This study explores the human-object relationship through the design of a flowerpot that amplifies object/ human communication. Humans frequently anthropomorphize artifacts in their environment, attributing feelings and features to artifacts, so transforming them into companions. For example people commonly name and ascribe gender to their favorite vehicles. Recent advances in digital and interface design have afforded new possibilities for shaping future human/ object interaction. I have chosen to focus my investigations on possible feedback loops that connect human emotionally to the plant. The Morphological chart was the method used in order to generate a broad range of the concepts. The method provides a structure for a less predictable and more experimental form of ideation. The concepts generated focused on defining new roles for, and ways of seeing houseplants and potential routes for interaction and communication between human and plant. The designs focused on attributing human values and features to both the form of the plant pot and communication system used. / text

As part of an internship at Ericsson, this report was written to enhance the understanding of how it is to develop a system that is well established at the workplace. To improve an already existing system is not always as easy as many developers may think. In this report the pros and cons of developing an already existing system has been researched and analyzed. Do note that the results are only from one development of a specific system and that comparison of other developments has been made from other reports and not from experiencing it firsthand. It was found that the choices made can have an impact on further developing and it is important to write down what has been done. Writing down why you choose to do something may help you further down the process why you did what you did. / Som en del av ett praktiskt examensarbete, har denna rapport skrivits för att öka förståelsen av hur det är vidareutveckla ett befintligt och etablerat system. Att förbättra ett redan befintligt system är inte alltid så lätt som många systemutvecklare har uppfattning om. I denna rapport har fördelar och nackdelar med utvecklingen av ett redan befintligt system undersökts och analyserat med hjälp av egna upplevelser. Notera att resultatet är framtaget från en enda upplevelse av en specifik utveckling av ett system. Detta betyder att jämförelser endast gjorts med andra rapporteringar av liknande fall och inte med egen erfarenhet då bara ett system utvecklats under denna tid. Resultatet visar att det är viktigt att du antecknar dina tankar kring de val du gör då det kan hjälpa dig med andra val senare i projektets process.

Den här doktorsavhandlingen presenterar ytinteraktion som ett gränssnitts-paradigm för grafiska användargränssnitt inom kreativa tillämpningar. Ytinteraktion utgår ifrån användarnas innehåll och allt innehåll presenteras på en oändligt stor tvådimensionell yta. Ytan är gränssnittet mot en databas som navigeras och zoom, pan och textfilter. Textfilter används för att visa vilka innehållselement som motsvarar en textsträng, ju fler tecken i strängen, desto färre motsvarande element. Ytinteraktion gör att användare kan dela och redigera innehåll tillsammans via synkront samarbete.Ytinteraktion har studerats genom att utveckla en interaktiv prototyp för kollaborativ live multimedia. Prototypen designades tillsammans med musik- och videoartister inom electronica- och klubbmusikgenren. Den kan användas med pekskärm eller med skäm, mus och tangentbord. Design-processens resultat utvärderades genom en fallstudie som omfattade artisternas förberedelse inför och genomförandet av ett framträdande vid en festival. Analysen av data resulterade i fem bruksvärden; instrumentvärde, kommunikationsvärde, förberedelsevärde, livevärde och underhållningsvärde. Det huvudsakliga bruksvärdet var att den interaktiva prototypen uppfattades som ett instrument. Prototypens design underlättade kommunikationen mellan artisterna i flykten på scen. Instrumentvärdet gjorde det lättare att spela live vilket i sin tur medförde att publiken blev underhållen. Kunskap om den interaktiva prototypen och ytinteraktion har formats med forskning genom design där aktionsforskning var det övergripande ramverket i forskningsprocessen. Aktionsforskning är ett kvalitativ förhållningssätt som sätter fokus på praktikers deltagande i forskningsprocessen och att forskningen intervenerar i praktiken med syfte att förbättra den och att inducera kunskap. Som ett resultat av designprocessen presenteras designprinciper för ytinteraktion. Dessa gör resultaten användbara för praktiker inom interaktionsdesign, människa–datorinteraktion och programvaruteknik. / This dissertation presents surface interaction as an interface paradigm for graphical user interfaces of creative applications. The users' content is the basis for surface interaction, and all content is presented on an infinitely large two-dimensional surface. The surface is an interface to a database, and is navigated by zoom, pan, and text filter. Text filter is to display which content elements match a text string, the more characters of the string the less matching element. Surface interaction allows users to share and edit content collaboratively via synchronous collaboration. Surface interaction was examined by developing an interactive prototype for collaborative live multimedia. The prototype was designed in collaboration with music and video artists within the genres of electronica and club music. It can be used either with a touch screen or with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. The result of the design process was evaluated in a case study which included the artists' preparations for and carrying through of  a live performance at a festival. The analysis of data yielded five utility values; instrument value, communication value, preparation value, live value, and entertainment value. The main utility value of the interactive prototype was that the artists saw it as instrument.  The design of the prototype made communication easier in the live situation on stage. The instrument value made it easier to play live which consequently entertained the audience.Cognition in the interactive prototype and surface interaction has been created with research through design where action research was the overarching framework. Action research is a qualitative method  which focuses on the participating practitioners and on the intervention of the practice with the purpose improving the practitioner’s situation and of increasing the knowledge of the participants. Design principals and guidelines will be presented as a result of the design process. The guidelines make the results of this dissertation applicable to practitioners of interaction design, human computer interaction and software engineering.

This thesis explores new approaches to making and playing with programming materials, especially the forms provided with screen-based digital media. Designing with these media expressions can be very attractive to children, but they are usually not made available to them in the same degree as are physical materials. Inspired by children's play with physical materials, this work includes design explorations of how different resources alter, scaffold and support children in activities of making dynamic, screen-based systems. How tangibles turn the activity of programming into a more physical, social and collaborative activity is emphasised. A specific outcome concerns the importance of considering 'offline' and socially oriented action when designing tangible technologies. The work includes the design of a tangible programming system, Patcher, with which groups of children can program systems displayed on a large screen surface. The character of children's programming is conceptualised through the notion of a digital patchwork, emphasising (1) children's programming as media-sensitive design, (2) making programming more concrete by combining and reusing readily available programming constructs, and (3) the use of tangibles for social interaction.

The elderly experience their health getting significantly deteriorated as they age. They suffer not only from chronic diseases but from various geriatric diseases such as high blood pressure, arthritis and cardiovascular disease. Their mental health also retreats creating challenges for the elderly from the loss of short term memory to dementia. Furthermore, after they retire, the elderly’s social network decreases as their social activities are inevitably limited to a small group of people like families and friends. With the face of such impairments in their physical, mental and social health, many elderly cannot help but are being institutionalized or sent to specialized places like nursing homes, which provide them professional care. However, a study indicates that most Americans prefer to stay in their homes as they get older since they can maintain their social connections to neighbors and friends, be close to their medical caregivers in town as well as attain emotional comfort and security with familiar surrounding and environments. On top of that, Americans of all ages value on keeping their ability of independence and autonomy by controlling their lives in general. Various health care-aid devices and services appear to offer specific support to health care activities for the elderly in their homes. However, such aids have more focused only on when the elderly’s health is degraded or on very specific areas such as tracking health data like blood pressure, blood sugar and calorie intakes. The elderly need comprehensive understanding about their health problems, healthy daily habits and timely interactions with their families and caregivers, in order to keep independent living safely in their places. Smart Home technology has much potential to support the elderly’s independent living as well as interactions with others. To better understand this, we conducted a user-centered design project which looks at the management of the elderly’s health enabled by Smart Home technology.

Denna uppsats redovisar en studie av normer i interaktionsdesignen av svt.se, som ett exempel på en nyhetssida av public service-karaktär. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka och belysa sociala normer och hur de bäddas in i designen. Vi ville också undersöka och utvärdera metoder och ramverk för att studera webbplatser och dess interaktionsdesign som kulturella uttryck och bärare av sociala normer. För att belysa studiens syfte har vi använt oss av de riktlinjer för tillgänglighet i webbgränssnitt som SVT förhåller sig till i designen. Studien utgick från en multimodal analysmetod för webbplatser och grounded theory. Studien visade att svt.se erbjuder ett tillgängligt gränssnitt som följer de riktlinjer webbplatsen sägs förhålla sig till. Vi såg att det fanns en tydlig aktualitetsnorm där innehåll och design samverkar för att lyfta en aktuell händelse. Studien visade även att könsfördelningen på bilder på svt.se var jämn, men att bilder på icke-vita personer samt personer med funktionsvarianter var mindre förekommande. / In this essay we present a study of norms within interaction design. We have analyzied svt.se as an example of a news site with a public service duty. The essay aims so explore and highlight social norms and how they are embedded in the design. We also wanted to examine and evaluate methods and frameworks for studying websites as cultural expressions and carriers of social norms. To illustrate the purpose of the study, we have used guidelines for accessibility on web interfaces that SVT relate to in their website design. The study was based on a multimodal framework for analyzing websites and grounded theory. The study showed that svt.se provides an accessible interface that follows the guidelines the interface is said to relate to. We also saw a clear convention regarding how current events where depicted where both content and design interacted. The study also showed that the gender distribution on images on svt.se was even, but the images of non-white people and people with functional variants were less common.

This thesis aims at developing a better understanding of the design process and the tools required to support it. Specifically it focuses on the early or conceptual stages of the industrial design process and the role of emerging technology based artifacts in supporting this activity. The starting point for this thesis is that industrial design focuses on discovery of new knowledge and that this process of discovery is reflective in nature. Further designers make use of artifacts throughout the design process to support them in this discovery and their reflection. To reveal the role of artifacts in this process, a study of the interaction between designers and their artifacts has been undertaken. To intensify these relationships this thesis has focused on design review activity undertaken in the early stages of industrial design process. Two ethnographic case studies were conducted which allowed for teams of final year industrial design students to be observed during a conceptual design review. The first case study focused on the student designers interacting with traditional artifacts such as sketches, form studies and illustrations as part of the design review session. In the second case study, the student designers made use of low fidelity digital models which were displayed in a highly immersive virtual reality environment to support the design review. Both case studies captured a time slice of a larger design project which the students were undertaking as part of their university studies. The design project focused on the redesign of a consumer product where the students were required to innovate on an existing design based on a number of technology and market constraints. The design review session which formed the basis of the case study was part of a weekly design critique which required the students to bring to the class all of their design development progress. Students were offered an additional review session which was held in a virtual reality facility to supplement their weekly design review session which formed the basis of the second case study. The objective of the review sessions were for the designers to discuss their progress, identify where they were having difficulty, be challenged on design decision and develop a shared understanding of their direction with the class. The case study approach has allowed for an authentic in situ account of how designers make use of artifacts within the early stages of an industrial design process. It has allowed for a comparison between traditional and technology based artifacts and has revealed how they impact on the nature of discovery and reflection. Through a detailed qualitative analysis of the video data which was captured from the case studies, this thesis makes a number of substantial contributions to the current knowledge gaps on the role of artifacts and to our understanding of this phase of design activity. It substantiates conceptual design activity as a reflective process allowing for new discoveries to be made by representing our existing knowledge and understandings in artifacts which can be reflected upon and extended to create new meaning and innovation. From this grounded perspective it has enabled further understandings into the role of the artifact in supporting the design activity. Artifacts are seen as critical in supporting early stage design activity. However it is the nature of the interaction between the designers and their artifacts within the different settings which have been revealed through this research which is of significance. The affordances of the different artifacts have been shown to alter how the students situate their activity and modify their actions within a design review. page 5 of 171 Further designers are required to make use of additional resources such as gestures and rich design language to supplement their design engagement; and they are required to adapt to the environment where the review is being undertaken to ensure that the objective of the design review can be achieved. This thesis makes its primary contribution in outlining the differences between the various types of artifacts and how they can be used to positively support early stage design activity. It is recommended that both traditional and virtual artifacts have a role in supporting activity, but future approaches should consider them as complimentary and consider ways in which they can be merged. The significance of the research is three fold. Firstly, from a pedagogical perspective, within an educational or practiced based setting, it provides a framework to consider the use of emerging technology based artifacts to support early stage design activity. Secondly, from a technology development perspective the grounded observation in authentic experience of design activity, it provides the foundation to inspire and develop new interfaces to support designer interactions with artifacts. Finally, it makes a substantial contribution to the growing body of design research substantiating and revealing new understanding between designers and their artifacts to support early stage design activity.

Ubiquitous computing aims to make human-computer interaction as naturalistic and functionally invisible as possible through embedding computing potential within a particular context to support human activity. However, much of ubiquitous computing research is focussed on technical innovation due to the challenges involved with deploying embedded computing, thereby reducing the commitment to the philosophical ideals of ubiquitous computing in research. This dissertation describes the investigation of a participatory approach to technically-complex research in order to understand how our view of the engineering and human challenges changes when the two are approached hand-in-hand. The domain chosen for this system was a dental surgery. Dentistry involves a complex workspace with computer interaction constrained by surgery hygiene. Ubiquitous computing offers a compelling interaction alternative to the keyboard and mouse paradigm in such an environment. A multi-method approach that employed ethnographic research and design prototyping was undertaken with dentists from several different private practices. A series of field studies used ethnographic methods such as observation and interview. Design events explored prototypes with activities such as design games, contextual interviews, role-playing and contextual prototyping. Activities were devised with the aim of providing a level playing field, whereby both designers and participants feel they can contribute equally, with their respective disciplinary knowledge. It was found that methods needed to be carefully chosen, devised and managed, in order to communicate complex concepts with participants and to constrain the design to technically feasible options. The thesis examines the design problem from the perspectives of a variety of different stakeholders within a participatory design framework, reflected upon by means of human-centred action research. Data was gathered through design speculations and observation, and explored using methods such as the Video Card Game and Video Interaction Analysis. Fieldwork was analysed using a multi-stage qualitative analysis process which informed further design collaboration with participants. The analysis of data gathered during design studies with dentists also contributed to the development of a prototype system to validate methodological contributions. The resulting prototype utilised off-the-shelf hardware and software which allowed for innovative customisation and development. In-situ prototyping (defined by the author as “participatory bootstrapping”) and a comprehensive knowledge of the domain afforded the creative application of technology. In addition to contributing to the prototype design, the interpretive understandings drawn from analysis identified how technical ideas were presented and utilised by participants of the studies, and how best to engage busy professionals. The final outcomes of the research were a multimodal ubiquitous computing system for interacting within a dental surgery; the development and implementation of a variety of methods aimed at communicating technical concepts and eliciting user motivations, practices and concerns; and a set of design principles for engineers engaging in design of systems for human use. The research presented within this thesis is primarily part of the field of human-computer interaction, but provides evidence of how engineering development can be influenced by a user-centred participatory approach. The benefits that derive from inclusive methods of design are demonstrated by the evaluation of a prototype that employed such methods. The contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate and delineate methods for developing ubiquitous computing technologies for the context of human use. This led to a set of design principles for the engineering of systems for human use: 1. Technology needs to be robust and simple to appropriate. This allows users to give insights on technology developments and also to allow users to discover for themselves how they would use the technology. 2. An evolving and carefully considered set of methods are needed to elicit communication between practitioners and across disciplines. The gaps in understandings and the different representations that arise across the disciplines provide essential clues to next steps in design. These gaps and differences form tensions that can be exploited productively. 3. Context is important for determining which design steps to take. Rather than abstracting a problem in order to solve it, as is usual in engineering design, the problem should remain grounded in the context of use. It reveals what the real problems are that need to be solved rather than the imagined ones. This requires an appreciation of the situated nature of action and of the variability of work. In turn it also requires an appreciation of what the human can and does do and what the machine should support. 4. Accountability in design is required. There is a fundamental tension between trying to make something work and seeing what really does work; specifically it is necessary to understand when automation is worth it in human machine systems. While engaged in the design process, engineers should ask how much technology should reconfigure human practices because of a useful outcome, rather than attempting to automate and converge devices for its own sake. A clear understanding of the constraints and workings of the work space needs to be balanced with the understandings of the limitations of the technology in order to design a system that improves work practice and empowers the practitioner.

This thesis presents an application-oriented theoretical framework for generalised and specific collaborative contexts with a special focus on Internet-based mass collaboration. The proposed framework is informed by the author’s many years of collaborative arts practice and the design, building and moderation of a number of online collaborative environments across a wide range of contexts and applications. The thesis provides transdisciplinary architecture for describing the underlying mechanisms that have enabled the emergence of mass collaboration and other activities associated with ‘Web 2.0’ by incorporating a collaboratively developed definition and general framework for collaboration and collective activity, as well as theories of swarm intelligence, stigmergy, and distributed cognition. (For complete abstract open document)

The relationship people have to electronic devices relys on their passive acceptance rather than an understanding of their functioning – often leaving the users alientated and helpless as their products break. Which qualities do electronic artifacts need to embody in order to be repairable? As opposed to a black-box, the metaphor of a white-box can describe this repairable ideal: A white-box is meant to be opened and allows easy access to all inner parts. It is designed to communicate functions and connections and aids the user in understanding. Therefore, a white-box is designed to allow the consumer to act. How «open» can household electronics be?