I developed a resource to aid people going through reentry and reverse culture shock after returning from long stays abroad. Based on my experience with the JET Programme, I used North American JET alumni as my case study, but aimed to develop a solution that would be scalable and useful for people in other programs and situations. While JET and other similar programs assist and support participants in the initial journey abroad and during their stay, they tend to not provide much support when the participants return. This is a real issue because culture shock upon returning from an extended trip is stronger and generally unexpected than what’s experienced at the initial departure. Because of the increasing number of people going abroad for extended stays, this highlights a very real need for support, either from the organizing groups or from alumni of those groups and programs. I began my exploratory research with an extensive survey, where I gathered information on people’s situations prior to joining JET, various qualitative and quantative aspects of their time in Japan, and their experiences upon their return. I continued to conduct exploratory research to gather people’s personal experiences, and I worked closely with JET alumni during my generative and evaluative research phases as well. From the beginning, I leaned towards an online solution that would connect JET alumni regardless of distance or location. Though I considered other options, this approach was vindicated by the strong needs for “community” and “shared experiences” voiced by JET alumni throughout all my research. Ultimately I developed a plan for an online platform that enables people to share their experiences through writing and other media, as well as to communicate and connect easily with others. The name of this platform is okaeri, which means both “return” (verb) and “welcome” (greeting) in Japanese. Beyond the site’s structure and function, the key element is the visual-verbal rhetorical strategy throughout the content and layout, which will set an empathetic tone and perpetuate the sense of community that already exists among JET alumni.

In recent years the development of mobile devices has made great progress and today they account for a large proportion of the internet usage. This trend poses new demands on web developers as more companies and product owners want to customize their services and products for this new market. In this study we examine the pros and cons of the strategies desktop-first and mobile-first in the development of adaptive interfaces for the web. The study aims to create guidelines for situations in which each strategy fits well. The purpose of the study is to create an understanding of how these strategies can help developers and product owners to develop adaptive interfaces based on different goals and objectives. The study was conducted through the development of two high-fidelity prototypes for the redesign of an existing website. A literature review was also performed to create a deeper understanding of the subject. Our conclusion showed that mobile-first was preferable when building a website from scratch. However, there are cases when desktop-first may be preferable, for example, in the redesign of an existing website where the foundation is already finished. Furthermore, the study has led us to the realization that there are many purposes of different websites making the subject complex. Therefore, the developer should always make an evaluation of the product owner's goals and objectives in order to choose the right strategy.

In recent years, technological advances in creating, storing, and accessing digital facsimiles of print and manuscript documents has resulted in an explosion of digitization initiatives. While such initiatives commonly endorse the viewpoint that digital facsimiles either replace or successfully stand in for their physical originals, textual scholars, whose principle interest is in the text as material artifact, do not share this perspective. Thresholds of Engagement explores the ways textual scholars engage with textual artifacts, tests the limits of representation of digital facsimiles and of the interfaces that house them, and proposes a model for the relationship between physical texts and their digital counterparts that privileges the requirements of textual scholars. The digital-facsimile interface proposed in this study is designed to facilitate methods described by textual scholars in interview—methods of comparison, material analysis, pattern recognition, and modelling—using an open-source web-based approach that is accessible for individuals to innovate and build upon.

Nous analysons le niveau d'engagement de l'usager sur les sites web des ONG. (i) La création d'un cadre d'analyse sémiotique mettant en perspective usage et dispositif de médiation ;(ii) La description des formes et des rythmes de la présence du geste de l'usager (son style d'interaction) par la création de métadonnées sémiotiques sont des outils permettant d'aborder la question des stratégies sous l'angle des modulations de la relation co-énonciative. La prise en considération du mode de perception du co-énonciateur, se révèle être un nouvel indicateur du degré de responsabilisation et d'ajustement de l'usager en lien avec le message éthique de l'Organisation énonciatrice. Nous mettons en évidence ici le déplacement du point de vue de l'analyse pour l'évaluation d'une stratégienumérique : de l'exigence performative ciblée sur le don à l'exigence d'une relation coénonciative propice à l'engagement. Les procédures d'ajustement observées dans le cours de l'interaction nous permettent de préciser les modes de valorisation coénonciatifs. L'analyse des inter-relations établies par les usagers entre les différents modèles d'interaction (la figuration ou contre-figuration de combinaisons de modèles d'interaction) restitue la pluralité des formes d'engagement ouvertes par le design, allant de l'ignorance de l'autre à l’identification de sa responsabilité citoyenne vis-à-vis de l'autre. / We assess the level of user commitment on NGO websites by defining:i. an analytical framework linking user interactions with mediating devices (interaction models),ii. semiotics metadata describing individual user behaviour evolutions (interaction styles).This method allows us to discuss strategies from the perspective of co-enunciative relationship change depending on user interactions.Considering user perception produces a new indicator of the level of public support for the ethical message of NGO. We highlight a change of perspective to evaluate digital strategies: from a performance assessment focused on donations to the requirement of a co-enunciative relationship conducive to commitment.We define differents ways of interacting with NGO websites according to the relation between interaction models and interaction styles. Therefore, the level of user commitment on NGO websites depends on these different interaction possibilities provided by webdesign and covering a wide range of involvements from ignorance to empowerment.

Since the third-generation’s mobile telephony was introduced, the use of the Internet changed significantly. Websites can nowadays be viewed from a wide range of devices that differ in type and size. This puts a demand on the design of web pages because the page should be equally useful regardless of the type of device used to view the page. Responsive web design is a design method that strives towards solving this problem by allowing web pages to customize their visual representation based on the medium used to interact with them. Although it is a well-used tool in web development, it is relatively unexplored from a technical, aesthetic and functional perspective. The goal of this thesis is to improve the situation by exploring the possibilities and limitations of responsive web design in relation to the above perspectives. To achieve this, common definitions of this approach were collected, together with an implementation of a responsive product. To give structure to the analysis, the development process followed the Double Diamond approach together with two experiential qualities, fluidity and naturality. By using media queries together with scalable units in the implementation, a fully responsive portfolio website was created. The creation of the product gave room for understanding possibilities and limitations of responsive web design. The encountered problems in this thesis, such as detecting different types of devices, concludes that responsive web design is yet not a fully developed approach and contains problems that limit the implementation.

Svenska internetanvändare använder internet idag för att söka information om tidtabeller, nyheter eller vilken restaurang de vill besöka. För att minska konkurrensen på internet är det viktigt att de snabbt hittar den information de söker på webbplatserna. För ett företag kan en webbplats användas för att bygga ett professionellt varumärke. Syftet med examensarbetet var att undersöka vad som gav restaurangkänsla på restaurangwebbplatser. Undersökningen gjordes genom en visuell innehållsanalys för att kartlägga innehållet på webbplatserna. Därefter skapades en webbenkät där respondenterna fick avgöra vad som skapade restaurangkänsla för dem. Analysen visade att restaurangwebbplatserna använde sig av få färger och bilder där bilderna fick ta stor plats på webbplatserna. Detta för att låta bilderna tala och besökaren kan fokusera på budskapet som restaurangen vill förmedla. Respondenterna från webbenkäten ansåg dock att storleken på bilderna inte var avgörande utan det var de bilder som hade koppling till mat och restaurangmiljö som avgjorde restaurangkänsla. / Swedish internet users use Internet today to search information for time tables news and which restaurant they want to visit. In order to reduce competition on the Internet it is important that they quickly find the information they search on the websites. For a company, a website can be used to build a professional brand. The purpose of the thesis was to investigate what gave restaurant feel to restaurant websites. The survey was conducted through a visual content analysis to map the content of the websites. Thereafter, a web survey was created where the respondents were allowed to decide what they considered created restaurant vibes for them. Analysis showed that the restaurant web sites used few colors and images where the images took a big place on the sites. This to let the pictures speak and the visitor can focus on the message that the restaurant wants to convey. The respondents from the web site thought that the size of the images was not critical, but it was the pictures that had links to food and restaurant environments that determined a restaurant feeling.

As the internet has become an increasingly growing market for companies, it has also subsequently revolutionized shopping. There are countless different options on the internet for individuals. If a website does not live up to the expectations, there is always another one just a few clicks away. This raises the demands on the retailers, in terms of development and maintenance of their e-commerce websites. In order to succeed, there are many things that have to be considered and addressed. This thesis research discusses some of the most essential questions that may arise during the development of an e-commerce website. The process has been divided into four different sections; graphical design, information design, interaction design, and online trust. Each one of these sectors is important and every website developer should be familiar with them.

O presente trabalho reúne conceitos utilizados no desenho de interfaces de documentos hipermídia e conceitos de psicologia relacionados ao aprendizado e à cognição, identificando características correlacionadas. A preocupação da pesquisa está em oferecer uma referência organizada para o desenvolvimento de interfaces de documentos hipermídia que serão utilizados em sistemas educacionais. Para tanto, é realizado um estudo de fatores humanos relacionados à aprendizagem e de fatores relacionados ao desenvolvimento de interfaces Web e, em seguida, identificada a intersecção entre estes conjuntos, que consiste em elementos relacionados com a interface gráfica que são relevantes para o aprendizado. O texto apresenta também propostas para a utilização destes aspectos. / This work combines concepts used in interface design of hypermedia documents and psychology notions related to learning and cognition, identifying correlated characteristics. The research done is concerned in offering an organized reference to interface development of hypermedia documents used in educational systems. This research contains a study about two sets of factors, one related to human learning and the other related to Web interface design. The intersection of these two sets consists of related elements with the graphic interface that are relevant to learning. In addition, the text presents proposals for using these concepts.

The technical society we live in is in a constant state of advancement and we are continuallyintroduced to new innovative ways of mediating information through. Today, plenty of mediachannels exist, for organizations to use when they strive to reach larger groups of people, butto achieve web site success; researchers have stated that considerations of user preferencesimplemented in web design are crucial. This makes understanding and addressing whichcharacteristics will be valued from the moment a user enters a site something that isconsidered helpful to the web designer in order to maintain user traffic and create an interest.In other words, something to catch the user’s attention to create a good first impression is necessary. The constant state of advancement of technology prevailing today has resulted in even morecomplex websites and a countless number of design principles to apply when designing forthe web. In spite of this, usability and visual appeal have remained central in prior research.To test these theories, a study was conducted by using a qualitative method in form of anexperiment consisting of eye tracking and an open-ended questionnaire. To perform the eyetracking the researchers created two mock-ups representing the main page of two differentwebsites. Each mock-up was developed with considerations towards two different designapproaches, one striving to achieve visual appeal and the other towards usability, todetermine which one the participants preferred. The study contained 50 participants who performed the experiment and answered thequestionnaire. Results from the eye tracking were presented in gaze plots and heat maps andthe result from the questionnaire was presented and analyzed through coding by the researchers. Final findings showed that the website preferred by most participants were the one developedwith the usable design approach. Additionally, the discussion presented the findings andreaches a conclusion of the study which finds connections between the chosen designapproach of the webpage and the participant’s choice of preferred webpage.

This paper describes a usability study of a responsive website prototype. A heuristic evaluation was conducted with three evaluators with a background in HCI, and user tests with four potential users were conducted as a control method to test the relevance of the heuristic evaluation result. The study showed that the website prototype failed the visibility of system status, user control and freedom and error prevention heuristics in the heuristic evaluation. However, the users responses contradict that result by showing that the users had no problems with those areas in the user tests. In fact, the users detected no usability problems at all. This could mean that those heuristics are not relevant for a responsive Web 2.0 site and needs to be removed when conducting a heuristic evaluation of a responsive website in the future, and that designing for responsiveness leads to higher usability. This study shows some indications but more testing needs to be done, preferably on several fully developed responsive websites, to be able to make any real conclusions about the usability of a responsive website and the relevance of the heuristics used in this study.