Businesses do evolve. Their evolution necessitates the re-engineering of their existing "business processes”, with the objectives of reducing costs, delivering services on time, and enhancing their profitability in a competitive market. This is generally true and particularly in domains such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and education). The central objective of workflow technologies is to separate business policies (which normally are encoded in business logics) from the underlying business applications. Such a separation is desirable as it improves the evolution of business processes and, more often than not, facilitates the re-engineering at the organisation level without the need to detail knowledge or analyses of the application themselves. Workflow systems are currently used by many organisations with a wide range of interests and specialisations in many domains. These include, but not limited to, office automation, finance and banking sector, health-care, art, telecommunications, manufacturing and education. We take the view that a workflow is a set of "activities”, each performs a piece of functionality within a given "context” and may be constrained by some security requirements. These activities are coordinated to collectively achieve a required business objective. The specification of such coordination is presented as a set of "execution constraints” which include parallelisation (concurrency/distribution), serialisation, restriction, alternation, compensation and so on. Activities within workflows could be carried out by humans, various software based application programs, or processing entities according to the organisational rules, such as meeting deadlines or performance improvement. Workflow execution can involve a large number of different participants, services and devices which may cross the boundaries of various organisations and accessing variety of data. This raises the importance of _ context variations and context-awareness and _ security (e.g. access control and privacy). The specification of precise rules, which prevent unauthorised participants from executing sensitive tasks and also to prevent tasks from accessing unauthorised services or (commercially) sensitive information, are crucially important. For example, medical scenarios will require that: _ only authorised doctors are permitted to perform certain tasks, _ a patient medical records are not allowed to be accessed by anyone without the patient consent and _ that only specific machines are used to perform given tasks at a given time. If a workflow execution cannot guarantee these requirements, then the flow will be rejected. Furthermore, features/characteristics of security requirement are both temporal- and/or event-related. However, most of the existing models are of a static nature – for example, it is hard, if not impossible, to express security requirements which are: _ time-dependent (e.g. A customer is allowed to be overdrawn by 100 pounds only up-to the first week of every month. _ event-dependent (e.g. A bank account can only be manipulated by its owner unless there is a change in the law or after six months of his/her death). Currently, there is no commonly accepted model for secure and context-aware workflows or even a common agreement on which features a workflow security model should support. We have developed a novel approach to design, analyse and validate workflows. The approach has the following components: = A modelling/design language (known as CS-Flow). The language has the following features: – support concurrency; – context and context awareness are first-class citizens; – supports mobility as activities can move from one context to another; – has the ability to express timing constrains: delay, deadlines, priority and schedulability; – allows the expressibility of security policies (e.g. access control and privacy) without the need for extra linguistic complexities; and – enjoy sound formal semantics that allows us to animate designs and compare various designs. = An approach known as communication-closed layer is developed, that allows us to serialise a highly distributed workflow to produce a semantically equivalent quasi-sequential flow which is easier to understand and analyse. Such re-structuring, gives us a mechanism to design fault-tolerant workflows as layers are atomic activities and various existing forward and backward error recovery techniques can be deployed. = Provide a reduction semantics to CS-Flow that allows us to build a tool support to animate a specifications and designs. This has been evaluated on a Health care scenario, namely the Context Aware Ward (CAW) system. Health care provides huge amounts of business workflows, which will benefit from workflow adaptation and support through pervasive computing systems. The evaluation takes two complementary strands: – provide CS-Flow’s models and specifications and – formal verification of time-critical component of a workflow.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the influences that Information Retrieval Systems such as online Search Engines and Databases have on designers' early searching strategies. The study involves the observation of designers transforming early design language into query 'keyword' language for the operation of Information Retrieval Systems and how this transition causes a shift in early design exploration. This transformation is referred to in this research as the CLASS activity; Converting Language from Abstract Searching to Specific. Findings show a common pattern across the activity of both professional and advanced student designers. Information Retrieval Systems are seen to drive the searching process into specific, explored domains rather than stimulate an 'abstract' broad investigation. The IR systems are built upon categories that are created to manage the information content. It is these categories that require a person to use defined keywords and query sentences to operate the Information Retrieval Systems. The findings suggest that using Information Retrieval Systems prior to defining the scope of a design problem causes designers to prematurely focus on specific searching.

[pt] Atualmente, designers de interfaces multi-usuário contam com o apoio de diretrizes, frame-works, modelos de descrição e toolkits durante o desenvolvimento destas. Toolkits dão suporte à construção da interface, enquanto diretrizes e frameworks levantam questões a serem consideradas durante a sua definição. Os modelos, por sua vez, permitem a descrição dos modelos conceituais do grupo a serem representados nesta interface, ou parte deles. No entanto, nenhum destes fornece ao projetista um ambiente que lhe permita planejar e definir sua interface. Adotamos neste trabalho a abordagem da Engenharia Semiótica, na qual a interface é vista como uma mensagem unilateral sendo enviada pelo projetista aos usuários. Esta mensagem é considerada um artefato de meta-comunicação, uma vez que ela mesma é capaz de trocar mensagens com o usuário. Em um ambiente multi-usuário ela é também um artefato de mediação de comunicação, já que serve de medium para os usuários se comunicarem entre si. Esta abordagem enfatiza a expressão do designer e cria a necessidade de se desenvolver instrumentos de apoio a esta expressão. Neste trabalho buscamos dar apoio ao designer de interfaces multi- usuário, dentro do quadro teórico da Engenharia Semiótica. Assim, apresentamos um modelo abstrato de meta-comunicação que serve de base para o desenvolvimento de instrumentos de apoio à descrição de interfaces multi-usuários. Este modelo propõe que se ofereça ao projetista, não apenas uma forma de descrever sua mensagem, mas também indicadores qualitativos sobre esta descrição. A partir deste modelo, criamos um modelo de arquitetura de suporte ao design de interfaces multi-usuário. Este modelo dá suporte a projetistas fazendo o design de interfaces de forma top-down. Assim, este trabalho é o primeiro passo na direção de um ambiente de suporte ao design de interfaces multi-usuário com qualidade. / [en] Nowadays there are guidelines, frameworks, models and toolkits that support the devel-opment of multi-user interfaces. Toolkits assist designers in buiding the interface, whereas guidelines and frameworks direct the designer towards issues to be considered during interface design. Models, on their turn, allow for the description of the conceptual model of the group (or part of it) to be represented in the interface. Nevertheless, none of these provide the designer with an environment in which to plan and define the system`s interface. We take a Semiotic Engineering approach, in which the interface is perceived as a one-shot message being sent from the designer to the users. In particular, interfaces can be viewed as meta- communication artifacts, since they can also exchange messages with the users. Further-more, in multi-user environments, they are also communication embedding artifacts, since they allow for the communication among users. This approach focuses on the expression of the designer and requires the development of means to support this expression. In this work, we intend to provide support to multi-user interface designers, in a Semiotic Engineering framework. In order to meet our goal, we developed a meta-communication model from which models and techniques to support the development of multi-user interfaces can be developed. The meta-communication model proposes that designers should be provided not only with means to describe their messages, but also some qualitative indications on their description. Based on this model, we developed a model of an architecture to support the design of multi-user interfaces. This model assists designers that develop multi-user interfaces top-down. Therefore, this work is the first step in the direction of an environment to support the design of multi-user interfaces with quality. / [es] Actualmente, los dieños de interfaces multi-usuario cuentan, durante su desarrollo,con el apoyo de directrizes, frame-works, modelos de descripción y toolkits. Los Toolkits dan soporte a la construcción de la interfaz, mientras que las directrizes y los frameworks levantan cuestiones que deben ser consideradas durante su definición. Los modelos permiten la descripción de los modelos conceptuales del grupo que serán representados en esta interfaz, o parte de ellos. Sin embargo, ninguno de ellos brinda al proyectista un ambiente que le permita planear y definir su interfaz. En este trabajo adoptamos el abordaje de la Ingeniería Semiótica, en la cual se ve la interfaz como un mensaje unilateral enviado por el proyectista a los usuarios. Este mensaje se considera un artefacto de meta-comunicación, una vez que él mismo es capaz de intercambiar mensajes con el usuario. En un ambiente multi-usuario el mensaje constituye también un artefacto de mediación en la comunicación, ya que sirve de medium para que los usuarios se comunicaren entre sí. Este abordaje enfatiza la expresión del diseñador y crea la necesidad de desarrollar instrumentos de apoyo a esta expresión. En este trabajo buscamos dar apoyo al designer de interfaces multi- usuario, dentro del cuadro teórico de la Ingeniería Semiótica. Así, presentamos un modelo abstracto de meta-comunicación que sirve de base para el desarrollo de instrumentos de apoyo a la descripción de interfaces multi-usuarios. Este modelo propone que se ofrezca al proyectista, no apenas una forma de describir su mensaje, sino también indicadores cualitativos sobre esta descripción. A partir de este modelo, creamos un modelo de arquitectura de soporte al diseño de interfaces multi-usuario. Este modelo dá soporte a proyectistas realizando el diseño de interfaces de forma top-down. Así, este trabajo es el primer paso en la dirección de un ambiente de soporte al diseño de interfaces multi-usuario con calidad.

Studiens syfte är att redogöra för, samt få en djupare förståelse kring lokala designföretags marknadskommunikation. Forskningsfrågorna lyder som följande; Vilka kanaler för marknadskommunikation använder sig lokala designföretag av? samt Hur arbetar lokala designföretag med innehåll och formspråk i sin marknadskommunikation?   Genom en kvalitativ metod med deduktiv ansats, utfördes åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med både företagare och experter. Vidare genomfördes en innehållsanalys samt strukturerade observationer av fem företags digitala och sociala kanaler. Resultatet visar på att det finns gemensamma aspekter när det kommer till vilka kanaler samt vilket innehåll som företagen använder och publicerar. Det går även att utläsa att samtliga företag har en tydlig produktorientering i sin kommunikation. Formspråket baseras dock på företagens egen estetik. Slutligen presenteras studiens resultat i en modell, som utgår från Shannon-Weavers kommunikationsmodell från 1948 och förslag för framtida forskning tydliggörs. / The purpose of this study was to describe, as well as gain a deeper understanding of local design companies' marketing communication. The research questions were as follows: Which channels for marketing communication do local design companies use? and How does local design companies work with content and design languages ​​in their market communication? Through a qualitative method of deduction, eight semistructured interviews were conducted with both entrepreneurs and experts. Furthermore, a content analysis and structured observations were conducted of five companies' digital and social channels. The result shows that there are common aspects when it comes to which channels and what content companies use and publish. It is also possible to read that all companies have a clear product orientation in their communication. The design language is based on the company's own aesthetics. Finally, the study results are presented in a model, based on Shannon-Weaver's communication model from 1948, and proposals for future research are clarified.

This thesis is a two-part project, where the first part is to find out what a design guide is,what it should contain and make a suggestion for one that fits Röshults design language.A design guide contains information that can help a designer follow a company’s designlanguage when developing a new product.The second part is to look at Röshults assortment for an opening for a new product anduse the guide suggestion to design it. / Detta examensarbete är ett tvådelat projekt. Där den första delen går ut på att ta reda påvad en designguide är, vad den ska innehålla och ge ett förslag på en som passarRöshults formspråk. En designguide innehåller information som kan hjälpa en designeratt följa ett företags formspråk när de utvecklar en ny produkt.Den andra delen är att titta på Röshults sortiment för en öppning för en ny produkt ochanvända guideförslaget för att designa den.

This research investigates the key characteristics of design leaders in the context of New Product Development (NPD) at the Fuzzy Front End (FFE) or early stage of this process. It particularly focuses on how design leaders communicate design to non-designers. It is often observed that designers struggle to communicate design to non-designers. Previous research has identified design leaders as competent design communicators. However, the definition and key characteristics of design leaders remain unclear. By reviewing the literature on leadership studies, design leadership and project leadership, it is evident that no single universal definition of leadership exists. The most common definition is that leaders apply their knowledge and skills to conduct activities and use their traits to influence other people’s actions. Leadership requires different characteristics for different tasks. To understand the characteristics of design leaders, triangulated research was employed at a real-life NPD project involving young designers and non-designers at early stages of NPD as part of the first study. All participants (N=32) were directly observed, interviewed in semi-structured interviews and administered with assistive questionnaires to compare design and non-design participants’ leadership and communication styles. The second study was in-depth, focusing on UK design leaders (N=11) through semi-structured interviews and based on deficiencies in leadership and communicating design, identified from the first study and the literature review. Comparative studies indicate that designers and design leaders vary their attitudes towards non-designers, motivation and communication style. This study highlights the key characteristics of design leaders: an epiphany by experiencing the entire NPD process, interest in the benefits of NPD stakeholders, a good understanding of design competency, reflectively flexible working attitude and strong, active listening. Thus, a conceptual model was formulated and evaluated, able to guide designers who wish to become design leaders and help to enhance design communication and relationships with non-designers.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Architectural specification of real-time software systems is an activity that conveys analysis, knowledge and understanding of both the application domain and the parties involved in software construction. Architecture plays a key role in communication between stakeholders, in addition to planning the entire architectural process involved in the project. However, Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) have not been widely used in the industry. Another limiting factor for the e ff ective use of ADLs is the di ffi culty of these languages in e ff ectively expressing the architecture of complex systems. Considering this situation of di ffi culty in the e ff ective use of ADLs, the UML has been used in recent years to model the architecture. However, UML can not represent the important characteristics pertinent to real-time systems, such as security or real-time constraints. One of the advantages of the UML is the extensibility allowing the creation of profiles. In this sense, this work proposes using Systems Modeling Language (SysML), a UML profile, to model real-time systems architecture in two automotive systems, the airbag control system and the light control system. The objective of this work is to use UML and SysML to model and document the architecture and design of requirements traceability between software and systems elements, increasing the understanding of the project among the parties involved, and finally presenting SysML as a language for description of real-time software architecture. The ADL Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) and SysML languages were compared to show the advantages of SysML. As a result, it was noticed that abstract features such as conditional deviations, loop, characteristics that are related to reality and consequently to the system can not be described in AADL. SysML has proved to be relevant in the context of architecture description, analysis, classification and modeling of real-time systems. The SysML Requirements diagram explicitly shows the various types of relationships between di ff erent requirements, the Block diagram enables the global view of the systems involved in a single project, the Internal Block diagram allows the internal view of the system under construction, the Activity diagram considers the behavioral view of the system. SysML concepts, articulated in the SysML Requirements, Activities, Blocks and Internal Blocks diagrams, are complementary, covering the purposes needed to describe the architecture of real-time systems. It is concluded that the proposed UML and SysML join technique provides elements to describe software requirements and their relationships with the system, to manage changes, to evolve and to trace requirements more easily, in addition to the communication being e ff ectively carried out between the stakeholders. This is important for the development of real-time systems because of the diversity of people / teams involved and influencing a wide range of design decisions. / A especificação da arquitetura de sistemas de software de tempo real é uma atividade que depreende análise, conhecimento e compreensão tanto do domínio da aplicação quanto das partes envolvidas na construção do software. A arquitetura tem um papel primordial na comunicação entre os stakeholders, além do planejamento de todo o processo arquitetural envolvido no projeto. Contudo, as Linguagens de Descrição de Arquiteturas (ADLs) não têm sido amplamente usadas na indústria. Outro fator limitador para o uso efetivo de ADLs é a dificuldade dessas linguagens em expressar efetivamente a arquitetura de sistemas complexos. Considerando essa situação de dificuldade do uso efetivo de ADLs, a UML tem sido utilizada nos últimos anos para modelagem da arquitetura. No entanto, a UML não consegue representar características importantes pertinentes a sistemas de tempo real, tais como segurança ou restrições de tempo real. Uma das vantagens da UML é a capacidade de extensão permitindo a criação de profiles. Neste sentido, este trabalho apresenta a Systems Modeling Language (SysML), um profile da UML, para modelagem da arquitetura de sistemas de tempo real em dois sistemas automotivos, o sistema de controle de airbag e o sistema de controle de faróis. Neste trabalho tem-se como objetivos utilizar a UML e a SysML para modelagem e documentação da arquitetura e delineamento de rastreabilidade de requisitos entre software e sistema, ampliando o entendimento do projeto entre as partes envolvidas, e por fim apresentar a SysML como uma linguagem para descrição da arquitetura de software de tempo real. As linguagens SysML e a ADL Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL) foram comparadas para mostrar as vantagens da SysML. Como resultado, foi percebido que características abstratas, tais como tomadas de decisão, repetição de uma funcionalidade (loop), características que são relacionadas a realidade e, consequentemente, ao sistema, não podem ser descritas em AADL. A SysML mostrou-se relevante no contexto da descrição, análise, classificação e modelagem de arquitetura para sistemas de tempo real. O diagrama de Requisitos da SysML mostra explicitamente os diversos tipos de relacionamentos entre diferentes requisitos, o diagrama de Blocos viabiliza a visão global dos sistemas envolvidos num único projeto, o diagrama de Blocos Internos possibilita a visão interna do sistema em construção, o diagrama de Atividades considera a visão comportamental do sistema. Os conceitos de SysML, articulados nos diagramas de Requisitos, Atividades, Blocos e Blocos Internos da SysML são complementares cobrindo os propósitos necessários para a descrição da arquitetura de sistemas de tempo real. Conclui-se que a técnica proposta da junção de UML e SysML fornece elementos para descrever requisitos de software e seus relacionamentos com o sistema, gerenciar mudanças, evoluir e rastrear requisitos mais facilmente, além da comunicação ser efetivamente realizada entre os stakeholders. Este aspecto é importante ao desenvolvimento de sistemas de tempo real, por causa da diversidade de pessoas / equipes envolvidas e que influenciam uma ampla série de decisões de projeto.

100 years after the official acceptance of women into higher architectural education in Sweden’s technical institutions, I have tracked and summarized the progress of not just female students and female employees within the architecture industry, but also the extent of the creative space offered for women throughout the years to express their individual styles. This has been with the intention of detecting a female design language that can be read in the Swedish city, starting from Sweden’s earliest female pioneer in the late 1890s. The study relates the female design language to openness and fluidity, and the feminine sense of caring for the social experience taking place within urban spaces. This is naturally not the case for every woman and is just a common pattern detected throughout different architectural eras. Results show a rapid progression of women within statistical numbers of both educational institutions and architecture firms. This number is, however, one dimensional and does not accurately represent positions of power - which appear to be male dominated - and its impact on the Swedish urban city. The modern woman, as it turns out, does not face the struggles of the pioneers. She is, on the other hand, placed within the box of large architecture corporations, and in that way loses her personal touch and sense of style in her professional work.

Klimatförändring är något som sker naturligt på vår planet. Vad man dock har upptäckt under de senaste 100 åren, är att vi människor har påskyndat denna process och därmed satt planetens naturliga cykel ur balans. Forskare förutspår drastiska förändringar i framtiden. Torka och begränsad åtkomst till dricksvatten. Höjning av havsnivån. Extremaväder. M.m. Ändå händer det inte så mycket som man tycker att det borde göra. En förändring måste ske. Så vad kan jag, som grafisk designer, göra för världen? Ett av de stora problemen inom detta ämne är attdetta är något man inte vill tala om i samhället. Det är ett tungt ämne och det är förståeligt att mangärna vänder ryggen till. Därför har jag anpassatmitt projekt till att tackla detta dilemma genom attutnyttja ett medium som har möjlighet att fångauppnärksamhet på ett öppensinnat sätt. Genom rolig aktivitet och lättsam stämning hoppas jag att fler ska vara öppna till förändring. För att uppnå detta har grafisk formgivning använts för att gestala projektets identitet med stöd från färgteori och beteendevetenskap. Även teorierna om nudging och learning by doing har spelat en rolli arbetet som mynnat ut i ett  brädspel med fokus på användarupplevelsen. / Climate change is something that happens naturally on our planet. What has been discovered over the last 100 years, however, is that us humans have accelerated this process and put the planet’s natural cycle out of balance. Researchers predict drastic changes in the future. Drought and limited access to drinking water. Increasing sea level. Extreme weather. Etc. Despite this not as much happens as you think it should. A change must happen. So what can I, as a graphic designer, do for the world? One of the big problems about this topic, is that this is something people avoid talking about in society. It’s a heavy subject and it’s understandable that people would rather turn their back on it. Therefore, I have adapted my project to tackle this dilemma by using a medium that has the opportunity to capture attention in an open minded way. Through fun activity and light-hearted atmosphere, I hope that more people will be open to change. To achieve this, graphic design has been used to shape the project’s identity with the support of color theory and behavioral science. The theories of nudging and learning by doing have also played a role in the work, which resulted in a board game with a focus on user experience.