This thesis examines customer value by studying the iPhone through its users from a Service- Dominant logic perspective. We distinguish three parts of the theory: the process of value- creation; the role of the firm; and customer involvement in shaping the offering. By conducting interviews with students in Uppsala, Sweden, we recognize three findings. First, while value is mainly created through the use of an offering the start and end of the value creating process is difficult to distinguish. Second, by interacting with the customer during the use of an offering the firm can affect the value the customer experiences. Third, by customizing an offering more value can be created, and if the customer participates in the process it is more like to succeed.

There are a vast number of research and studies undertaken within the domain of user-centered design concerning the design process of an artifact, but still there are questions being raised of the relatively new and successful field of mobile design. During recent years mobile technology have surpassed the standardized thoughts of how to prototype and evaluate such a ubiquitous device. The paper addresses this predicament by discussing aspects of fidelity differences in an early design process of a mobile design. The example being presented refers to a design study of an iPhone-application, where two different types of prototypes were created and user tested, a low-fidelity paper prototype and a mixed-fidelity interactive prototype. The paper sets focus on the various differences between these fidelities closely related to the case. It also reflects on how mobile design approaches can mature during the early stages of a design process.

Today, 3D models of cities are created from aerial images using a camera rig. Images, together with sensor data from the flights, are stored for further processing when building 3D models. However, there is a market demand for a more mobile solution of satisfactory quality. If the camera position can be calculated for each image, there is an existing algorithm available for the creation of 3D models. This master thesis project aims to investigate whether the iPhone 4 offers good enough image and sensor data quality from which 3D models can be created. Calculations on movements and rotations from sensor data forms the foundation of the image processing, and should refine the camera position estimations. The 3D models are built only from image processing since sensor data cannot be used due to poor data accuracy. Because of that, the scaling of the 3D models are unknown and a measurement is needed on the real objects to make scaling possible. Compared to a test algorithm that calculates 3D models from only images, already available at the SBD’s system, the quality of the 3D model in this master thesis project is almost the same or, in some respects, even better when compared with the human eye.

This paper presents the designing process of Tourist Guiding app on iPhone. This app aims for assisting tourists to schedule their trip plan in detail. The designing process consisted of three phases: research, interface design, user evaluation. In order to focus on user-centered  research, two methods were carried out questionnaire survey, interview with participants. After the research was done, the results of research were analyzed and summarized so that the potential requirements were collected. Those requirements would decide the inclusive features of this app, such as navigation,plan a trip,search for transportation.  Meanwhile, the interfaces of this app were designed on the platform: Photoshop. Lastly, the paper prototype's evaluation was conducted with four participants. The valuable feedbacks was given and the improvements of the interfaces were done.

Civic issues in a society can be reported through a crowdsourcing web application. People can download the application on their smartphones and report the issues such as a pothole or broken streetlight. The report is submitted by taking a photo of the issue and additional information is entered. At first, the reports are submitted to a call center and after analyzing they will be transferred to organizations responsible for this type of events. In such a crowdsourcing project it is very vital to motivate people to participate in the project. The reports are supplied by users and without an acceptable number of users the application would be useless. In addition, having the exact location of a report is very helpful to facilitate the process of solving civic issues. Positioning with smartphones is not very accurate as they do not have strong and accurate GPSs. Therefore, there is a need to improve the accuracy of the positioning process and consequently accuracy of the spatial data. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how to employ GIS to help reporting civic issues and how to design an interesting client interface for such an application, in order to motivate user to download and use it. The goal is also to find out shortcomings and weaknesses of the positioning with smartphones and find a way to improve its accuracy.Some of successful similar applications’ structures and their interfaces were reviewed. In addition, a survey among existing users of crowdsourcing applications has been done in order to find out how to design the application to be interesting for users. Furthermore, some techniques and methods were chosen in order to improve the GPS accuracy especially in the places with a low GPS signal strength. These methods exploit WLAN and some of embedded features in a smartphone such as microphone, camera, accelerometer, gyroscope to improve the positioning accuracy. In the end, along reporting civic issues the user is able to report and get information about cheap and appropriate necessities and public events in different geographical areas through a map-based application. Furthermore, he or she is benefited by some location-based services such as online-food or taxi. The client application’s interface was designed for iPhone.This GIS-based mobile application would be an appropriate alternative for the old reporting methods like phone call or mail. Nevertheless, reporting civic issues itself, cannot be necessarily a strong motivation to attract the user to download and use the application. Therefore, desired feedbacks of the crowd need to be found out in order to encourage them to spend their time for the application. User needs to get motivated to use the application and considered additional parts can be very helpful to reach this aim.

With the increasing popularity of phone application development, a number of features have surfaced that enable users to utilize extended functionalities with their phone. With a single device, a user is now able to have access to the latest trends. As a result, functionalities from various products such as personal computers or GPS devices can now be accessible in one place. While this technology is evolving at a fast rate, it is the embedded technology and hardware that drive it which facilitate the innovative designs and solutions. At the other end of the spectrum of embedded systems, companies continue to maintain legacy products that use embedded chips programmed through their flash memory. With this perceived commitment to stay loyal to their older product designs, it has become rather cumbersome for such companies to stay current with the latest hardware and software trends. The result is higher costs to the customers for their high-end products. While the average user invests in newer and faster Google phones or iPhones, it is unlikely that the same can be said for commercial products such as a refrigerator or a ball machine. What if a development framework existed that allowed customers to have access to better user interfaces and functionalities over the lifetime of their product? In this Masters report, an innovative approach is discussed which demonstrates the latest mobile phone technology combined with an existing embedded device being applied to the conversion of a low-end tennis ball machine into an affordable high-end one. / text

Denna rapport kommer att behandla processen i skapandet av RADA som är en applikation där användare kan dela idéer. RADA är ett uppdrag av Acne Digital som jag har tillägnat 3 månaders praktik. Målet med RADA är att medarbetarna som jobbar på Acne Digital ska på en snabbt och interaktivt sätt kunna dela idéer och bilder. Rapporten beskriver hur arbetet gick till från koncept, design och utveckling till en färdig slutprodukt. Jag kommer att undersöka skillnaderna mellan olika tillvägagångssätt när det gäller utveckling och design för webbaserade applikationer och så kallade native applikationer, som släpps på App Store eller Google play. Jag kommer även att ta upp och undersöka vilka metodval som är bäst lämpade för olika utvecklingssituationer när det gäller utvecklingspaketet Phonegap och dess för- och nackdelar.

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This project focuses on wireless power transmission (WPT). More specifically, the use of inductive coupling with resonance. The resonance phenomenon makes the transfer of power more efficient, through matching the inductive and capacitive reactances thus eliminating the reactive losses. A wireless smartphone charger has been built with this method for demonstration, and some tests were performed. The charger consisted of a primary “transmitting circuit” and a secondary “receiving circuit”. The built charger did not achieve full resonance, but it achieved longer wireless transmission distance compared to that of a commercial wireless phone charger. The first experiment confirmed the DC/AC characteristics of the transmitting circuit, and the ability for the voltage to oscillate at a higher level than the input voltage. The voltage oscillated at 45kHz. The second experiment confirmed the AC/DC characteristics of the receiving circuit, and the ability to regulate the voltage to a constant 5V. The minimum required input voltage for the receiving circuit, to achieve a constant 5V output, was approximately 6V. Frequencies from 100Hz to 350kHz were tested and it had no severe impact on stability of the output voltage. The third and last test used both circuits, and showed the relationship between input voltage and transmission distance. The maximum distance achieved for the complete device was ~4.3cm at an input voltage of ~20V. When having the coils touch (Transmission distance ~0cm), the minimum required voltage was 6.6V, whereas a commercial wireless charger needs 5V.

Augmented reality opens up a lot of possibilities for new types of games, where the real and the virtual world are mixed. Despite this, augmented reality games are still not very common, probably due to the fact that head-mounted displays (which are often used for augmented reality) are expensive. However, in recent years mobile phones have become more and more powerful, and since many of them have built-in cameras and rather large screens, they are a potential platform for augmented reality games. This thesis explores some of the problems and possibilities associated with the creation of augmented reality games for the Apple iPhone. In order to do that, a multi-player augmented reality game for the iPhone was implemented, and then a number of performance tests and a user study were conducted. The most important conclusion that was reached is that performance is a definite problem when creating augmented reality games for the iPhone. / Augmented reality (förstärkt/utökad verklighet) öppnar upp nya möjligheter för spel där den virtuella världen kombineras med den verkliga. Trots detta så finns det inte många augmented reality-spel tillgängliga, vilket kan bero på att head-mounted displays (som ofta använda till augmented reality) är dyra och inte särskilt lätt att få tag på. Mobiltelefoner är däremot väldigt lättillgängliga och de senaste åren har de blivit mer och mer kraftfulla. Eftersom många av dem dessutom har inbyggda videokameror och relativt stora skärmar, så har mobiltelefoner blivit en potentiell plattform för augmented reality-spel. Denna rapport utforskar några av de problem och möjligheter som är associerade med skapandet av augmented reality-spel för Apples mobiltelefon, iPhone. Ett multi-player augmented reality-spel implementerades för iPhone, och sedan genomfördes ett antal prestanda-tester och en användarstudie. Den viktigaste slutsatsen som drogs var att prestanda är ett stort problem när man skapar augmented reality-spel för iPhone.