Artificial Intelligence, being recently one of the most popular topics in technology, has been in a spotlight of Interaction Design for a long time. Despite its success in software and business-oriented cases, the adoption of Artificial Intelligence solutions in home environments still remains relatively low. This study reflects on the key reasons for the low penetration of AI-based solutions in private households and formulates design considerations for possible further developments in this area with a focus on artificial light sources. The design considerations are based on literature review and studies of multiple home environments gathered through qualitative interviews and context mapping exercises. Health influence of lighting, multi-user interactions, and privacy-related and ethical concerns are taken into account as the key factors. The considerations have been validated with participants of the study through user testing sessions of a digital prototype that virtualises a home environment and explores some of the common light usage scenarios. The study argues that despite multiple efforts in this direction during the past three decades, the future of Artificial Intelligence in connected, intelligent homes does not lie in smart, autonomous systems. Instead, Artificial Intelligence can be arguably used to simplify and contextualise interactions between humans and their home environments as well as foster the development of parametric solutions for private households.

Urbanization has been a growing trend in the past fifty years. Cities are now transforming into smart cities, spaces whose infrastructure comprises an embedded digital layer. Hardware collects real-time data in the urban environment and software elaborates it to improve all types of services, from traffic to waste management to well-being. One technology that is expected to use this digital layer to further change the urban environment is the autonomous car. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore what key design attributes future autonomous cars should possess if they have not only to co-exist with and be accepted by people in the landscape of tomorrow’s smart cities, but also what they should not possess in order not to cause any harm. In this sense, the dissertation recognizes calm technology to be necessary in the design of a future autonomous car to support a human-centered, as opposed to a car- or technology-centered, environment. A socio-technical and systemic lens is applied to the phenomenological investigation of nine companies carried out by means of twelve in-depth semi-structured interviews with experts working within the automotive sector, the smart city industry, and calm technology. Eight attributes (safety, on-demand, geo-tracking, sharing, multiple purposes, communication through smart devices, electrical care and IoT/connectedness) are identified as necessary for future autonomous cars to implement in order to take advantage of the smart city infrastructure and provide a human-centered experience. Additionally, six out of the eight calm technology principles recognized in literature are considered necessary when designing future autonomous cars.

Med en ökad användning av digitala enheter i samhället ser vi också att fler drabbas av hållningsrelaterade hälsobekymmer. Ungdomar är särskilt drabbade även om de i många fall är omedvetna om det, men knappt ingen forskning fokuserar på den här målgruppen och deras behov. Den forskning som tagits fram är inte heller överens hur man på bästa sätt löser problematiken med hållning. Syftet med studien är därför att göra ungdomar mer medvetna om sin kroppshållning samt ta reda på hur digital design på bästa sätt kan motivera ungdomar att förbättra sin kroppshållning. För att ta reda på detta ställdes följande fråga: ”Hur kan en digital designlösning utformas för att skapa medvetenhet kring ungdomars kroppshållning, samt hjälpa att förbättra deras kroppshållning på ett underhållande och icke störande sätt?”. Studien genomfördes med metoden Konceptdriven Designforskning som inkluderar skapandet av en konceptuell prototyp förankrad i tidigare forskning. Prototypen består av en bärbar sensor som mäter hållning och en applikation i form av ett spel där användaren kan se sin hållning i realtid samt aktivt träna sin hållning. Prototypen värderades sedan genom en digital enkätundersökning. I resultatet framgick att designlösningen kunde tänkas användas av deltagarna, samt hjälpa att förbättra deras hållning eftersom den gjorde användaren mer medveten om sin kroppshållning. Många deltagare trodde att spelet kunde bidra med motivation och göra hållningsträningen mer underhållande men att fler spel-funktioner krävs för att behålla användarens intresse under en längre tid. Deltagarna ansåg att konceptet i sin helhet inte var störande men att mer tydlig feedback krävs för att indikera bra/dålig hållning. Utifrån detta resultat kan slutsatsen dras att konceptet i teorin kan skapa medvetenhet kring ungdomars kroppshållning och hjälpa de att träna den på ett underhållande sätt som inte är störande, men att mer studier och designarbete krävs för att komma fram till det bästa sättet att ge användaren feedback om sin hållning samt göra konceptet mer attraktivt att använda ur ett långsiktigt perspektiv. / With the increased use of digital devices in society, we can see that more people are affected by posture related health issues. Adolescents are especially affected although in many cases they are unaware of it, but hardly any research focuses on this group and their needs. The research that has been done also does not agree on how to best solve the problem with posture. The purpose of this study is therefore to make young people more aware of their posture and to find out how digital design can be used in the best way to motivate young people to improve their posture. To find this out, the following question was formed: “How can a digital design solution be formed to create awareness about young people's posture and help improve their posture in an entertaining and non-disturbing way”. The study was carried out with the method Concept driven design research which includes the creation of a conceptual prototype grounded in previous research. The prototype consists of a portable sensor that measures posture and an application in the form of a game where the user can see their posture in real time and actively train their posture. The prototype was then evaluated through a digital survey. The results showed that the participants could consider using the design solution and that it helped to improve their posture as it made the user more aware of their posture. Many participants thought that the game could contribute with motivation and make posture training more entertaining, but that more gaming features are required to keep the user's interest for a longer period. The participants felt that the concept as a whole was not disruptive, but that more clear feedback is required to indicate good/bad posture. Based on this result, it can be concluded that the concept in theory can create awareness of young people's posture and help them to exercise it in an entertaining way that is not disturbing, but that further studies and design work is needed to come up with the best way to give the user feedback on their posture and to make the concept more attractive to use from a long-term perspective.

The thesis project underlines the importance of designing calm and subtle technologies, by exploring how mobile communicative technologies, such as cell phones, could notify their users about incoming information in a more natural, and non-intrusive manner. The aim of the thesis was to find a way for cell phones to act more appropriately in public and social settings, where they now often are considered intrusive due to their uninhibited manifestations.The thesis provides a theoretical understanding of how normative expectations of cell phone conduct are constituted and maintained within public and social settings. The theories are further grounded in practical work, where the project employ user centered design methods and techniques to, in a collaborative manner, together with users explore the research field to generate insights. Solutions have further been prototyped and evaluated together with users in their everyday settings.Taking inspiration from calm technology, the project looks into how information can be notified, in a more subtle manner in the periphery of the user’s attention. Users’ own priming abilities have been considered as a personal way to recognize the notification and to further associate it as relevant information.As a solution for intrusive cell phones, the thesis proposes Knot; a signature based notification system, which builds on friends’ abilities to recognize each other’s characteristic traits. The system consists of a notification rope, which is a free standing phone accessory that twists and turns, when new information is arriving to the user’s cell phone. It can present whom the information is from by shaping itself into the sender’s representative Knot-signature. If the user can recognize the signature, it will immediately trigger a meaningful association to the person who sent the information.The solution builds upon the restrictiveness between those who can associate a certain signature to a certain person, and those who cannot. For those who have the ability to associate to the signature, its role as a notifier will become meaningful and informative, while for others, who do not share this ability, the signature would be subtle and meaningless, and hence not interfering. The thesis exemplifies how interfaces could provide users with output in a more natural way, by considering users’ previous skills and knowledge, and primarily their priming abilities.

Hospital environments are ranked as one of the most stressful contemporary work environments for their employees, and this especially concerns nurses (Nejati et al. 2016). One of the core problems comprises the notion that the current technology adopted in hospitals does not support the mobile nature of medical work and the complex work environment, in which people and information are distributed (Bardram 2003). The employment of inadequate technology and the strenuous access to information results in a decrease in efficiency regarding the fulfilment of medical tasks, and puts a strain on the attention of the medical personnel. This thesis proposes a solution to the aforementioned problems through the design of ambient displays, that inform the medical personnel with the health statuses of patients whilst requiring minimal allocation of attention. The ambient displays concede a hierarchy of information, where the most essential information encompasses an overview of patients’ vital signs. Data regarding the vital signs are measured by biometric sensors and are embodied by shape-changing interfaces, of which the ambient displays consist. User-authentication permits the medical personnel to access a deeper layer within the hierarchy of information, entailing clinical data such as patient EMRs, after gesture-based interaction with the ambient display. The additional clinical information is retrieved on the user’s PDA, and can subsequently be viewed in more detail, or modified at any place within the hospital.In this thesis, prototypes of shape-changing interfaces were designed and evaluated in a hospital environment. The evaluation was focused on the interaction design and user-experience of the shape-changing interface, the capabilities of the ambient displays to inform users through peripheral awareness, as well as the remote communication between patient and healthcare professional through biometric data. The evaluations indicated that the required attention allocated for the acquisition of information from the shape-changing interface was minimal. The interaction with the ambient display, as well as with the PDA when accessing additional clinical data, was deemed intuitive, yet comprised a short learning curve. Furthermore, the evaluations in situ pointed out that for optimised communication through the ambient displays, an overview of the health statuses of approximately eight patients should be displayed, and placed in the corridors of the hospital ward.