Studien är baserad på intervjuer med praktiker som arbetar med user-experienceinom IT-projekt. Studiens mål är att identifiera potentiella hinder för praktiker medavseende på att tillämpa UX enligt sin egna tolkning av konceptet. För att undersökadetta har semi-strukturerade intervjuer utförts med fem UX-praktiker som arbetari UX-roller inom organisationer vars verksamhet är att producera webbsidor,mjukvara och andra typer av digitala system. Baserat på data från dessa intervjuerhar en tematisk analys använts för att sammanställa mönster i respondenternas svar.Resultaten indikerar att en praktikers egna förmåga att kommunicera innebördenav, och nyttan med UX är både en viktig och problematisk del i tillämpningenav UX inom IT. Vidare att denna förmåga härleds och är särskilt nödvändig tillföljd av en bristande förståelse och kunskap om UX, bland intressenter i ett projekt.Ytterligare framgår att den låga kunskapsnivån påverkas av en allmän uppfattningom att UX avser grafisk design och där med begränsas till pragmatiska aspekter ochkompetenser, snarare än holistik, användarcentrering och hedoniska aspekter. / This study is based on interviews with practitioners working with user-experiencewithin IT projects. The aim of the study is to investigate and identify potentialobstacles that hinders UX-practitioners to address UX in relation to their perceptionof the concept. To investigate this, semi-structured interviews were conducted withfive UX-practitioners in Sweden, working in UX-roles within organisations whoproduce IT-solutions such as websites, software and other types of digital systems.Based on these interviews a thematic analysis was used to investigate the topic.The result indicates that the practitioner’s ability to communicate the utility andbenefits that UX proposes, are essential for the application of UX. Further resultsindicate that this ability originates from a lack of knowledge and understanding forUX amongst stakeholders within a project, and that the experienced low level ofunderstanding for UX is affected by the general view of UX as being limited tographic design, and furthermore to pragmatic aspects and competencies rather thanacknowledging holistic, user-centered and hedonic aspects.

Porous sintered ceramic foam made of 99.8% Alumina (AL2O3) was investigated for grinding applications in metallic bearings. The properties of this alumina foam were investigated and correlated to the grinding performance in an I.D. grinding application. The mechanical properties, such as density and Young's Modulus, were correlated to grinding performance. The physical properties, investigated with Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis and a CT Scan, were used to study sintering behavior and porosity size and distribution. This work found an optimal friability and sintering temperature for the alumina foam grinding wheels. This will enable the alumina foam to become a viable grinding product and compete with the conventional vitrified products. This would be significant since the alumina foam has mainly one ingredient and is manufactured with a simpler process. It can also support a higher porosity than conventional grinding wheels, which has proven to provide better grinding performance and coolant access, keeping the work piece cooler and avoiding thermal damage.

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Documento confidencial. Não pode ser disponibilizado para consulta / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universiade do Porto. 2010

In enterprises we find many complex processes consisting of several sub-processes and actors, each of them contributing to the end outcome. Teaching on complex processes is not easy if the aim is deep knowledge regarding the processes and how different activities and choices will affect the final outcomes. An example of a complex process is the Enterprise Recourse Planning (ERP) systems procurement. A lot of different business representatives are involved in the procurement project, each with their opinion on how the optimal solution looks like. These opinions are often conflicting and the demands too many to be included in the formal requirements specification. Sometimes the requirements are the same, but expressed in different terms. Definition and selection of requirements is one of many potential pitfalls of Information Technology (IT) procurement which is dealt with during a half day exercise in ERP procurement in the course “Integrated Business Solutions”. Through role playing the students experience the transformation of theories into practice by identifying, arguing for or against and thereafter agree upon a limited list of requirements. Another complex activity is the evaluation of alternatives, where the students first need to find suitable candidate systems and thereafter assess how well these satisfy the formulated requirements. The vendor web pages and an online search function provided by a consultant are used. This gives a good basis for discussions regarding assessment of information sources and how decision making is affected by available information. This article describes the purpose and implementation of the above mentioned exercise. The exercise serves as an exemplification of how to create active learning situations that provide hands-on experiences and puts the problem solving and analysis abilities in a real context. Different skills trained during the exercise are highlighted using the Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) syllabus. The article also identifies pitfalls to be avoided when creating this kind of learning situations.

With the continued increases in the global population, a serious problem will occur in relation to an ageing population. The reason for this is that a significant number of elderly people may suffer from serial chronic diseases making it difficult for them to live independently and thus they pose a significant economic burden for both themselves and for their government. In order to solve this problem, more and more E-healthcare applications are being designed. In addition, a wide range of medical sensors exist, which can monitor almost all the important physiological parameters of the human body. However, different sensors may use different communication protocols, data units and formats. Additionally, the elderly may use more than one E-healthcare application at the same time and this can lead to problems if there is more than one data source. The project “A Middleware of Wireless sensor networks for Home healthcare monitoring application” is designed to solve these problems.  The focus of this report is on the design and implementation based on multiple modules of data acquisition. There are four data acquisition modules which include the ZigBee module, 6LowPAN module, Wi-Fi module and a Bluetooth module. Thus, multiple data acquisition module middleware supports the sensor by means of ZigBee, 6LowPAN, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The tasks of the middleware are to collect packets from sensors, perform data processing and mapping and then displaying as real-time data and finally transmitting the data to the remote server.

Arbetet har gått ut på att ta fram en Androidapplikation vars funktion är att beräkna vilka transaktioner som är nödvändiga, minimerat till antalet, för att reda ut en komplex skuldsituation inom en grupp individer. Den här typen av situationer uppstår ofta i vardagliga sammanhang, exempelvis då en grupp vänner lagar middag tillsammans och olika personer lägger ut för olika kostnader som till exempel mat och dryck. Arbetet resulterade i applikationen SplitIt, en stilren och lättanvänd applikation som uppfyller uppsatta kravspecifikationer. Osäkerhet råder dock om algoritmen som räknar ut transaktionerna är optimerad i det avseendet att antalet transaktioner minimeras. En del åtgärder bör vidtas innan produkten lanseras på Android Market, till exempel har framtagning av ikoner åsidosatts med avsikten att lägga ned mer tid på övriga delar i användargränssnitt och algoritmframtagning. SplitIt har vuxit fram genom att liknande applikationer på Android Market har studerats samt genom att noga beakta användarvänlighet. Innan implementeringen av applikationen påbörjades, gjordes en studie där skisser på det tänkta användargränssnittet ritades upp och testpersoner fick möjlighet att navigera sig igenom applikationen. Studien klargjorde vilka delar i användargränssnittet som uppfattades som otydligaoch vilka som var tilltalande. / The goal of the project has been to develop an Android application whose function is to calculate the necessary transactions, minimized in number, to resolve a complex debt situation within a group of individuals. These types of situations frequently occur in everyday life, for example when a group of friends cook dinner together and different people pay for various expenses such as food and beverages. The work resulted in the application SplitIt, a stylish and easy-to-use application that meets the desired specifications. Uncertainties exist however, whether the algorithm thatcalculates the transactions is optimized regarding the minimum number oftransactions required. Some measures should be taken before the product is launched on the Android Market. The development of icons, for example, has been put to the side with the intention to spend more time on other parts of the user interface and algorithm development. Splitit has been developed by studying similar applications on the Android Market and by carefully considering usability. Before starting the implementation of the application, a user study was conducted in which sketches of the proposed user interface was designed and a test panel had the opportunity to navigate through the application. The study clarified unclear as well as appealing parts of the user interface.

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Advancement in high-throughput microscopy technology such as the Knife-Edge Scanning Microscopy (KESM) is enabling the production of massive amounts of high-resolution and high-quality volumetric data of biological microstructures. To fully utilize these data, they should be efficiently distributed to the scientific research community through the Internet and should be easily visualized, annotated, and analyzed. Given the volumetric nature of the data, visualizing them in 3D is important. However, since we cannot assume that every end user has high-end hardware, an approach that has minimal hardware and software requirements will be necessary, such as a standard web browser running on a typical personal computer. There are several web applications that facilitate the viewing of large collections of images. Google Maps and Google Maps-like interfaces such as Brainmaps.org allow users to pan and zoom 2D images efficiently. However, they do not yet support the rendering of volumetric data in their standard web interface. The goal of this thesis is to develop a light-weight volumetric image viewer using existing web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript while exploiting the properties of stereo vision to facilitate the viewing and annotations of volumetric data. The choice of stereogram over other techniques was made since it allows the usage of raw image stacks produced by the 3D microscope without any extra computation on the data at all. Operations to generate stereo images using 2D image stacks include distance attenuation and binocular disparity. By using HTML and JavaScript that are computationally cheap, we can accomplish both tasks dynamically in a standard web browser, by overlaying the images with intervening semi-opaque layers. The annotation framework has also been implemented and tested. In order for annotation to work in this environment, it should also be in the form of stereogram and should aid the merging of stereo pairs. The current technique allows users to place a mark (dot) on one image stack, and its projected position onto the other image stack is calculated dynamically on the client side. Other extra metadata such as textual descriptions can be entered by the user as well. To cope with the occlusion problem caused by changes in the z direction, the structure traced by the user will be displayed on the side, together with the data stacks. Using the same stereo-gram creation techniques, the traces made by the user is dynamically generated and shown as stereogram. We expect the approach presented in this thesis to be applicable to a broader scientific domain, including geology and meteorology.

This article mainly talks about how Chinese students are seeking different ways to get into American universities. Because of the large number of applicants, the competition is intense. Some students are trying something different to get their documents look great, such as changing transcripts, fake recommendation letters and non-existing experiences in the resumes. In addition, there are actual consulting and servicing agencies in China helping students apply to American colleges with partially fake material. In the U.S., these type of modifications are called cheating, but with a bigger picture that considering the cultural and societal differences between China and the U.S., we are able to find several reasons that why this phenomenon is happening and expanding; meanwhile, what possible steps can the American colleges do to solve or reduce the cheating trend in China. / text