Emotions are thought to be a key factor that critically influences human decision-making. Emotion regulation can help to mitigate emotion related decision biases and eventually lead to a better decision performance. Serious games emerged as a new angle introducing technological methods to learning emotion regulation, where meaningful biofeedback information displays player's emotional state. This thesis investigates emotions and the effect of emotion regulation on decision performance. Furthermore, it explores design and evaluation methods for creating serious games where emotion regulation can be learned and practiced. The scope of this thesis was limited to serious games for emotion regulation training using psychophysiological methods to communicate user's affective information. Using the psychophysiological methods, emotions and their underlying neural mechanism have been explored. Through design and evaluation of serious games using those methods, effects of emotion regulation have been investigated where decision performance has been measured and analyzed. The proposed metrics for designing and evaluating such affective serious games have been exhaustively evaluated. The research methods used in this thesis were based on both quantitative and qualitative aspects, with true experiment and evaluation research, respectively. Serious games approach to emotion regulation was investigated. The results suggested that two different emotion regulation strategies, suppression and cognitive reappraisal, are optimal for different decision tasks contexts. With careful design methods, valid serious games for training those different strategies could be produced. Moreover, using psychophysiological methods, underlying emotion neural mechanism could be mapped to provide optimal level of arousal for a certain task. The results suggest that it is possible to design and develop serious game applications that provide helpful learning environment where decision makers could practice emotion regulation and subsequently improve their decision making.

Security Operation Centers (SOCs) have become an integral component of business organizations all over the world. The concept of a SOC has existed for a few years now yet there is no systematic study documenting the occurrences of their operations. A lack of documented operational knowledge makes it a challenge for security researchers interested in improving operational efficiency through algorithms, tools, and processes. SOC environments operate under a secrecy culture as a result of which researchers are not trusted by analysts and their managers. This lack of trust leads to only superficial information through methods such as interviews. Moreover, security analysts perform their tasks using hunches that are difficult to articulate and express to an interviewing researcher. This knowledge is called tacit knowledge. Capturing rich tacit knowledge is crucial for researchers to build useful and usable operational tools. This thesis proposes use of long-term participant observation from cultural anthropology as a research methodology for security researchers to study SOC analysts and their managers. Over a period of four and a half years seven students in Computer Science, graduate and undergraduate, were trained by an anthropologist in using fieldwork techniques to study humans. They then took jobs as security analysts at five different SOCs belonging to academia and corporations. We made unexpected discoveries in pursuit of tacit operational knowledge. The first discovery was identification of human capital mismanagement of analysts as the root cause of analyst burnout. Specifically, a vicious cycle among analyst skills, empowerment, creativity, and growth causes analysts to lose morale and eventually leave the job. In fact burnout is a manifestation of number of tensions that are inherent in a security operations setting. This leads to our second discovery of recognizing and managing contradictions as a prerequisite for SOC innovation. Failure to acknowledge them can lead to dysfunctions in a SOC such as analyst burnout. Informed by the findings regarding the social aspects of SOC operations we attained the intended goal of capturing tacit operational knowledge. The thesis documents our experience in tacit knowledge capture through design of a framework for detecting phishing emails in near real-time. Studying human aspects of security operations and cyber-security in general must be done within a social and organizational context. This thesis proposes long-term participant observation of practitioners and end-users as a viable methodology to conduct cyber-security research in general.

User centered design is a process which aims to understand user needs and desires by using different tools and methods. This is challenging in the industry as companies have different goals compared to the academic discipline of user centered design. As companies have different goals, common UCD methods which are used in the academic field are often not used. Therefore, there is a gap in how UCD is done in practice compared to theory. Designers and user experience specialists must use the tools which are available, capitalize on the opportunity to use existing resources in the organization in order to understand users and their needs. Insights explain the why and the motivation of the consumer or user, and they are less apparent and intangible, hidden truths that result from continuous digging. Insights can be draw from several different sources, from data and qualitative sources. This thesis investigates from what available sources in an organization can insights be generated from in order to understand users and design better experiences, specifically from the organizations perspective. The purpose is not only to understand users but to drive the organization’s objectives and goals. This thesis uses an innovative collaborative workshop methodology, working with digital designers, to answer the research questions and as a result presents an insights generation model. The research has been specifically conducted for an organization, and from their available sources, but the methodology and model creation has the potential to be used in similar settings, domains or projects.

I dagens samhälle används Informations- och Kommunikationsteknik (IKT) på olika sätt och fritidshemmet ska följa med i utvecklingen av omvärlden. Fritidshemmet ska även utgå från elevernas behov och intressen. Syftet med denna studie är att skapa kunskap om hur pedagoger inom fritidshem använder IKT som verktyg för elevers meningsskapande, välbefinnande och utveckling i fritidshemmets verksamhet. Följande forskningsfrågor fokuseras: Hur beskriver pedagogerna vad elever gör med de digitala verktygen? Vilka faktorer beskriver pedagogerna som viktiga om IKT ska användas på fritidshem? Hur beskriver pedagogerna sin kompetens i att arbeta med IKT på fritidshem? Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt är det sociokulturella perspektivet som har sitt ursprung i Lev Vygotskijs teorier gällande utveckling, språk och lärande. En etnografisk ansats samt en kvalitativ metod har valts och empirin är således inhämtad med hjälp av observation samt semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultaten redovisas utefter våra tre forskningsfrågor. Resultaten grundar sig i empirin vilket samlades in genom observation och genom de semistrukturerade intervjuerna. Resultaten visar att pedagogernas intresse och tillgång till tid och digitala verktyg styr hur mycket de arbetar med IKT i verksamheten. Det framkommer även att surfplattan har fått en stor roll i dagens fritidshem eftersom den är smidig och lätt att bära med sig för att dokumentera och användandet har ökat markant de sista åren.

Conversational agents such as Siri, Google and Alexa are growing in popularity, and Artificial Intelligence in the form of natural language processing utilized by these agents is becoming more available and capable with time. Understanding how conversational agents are used today and what implications it has for our daily lives is important if this trend is going to continue. In this thesis I present how children interact with conversational agents today and the implications this has for families. Four families with children in the age of 6-9 were interviewed regarding how children interact with conversational agents today, what concerns parents have and how they view the agent. The results show that children regard the conversational agent as a tool, and that the primary interactions are entertainment and exploration. Parents were concerned what the agent might say when they are not there, and do not feel in control of the agent. In the beginning children have high expectations on the capabilities of the agent but quickly assess the capabilities through experimentation.

Detta projekt har blivit utfört i samarbete med Senion AB för att ta fram en pappersrapport som presenterar information över bokningsdata för ett kontorsmiljös användning. Projektet har bestått av två övergripande delar. Första delen bestod av att utveckla en metod för att samla och formatera bokningsdata tillhandahållen från en av Senions kunders kontor. Andra delen bestod av att visualisera informationen härledd från den data som blev framtagen från första delen. Den informationsvisualisering som designades testades i användartester för att få djupare insikt i vad som är effektiv presentation av detta projekts bokningsdata. Användartesterna gav insikt i vilka representationer som fungerade bra och hur vissa kan bli korrigerade till det bättre. De kvantitativa mätningarna hade ingen statistisk signifikans så diskussionen av resultatet är huvudsakligen centrerad kring de kvalitativa mätningarna. Baserat på resultat av tänka-högt och semi-strukturerade intervjuer så diskuteras fördelen med några multimodala visualiseringar, stapeldiagram och tilltalande visualiserings estetik. Projektet har också presenterat vikten av att informationsvisualisering gynnas av att vara grundad i kognitionsvetenskapliga principer om perception och uppmärksamhet. Vidare så belyser texten hur användarcentrerad informationsvisualisering kräver starkare empiriska grunder och standardiserade mått för att testa kvalitet och effektivitet.

Information visualization aims at creating visually concrete representations of big and abstract data. Research shows that the subject has good potential when it comes to conveying information within many various sectors. However, there is a scarce range of research defining a design space for information visualization tools with the aim of trying to convey clear and true information that is completely understandable for many different target groups with varying educational background, cognitive state, etc. To explore the gap of such design and the potential that information visualization has towards it, a study was conducted to gather the experience of healthcare practitioners with various experience of examining and presenting results to patients with a certain condition. To gather their opinions and thoughts, semi-structured interviews were used and from the results, four defined design aspects emerged. These four emerged design aspects have potential to work as a base when designing a future design concept.

Whether utilizing our smartphones for navigation or skyping our friend on our way, the use of ICTs affects the way that we walk through and stay in public places. "Dancing" mobile phone users are only one example of this. Their virtual activity becomes visible in public places. This master thesis is about contemporary demands on public space imposed by the new ICT generation, and aims to explore ethe behaviour of ICT users in public places. Therefore, it investigates the question of how the use of ICTs affects the way that people use public places and whar that means for urban planning. To this end, the thesis combines a literature review with an empirical study on the Münsterplatz in Bonn, Germany. The interviews and observations from this case study identified examples of characteristics of ICT users that are described in the literature; however, they also revealed new insights. Therefore, the thesis contributes to a greater understanding of the behaviour and demands of ICT users in public places and identifies ICT users as one user group, out-of-many, with specific demands on public space.

The usage of conversational agents in domestic spaces is increasing every year and with this ethical issues that we have not anticipated will arise, both because these relationships are human-like and not human-like.This thesis shows that ethically responsible relations- hips between humans and conversational agents in private contexts and domestic environments are much more than conversational design. This project is not primarily focussing on designing dialogues, words, and voices but takes a closer look at the qualities and values these relationships are based on. It is looking at how agents are staged, using design fiction as a methodlogy and medium to raise questions around the impacts of these relati- onships. Furthermore, it is also pointing out some of the possible unintended consequences that could occur if these agents are staged, like personaswith human-like features or if technology goes in between human-human relationships.After multiple design explorations and realizing how complex human-agent and human-human re-lationships are, I realized that the best way to make an impact was not to provide solutions on how ethically responsible relationships between humans and conversational agents should look like. Instead, I have created a set of fictional design ar- tifacts in different future contexts. They aim to point out what designers who design for these relations- hips need to tweak and pay attention to to create more ethically responsible futures.As I created these design fictions, I aimed to find a good balance between humor, provocation, and abstraction to leave room for people‘s imagination. In addition, I am hoping to provoke enough for my audience to feel triggered to raise even more re- levant questions and point out further opportunities for other designers to build on my work.Finally, a fictional design organization was created, which I called “A(i)activists“. I see this as a space where the design fiction can live on and a great medium to communicate the project vision and mis- sion and create a small place for ongoing debates and input from a diverse audience.

Digitalization has spread to affect many aspects of our lives but it has yet to fully engage equestrians. Many stables still extensively use the traditional whiteboard in combination with digital technologies. Is it because digital technologies are not designed with the unique needs of an equestrian? Since research in this area is lacking, this study describes the daily conventions around the traditional whiteboard and the complementary use of digital technology, while exploring equestrians’ attitudes toward digitalization. Ethnographic methods of participant observation and group interviews were conducted at two large equestrian centers in Sweden, and the informants were a mix of horse owners, stable owners, stable staff, and riding school students. The results show that whiteboards are used to communicate and collaborative planning, but there is a problem of not noticing new handwritten information. Informants are hesitant toward incorporating new digital technologies because they worry about limitations, and some are content with the current traditional conventions - even if they employ many workarounds to issues related to the traditional way. The study also contributes toward a broader understanding of how future digital technologies can be designed in the unique setting of a stable, and the importance of a thorough understanding of users.