Elders usually experience high levels of loneliness in the society as they have retired from work and less of a center within the family. There are many interaction design work that target elder’s loneliness and aim to solve the problem by connecting elders with other people through distance. Digitalization’s connectedness is a helpful factor that can combat elder’s communication issues. At the same time, there are many already existing digital services that embed communication functions such as email, texting, and video call. Still, elders find themselves have difficulties using existing technology. The thesis focuses on why current digital technologies cannot help elders connect and communicate efficiently and how to re-design to help elders feel their willingness to communicate by current technologies. Empirical research in the thesis project has shown that elders lack trust towards digital systems due to lack of transparency and findings of specialized contexts. The project is in two parts: qualitative research and prototyping. Through qualitative research, the thesis shows that there is a lack of transparency and control from digital applications that elders experience. Prototyping outcomes suggests enabling personalization within digital services for elders by implementing slow user interactions and simple graphic elements.

Denna rapport beskriver utvecklingen av en webbapplikation skapad för Cepheid AB som är ett medicinteknikföretag i Stockholm. Genom att fördjupa sig i bakgrunden om kunden, målgruppen och målen för denna webbapplikation, syftar denna rapport till att hjälpa kunden att analysera data på ett enkelt sätt. En litteraturstudie görs genom att ta upp några teorier såsom användarbarhet, interaktion, grafisk design och Flow. En viktig del i litteraturstudien är att förstå vad dessa teorier har för kriterier eftersom dem ska etableras på webbapplikationens vidaredesign. Sammantaget syftar denna rapport till att validera alla designaspekter av webbapplikationen. / This report describes the development of a web application created for Cepheid AB which is a medical technology company. By delving into the background of the customer, the target audience and the goals of this web application, this report aims to help the customer report data in a simple way that is condensed into functional and visual elements through web design. A literature study is done by addressing different theories such as user children, interaction, graphic design and Flow theories in order to be able to first the different criteria that theories address and based on the most suitable theory be able to further design a web application. Taken together, this report aims to validate all design aspects of this site and prove that it is made for the end user while satisfying users.

The aim of this study is to investigate how the semiotic modalities interact (or not) in two ’domestic science- and consumer knowledge’ books. Unfortunately this interaction is often lost when the multimodal perspective is forgotten. The fact that this type of literature often is uninspiring and poorly designed does not make things better. This paper will use a wider text concept as a stepping stone toward an understanding of the interplay between multimodalities and semiotic resources in the books. A theoretical literature study combined with an empirical analysis will lay the foundation to answering my research questions: how do the modalities in two ’domestic science- and consumer knowledge’ books interact and how do these books relate to earlier research on multimodal texts? The result was somewhat surprising as it showed that from a collaboration point of view, the book that was perceived as the least inspiring was as good as the one that was perceived as the more interesting. The conclusion drawn was that design plays a greater role than one might think and that is just as important as as a well functioning interaction between modalities. In textbooks, all parts are important to create meaning.

This paper uses Panofsky’s iconographic method to analyze images and texts belonging to two environmental activist organizations: Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion. The purpose of the analysis is to gain an understanding of how design is used today to engage people in environmental activism. Two theories will be used to conduct the analysis; the first one is the theory of strategic activism which involves differentiating between radical activism and conventional activism. The second theory is Hall’s theory of representation which will be used to gain knowledge of how the organizations represent people in their imagery. The analysis show that Greenpeace show signs of conventional strategy and Extinction Rebellion show signs of radical strategy in their imagery. Lastly, I will discuss if the activist strategy shown in the organizations imagery correlates with their actions.

The aim of this study is to examine how the Graphical User Interface of League of Legends’ ability icons for champions evolved from 2009-2023. This was done by conductinga formal analysis of three different champions from the game League of Legends that haveundergone Visual and Gameplay Updates. The value of this case study was the understandingof the evolution of GUI in games over a long period of time. This may help game artists tounderstand how a coherent graphic design language is formed for a specific game and how itevolves over time to reflect design changes in games.

This thesis is a supporting paper for three of my 3D animations created and presented for a Master of Fine Arts graduate exhibition. It discusses how the two realms of graphic design and 3D animation helped me to develop my heuristic techniques of creating animations. Using the three animations as examples, I make an attempt to explain how linear and figurative images influence each other in the creative process of creature/character development. I also discuss the various influences and cumulative explorations behind the imageries of animation. A brief discussion about Asian Indian aesthetic concepts and the general methodology of creating 3D animation using Alias|Wavefront Maya is also included.

This thesis is the culmination of my work as a graphic artist thus far. I chose to investigate the use of type and image in the production of social protest art, as it relates to historical and contemporary art as well as my own. Methods used in gathering the data include references from books, periodicals, websites, and hands-on application of the artistic process. Conclusions found within this paper suggest that using type and image within a multimedia process, serves to communicate important messages and attempts to educate the viewer on important political and social matters. Protest art has and will continue to be a viable and important form of art. This thesis is significant in presenting my artwork as it fits into the mosaic of protest art in the past, along with discussion of design elements and graphic processes.

The workflow and process of graphic design is today streamlined by the usage of our tools such as softwares. However, this doesn’t mean that designers must restrict themselves from working outside an established practice largely determined by such software. Implementing programming and generative design as a method in the development of graphic design can lead to new insights and different perspectives. Proven to be an asset in the creation of visual material the method falls short as generative design is co-dependent on both the designer and user. Though complicated and expensive, generative design proves useful when working with realtime data and as a tool for generating new ideas. Working experimentally with under-utilized tools can help the development of new trends and methods within the field of graphic design.

Since the development of modern technology, we are faced with more choices than ever. Our choices are based on the visual impression of a product or a service (Watzman, 1992). But what is it that makes us choose a specific product or service? This essay sheds light on the problems surrounding the development of technology that have led to a digitalized society where products are replaced by digital services. It also highlights a new professional role that has emerged from the digitalisation of society. Furthermore, the essay also enlightens on how a digital service's design might affect its users by examining how the music streaming services Spotify and Apple Music affect user's first impression of the service through a semiotic analysis. The results show that the design of a service is decisive for which target group the company is aimed at. And that the choice of functions maintains the interest of the users. In addition, the graphic design profession takes place through a development, where you may need to broaden your knowledge towards a digital competence. The essay opened up the question of whether there are more aspects that are based on the choice of service, such as the cost of the service and class differences.

From music fans finding new songs in a genre, graphic designers brainstorming ways to depict a message, and journalists scrutinizing documents for angles, people often conduct exploratory searches to understand complex topics. In contrast to traditional search, which is done to quickly answer simple questions, exploratory search is an iterative learning process that involves understanding an information space in order to find useful pieces of information. Exploratory search is composed of two, closely-related sub-processes: (1) information foraging, choosing sources and collecting information, and (2) sensemaking, organizing this information into a mental framework. Both of these sub-processes are cognitively taxing and heavily rely on our memory. For information foraging, users need to read long, complex resources and recognize useful pieces of information. For sensemaking, as users encounter more information, it becomes harder to relate new information to their current knowledge. The spreading activation theory of memory purports that the information we encounter materializes in our working memory, which spreads activation into our long-term memory, enabling us to recall related semantic information to make sense of newly found information. From this theory, this thesis introduces three strategies for creating organizations that better stimulate memory: (1) constructing overviews that are association networks that mimic our memory's structure, (2) incorporating our prior knowledge in these overviews, and (3) providing concrete information to help us make sense of abstract ideas. This thesis demonstrates how to employ these strategies through three exploratory search systems across three domains: (A) SymbolFinder helps graphic designers explore visual symbols for abstract concepts, (B) TastePaths helps music fans explore artists within a genre, and (C) AngleKindling supports journalists explore story angles for a press release. Through this body of work, I demonstrate that by designing exploratory search systems to stimulate our memory, we can make acquiring and making sense of knowledge less cognitively demanding.