort to be practical in most designsettings. In order to find a good match between a solution and a framing of aproblem, the designer needs to be able to mould/shape/form the technology into a solution,but also to re-frame the problem and question initial conceptual designs as shelearns more about what the technology affords. Both of these activities require a goodunderstanding of the design opportunities of this technology. In this thesis I present a new way of working with spatial haptic interaction design.Studying the serially linked mechanism from a well-known haptic device, and a forcereflectingcarving algorithm in particular, I show how to turn these technologies froman esoteric engineering form into a form ready for interaction design. The work isgrounded in a real application: an oral surgery simulator named Kobra that has beendeveloped over the course of seven years within our research group. Its design hasgone through an evolutionary process with iterative design and hundreds of encounterswith the audience; surgeon-teachers as users and potential customers. Some ideas, e.g.gestalting authentic patient cases, have as a result received increased attention by thedesign team, while other ideas, e.g. automatic assessment, have faded away. Simulation is an idea that leads to ideals of realism; that e.g. simulated instrumentsshould behave as in reality, e.g. a simulated dental instrument for prying teeth is expectedto behave according to the laws of physics and give force and torque feedback.If it does not, it is a bad simulation. In the present work it is shown how some of therealism ideal is unnecessary for creating meaningful learning applications and can actuallyeven be counter-productive, since it may limit the exploration of creative designsolutions. This result is a shift in perspective from working towards constantly improvingtechnological components, to finding and making use of the qualities of modern,but not necessarily absolute cutting-edge, haptic technology. To be able to work creatively with a haptic system as a design resource we needto learn its material qualities and how - through changing essential properties - meaningfulexperiential qualities can be modulated and tuned. This requires novel tools andworkflows that enable designers to explore the creative design space, create interactionsketches and tune the design to cater for the user experience. In essence, this thesisshows how one instance of spatial haptics can be turned from an esoteric technologyinto a design material, and how that can be used, and formed, with novel tools throughthe interaction design of a purposeful product in the domain of dental education. / 3D-haptik är en fascinerande teknologi med vilken användare kan utforska ochmodifiera tredimensionella datorgrafik-objekt med känseln, men dess användningspotentialär ofta missförstådd. För flertalet applikationsutvecklare är tekniken fortfarandetill stor del okänd, och de som känner till den har antingen alltför höga förväntingarav vad som är tekniskt möjligt, eller uppfattar 3D-haptik som alltför komplicerat föratt vara ett gångbart alternativ. Dessutom är 3D-haptik i sin nuvarande form tämligenomoget för interaktionsdesign. Detta beror till stor del på att en applikationsprototypsegenskaper och användarkvaliteter inte kan upplevas innan ett system är implementerati sin helhet, vilket kräver alltför stora utvecklingsresurser för att vara praktisktförsvarbart i de flesta designsituationer. För att uppnå en bra matchning mellan ett användarbehovi en viss situation och en potentiell lösning behöver en designer kunna åena sidan formge och finjustera tekniken, och å andra sidan vara öppen för att ifrågasättaoch ändra problemformulering och konceptdesign när hen lär sig mer om vilkamöjligheter tekniken erbjuder. Båda dessa aktiviteter kräver en god förståelse för vilkadesignmöjligheter som en viss teknik, eller material, erbjuder. I den här avhandlingen presenterar jag ett nytt sätt att arbeta med interaktionsdesignför 3D-haptik. Genom att studera i synnerhet den seriellt länkade mekanismen somåterfinns i en vanligt förekommande typ av 3D-haptikenhet, och en kraftåterkopplandeskärande/borrande algoritm visar jag hur man kan omvandla dessa teknologier från attvara en svårtillgänglig ingengörskonst till en form som är mer redo för interaktionsdesign.Denna förberedelse resulterar i ett slags designmaterial, samt de verktyg ochprocesser som har visat sig nödvändiga för att effektivt kunna arbeta med materialet.Forskningen är grundad i en verklig tillämpning: en simulator för käkkirurgi vidnamn Kobra, som har utvecklas under sju år inom vår forskargrupp. Kobras utformninghar genomgått en evolutionär utvecklingsprocess med iterativ design och hundratalsmöten med målgruppen; lärarpraktiserande käkkirurger och studenter som användareoch potentiella kunder. Därvid har några designidéer, t.ex. gestaltning av patientfall, avdesignteamet fått utökad uppmärksamhet medan andra idéer, t.ex. automatisk gradering,har tonats ned. Simulering är i sig självt en idé som ofta leder till ett ideal av realism; till exempelatt simulerade instrument ska uppföra sig som i verkligheten, det vill säga ett simulerattandläkarinstrument för att hävla (bända) tänder förväntas följa fysikens lagar och geåterkoppling i form av av både kraft och vridmoment. Om detta inte uppfylls betraktassimuleringen som undermålig. I det aktuella arbetet visas hur delar av realism-idealetinte är nödvändigt för att skapa meningsfulla lärandeapplikationer, och att det till ochmed kan vara kontraproduktivt eftersom det begränsar utforskande av kreativa designlösningar.Ifrågasättandet av realsimidealet resulterar i ett perspektivskifte vad gällersimulatorutveckling generellt, från att ensidigt fokusera på vidareutveckling av enskildatekniska komponenter, till att identifiera och dra nytta av kvaliteterna som redanerbjuds i modern haptisk teknik. För att kunna arbeta kreativt med ett haptiksystem som en designresurs behöver vilära känna dess materialkvaliteter och hur, genom att ändra grundläggande parametrar,meningsfulla upplevelsekvaliteter kan moduleras och finjusteras. Detta kräver i sin turnyskapande av verktyg och arbetsflöden som möjliggör utforskande av det kreativadesignrummet, skapande av interaktionssketcher och finjustering av gestaltningen föratt tillgodose användarupplevelsen. I grund och botten visar denna avhandling hur en specifik 3D-haptik-teknologi kanomvandlas från att vara en svårtillgänglig teknologi till att vara ett designmaterial, ochhur det kan användas, och formas, med nyskapande verktyg genom interaktionsdesignav en nyttoprodukt inom tandläkarutbildning / <p>QC 20160309</p>

Personal Informatics (PI) systems common trending theme is fitness, which in turn is a trending theme in human-computer interaction. These systems have been the focus of a handful of studies. So far, the research that has been conducted merely focuses on the technical details of such services and few investigate the longitudinal use of PI systems. Even though fitness is a popular area, still personal informatics systems designed for this purpose suffer from short-term use. Therefore, there is a need to design systems that encourages users for prolong use. The prolonged use of digital artifacts is an issue of sustainable interaction design. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the design space of personal informatics fitness systems through the lens of sustainable interaction design. This thesis aims at investigating motives and intentions behind the longitudinal use of personal informatics fitness systems. This thesis argues that by adopting the lens of sustainable interaction design we can find ways of designing PI systems with prolonged use for the users. Based on the findings the thesis ends by suggesting a guideline for designing personal informatics fitness systems which will hopefully help interaction designers and researchers alike.

Augmented Reality is technology that superimposes virtual content on the real world, typically shown through a see-through head mounted display (HMD) or handheld device. AR has successfully been used for many applications and provides new opportunities for remote collaboration and communication. With the growing availability of commercial HMDs such as Google Glass and the Oculus Rift, more possibilities in the field of AR have opened up. However, interaction with AR content shown on HMDs is still not very well explored. This master's thesis investigates the possibilities of a combined use of head mounted and hand held displays (HHD) for interaction in AR conferencing experiences. Prior research in communication, AR collaboration and HMD-HHD interaction is reviewed before presenting new interaction methods. Two different HHD interfaces and cuing methods were created to support file sharing in an AR conferencing application. A formal evaluation compared four different combinations of the interfaces and cuing methods. The results showed a significant difference between the different conditions where in particular one condition performed better than the others. The results were used to create a set of basic design guidelines for future research and application development.

There is a growing amount of digital information available from Open-Data initiatives, Internet-of-Things technologies, and web APIs in general. At the same time, an increasing amount of technology in our lives is creating a desire to take advantage of the generated data for personal or professional interests. Building interactive applications that would address this desire is challenging since it requires advanced engineering skills that are normally reserved for professional software developers. However, more and more interactive applications are prototyped outside of enterprise environments, in more opportunistic settings. For example, knowledge workers apply end-user development techniques to solve their tasks, or groups of friends get together for a weekend hackathon in the hope of becoming the next big startup. This thesis focuses on how to design prototyping tools that support opportunistic development of interactive applications that take advantage of the growing amount of available data. In particular, the goal of this thesis is to understand what are the current challenges of prototyping with data and to identify important qualities of tools addressing these challenges. To accomplish this, declarative development tools were explored, while keeping focus on what data and interaction the application should afford rather than on how they should be implemented (programmed). The work presented in this thesis was carried out as an iterative process which started with a design exploration of Model-based UI Development, followed by observations of prototyping practices through a series of hackathon events and an iterative design of Endev – a prototyping tool for data-driven web applications. Formative evaluations of Endev were conducted with programmers and interaction designers.  The main results of this thesis are the identified challenges for prototyping with data and the key qualities required of prototyping tools that aim to address these challenges. The identified key qualities that lower the threshold for prototyping with data are: declarative prototyping, familiar and setup-free environment, and support tools. Qualities that raise the ceiling for what can be prototyped are: support for heterogeneous data and for advanced look and feel. / Mer och mer digital information görs tillgänglig på olika sätt, t.ex. via öppna data-initiativ, Sakernas internet och API:er. Med en ökande teknikanvändning så skapas även ett intresse för att använda denna data i olika sammanhang, både privat och professionellt. Att bygga interaktiva applikationer som adresserar dessa intressen är en utmaning då det kräver avancerade ingenjörskunskaper, vilket man vanligtvis endast hittar hos professionella programmerare. Sam­tidigt byggs allt fler interaktiva applikationer utanför företagsmiljöer, i mer opportunistiska sammanhang. Detta kan till exempel vara kunskapsarbetare som använder sig av s.k. anveckling (eng. end-user development) för att lösa en uppgift, eller kompisar som träffas en helg för att hålla ett hackaton med hopp om att bli nästa framgångsrika startup-företag. Den här avhandlingen fokuserar på hur prototypverktyg kan utformas för att stödja utveckling av interaktiva applikationer i sådana opportunistiska sammanhang, som utnyttjar den ökande mängden av tillgänglig data. Målet med arbetet som presenteras i den här avhandlingen har varit att förstå utmaningarna som det innebär att använda data i prototyparbete och att identifiera viktiga kvalitéer för de verktyg som ska kunna hantera detta. För att uppnå detta mål har verktyg för deklarativ programmering utforskats med ett fokus kring vilken data och interaktion en applikationen ska erbjuda snarare än hur den ska implementeras. Arbetet som presenteras i den här avhandlingen har genomförts som en iterativ process, med en startpunkt i en utforskning av modellbaserad gränssnittsutveckling, vilket sedan följdes av observationer av prototyparbete i praktiken genom en serie hackathon och en iterativ design av Endev, som är ett prototypverktyg för att skapa datadrivna webbapplikationer. Formativa utvärderingar av Endev har utförts med programmerare och interaktionsdesigners. De viktigaste resultaten av den här avhandlingen är de utmaningar som har identifierats kring hur man skapar prototyper och de kvalitéer som krävs av prototypverktyg som ska adressera dessa utmaningar. De identifierade kvalitéerna som sänker trösklarna för att inkludera data i prototyper är: deklarativt prototyparbete, välbekanta och installationsfria miljöer, och supportverktyg. Kvalitéer som höjer taket för vad som kan göras i en prototyp är: stöd för olika typer av data och för avancerad “look and feel”.