The use of social media and its accessibility through smartphones is becoming a more and more researched topic in the field of ICT. In relation to this, the current study attempts to shed light on the general use of social media, Facebook in particular, by youth in Danish context and pays attention to how the accessibility to this media through smartphones affects the interaction between individuals when being together. The research finishes with three conceptual models which goal is to provide future design implications of the studied ICTs in a way that closer meets the user needs and requirements. The models are – one related to Facebook, one general application, and one related to supporting many-to-many communication. The study is of interpretative nature, based on qualitative research approach with a main method for data collection being qualitative semi-structured interviews. There were 8 interviews performed – 3 with students at a secondary school in Odense, Denmark, and the rest with students at the university in the same town. In this way an understanding of the use patterns and issues experienced by the different age groups was attempted. Furthermore, the study contributes with findings to certain discrepancies identified in the current literature, such as the need for context-aware devices, type of friends on Facebook and others. Finally, due to the limited source for data collection, the thesis does not claim for generalizability, but it should be viewed as a small contribution to the studies related to Facebook, particularly applicable within a Danish context.

Personas (typanvändare) är ett populärt verktyg för interaktionsdesigners och gör det möjligt att, bland annat, uppfatta skillnader mellan en ofta stor mängd potentiella användare och därefter anpassa en design efter detta. Men hur användbart är detta verktyg om användarantalet är litet och deras mål i huvudsak styrs av deras identiska arbetsuppgifter? Interaktionsdesigners som vill försäkra sig om att de skapar användarvänliga applikationer bedriver ofta någon from av datainsamling och testning, från och med användare. Det finns flera kända metoder för analys av data som samlats in från kvalitativa studier. Det finns dock färre konkreta riktlinjer för vilka frågor man bör söka svar på under själva datainsamlingen. Detta varierar så klart kraftigt beroende på vilken kontext man befinner sig och någon universell lista med frågeställningar som alltid täcker in det man behöver kommer sannolikt aldrig att existera. Bardram (2000) och hans kollegor har dock sammanställt en checklista med frågeställningar de utvecklat under utvecklingen av ett nytt informationssystem för Danska sjukhus. Ett sådant system är väldigt komplext så det finns anledning att undersöka hur väl deras checklista fungerar för enklare system. I denna studie utvärderades nyttan av personas och Bardrams (2000) checklista som verktyg under ett designprojekt i en miljö med ett fåtal användare, vars uppgifter i huvudsak styrs av deras identiska arbetsuppgifter och komplexiteten i systemet är liten. Resultatet visade att personas är ett lämpligt verktyg trots likheten mellan användarna. Arbetet med att utveckla det som slutligen endast blev en persona gav författaren (tillika studiens interaktionsdesigner) ett sätt att fastställa att deras mål faktiskt var väldigt lika. Personan var grunden i utvecklingsarbetet som slutade med en lyckad design. Även Bardrams (2000) checklista visade sig vara ett bra stöd under studiens gång. Författaren ger dock förslag på två punkter att lägga till i denna checklista.

What transportation means corporations choose for satisfying their mobility needs may have an essential impact on the environment. Choosing environmental friendly, alternatives such as battery driven light electric vehicles, would mean drastically contributing to a more sustainable environment. Meanwhile as carsharing solutions, continuously rise in popularity together with other sharing economy business models so do their possibilities to satisfy the mobility needs for corporations either by them implementing their own carsharing service or by investing on external services offered by established carsharing operators. This thesis has investigated and designed for a Zbee based corporate carsharing service, to be used between the affiliates of Vinngroup in Gothenburg. A Zbee is a light electric three-wheeled vehicle. Based on user-centred service design methods, methods suggested for sharing economy solutions, as well as user experience design methods, this thesis identified that users have different individualistic needs in a workplace and prior experiences that affects how they will use the service.In order to satisfy these different needs, it was found, the system needs to provide real-time vehicle and scheduling information for ensuring the users vehicle availability and service reliability, being one of the first requirement from the users. Further the service should provide users with functions that help users through the different use phases that were identified during this work. The findings found were then presented visually by designing mobile application prototypes and testing them on participants iteratively. The final set of prototypes was further evaluated by using the System Usability Scale, an effective and popular tool for measuring the usability of products and services. This evaluation gave the scores 77.5, 92.5, 90, 87.5 and 72.5, thus this giving a mean-value of 84 and a median of 87.5. All these scores suggests the prototype has high usability.

This technical report presents the data and some results of the experimental research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (Kansei Engineering), undertaken jointly by Technische Universität Chemnitz (Germany) and Novosibirsk State Technical University (Russia) in Feb- March 2016. In the experiment, 82 Master and Bachelor students of both universities evaluated 21 website of selected German and Russian universities per 10 emotional and 5 quality scales.

The advance of the Internet, with its sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. Pre-trip travel planning can be considered a fundamental component of the trip experience. A traveler often needs to obtain important information in order to develop a travel plan. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate and enhance the user experience for a digital travel service and associated Intranet wich main function is to help travellers find departures, arrivals and prices. Based on an usability analysis, and user studies and support from a literature review this master theses resulted in a design proposal for Länstrafiken Norrbottens external website and their Intranet as well as a couple of guidelines for designing or redesigning a travel website.

This thesis introduces and critically reflects on a design programme, Storyforming, that explores ways to design objects and places to enrich daily life narratives. Using an experimental design approach, the goal is to exemplify and explore this idea with discursive artefacts that, through their physical and temporal form, act as catalysts in the construction of meaningful experiences. In the current sustainability discourse, behavioural change has been pointed out as a key factor in achieving a sustainable society. Historically, design has been very effective in increasing production and consumption behaviours by creating new types of needs and, in a way, manufacturing desire (Forty, 1986). Drawing on this, the overarching aim of this thesis is the investigation of the ways design, through a suggested programme, can afford alternative types of meaningful experiences in contrast to the prevailing consumer culture. The empirical work reported in the thesis stems from several research projects looking into the matter of energy use in relation to design. In addition, two of the projects have been carried out in the author’s own design practice. Some concepts are explored more in-depth—involving events such as field studies, situated interviews, workshops, prototype building, design interventions in the form of domestication probes, and contextual studies ranging from a few weeks up to a year—while other concepts exist only as sketches or photo montages. The diversity of these concepts, the design experiments, helps span a design space becoming a new provisional design programme. The idea for this programme has evolved from observations and reflections made throughout the experiments presented in the thesis. The general results are the suggested approach of Storyforming, which focuses on the design of artefacts supporting daily narratives that can be used to create engagement, meaning, and alternative values applicable to the discourse of sustainable behaviour. Specific contributions are the selection of design experiments. In the thesis, the experiments have first been examined from the perspective of stories and forming as a basis for the new programme formulation. Through this articulation of the programme, the experiments are revisited through three leitmotifs, part of the provisional programme focusing on different properties related to the aspect of forming. From the perspective of the user, these themes—seeing and accessing designs, exploring and expressing complexity, and sharing experiences and negotiating use—are finally elaborated on in relation to other theoretical concepts as well as their implications for future research. / <p>QC 20140825</p>

Orientador: Maria Cecília Calani Baranauskas / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T12:26:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Hornung_HeikoHorst_D.pdf: 6593850 bytes, checksum: 75052d44505f3a88db9d9ad41b115259 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Web e suas tecnologias de base facilitam interações entre pessoas que alguns anos atrás não eram imagináveis. A colaboração é um tipo importante de interação que tem um propósito. Pessoas de diferentes contextos sociais e culturais, e com diferentes preferências e habilidades, podem colaborar mediadas pela Web. A colaboração muitas vezes acontece em contextos heterogêneos, que são definidos tanto pelas situações atuais dos parceiros na colaboração, quanto pelas experiências passadas, sejam elas individuais ou coletivas. A Web como um meio/uma mídia tem um impacto na colaboração e facilita certos aspectos da colaboração enquanto dificulta outros. Adotando uma perspectiva informada pela Web Pragmática, nesta tese investigamos questões da colaboração mediada pela Web, relacionadas com o Design da Interação. Nosso objetivo principal é entender barreiras semióticas da colaboração mediada pela Web e propor uma abordagem ao Design da Interação que reduza tais barreiras. Barreiras semióticas são barreiras relacionadas à comunicação, mediação e representação. Estas barreiras surgem na colaboração mediada pela Web pois muitos mecanismos da comunicação interpessoal face-a-face não estão disponíveis. Dependendo do contexto, barreiras semióticas frequentemente exercem um impacto negativo à colaboração; entretanto, em alguns casos o impacto pode ser positivo também. A abordagem ao Design da Interação aqui proposta tem suas bases na Web Pragmática e utiliza a Semiótica Organizacional e a Teoria da Atividade como referenciais teórico-metodológicos. As investigações teóricas contaram com uma contrapartida em termos de um embasamento em práticas reais através da participação em um projeto de pesquisa no domínio da educação inclusiva. Materializamos a abordagem proposta no design de um protótipo e na implementação de uma ferramenta correspondente ao protótipo, que apoia uma prática de profissionais no domínio da educação inclusiva. Além disso, propusemos e conduzimos um método de avaliação guiada pela pragmática dentro do contexto de um estudo de caso longitudinal. O design do protótipo, a implementação da ferramenta e a avaliação conduzida fornecem evidências de que a abordagem proposta ao Design da Interação guiada pela pragmática contribui para a redução de barreiras semióticas e para a promoção da colaboração mediada pela Web / Abstract: The Web and its underlying technologies enable interactions among people that were unimaginable a few years ago. An important type of purposeful interaction is collaboration. Mediated by the Web, people from different social and cultural backgrounds, with different needs, preferences and capabilities can collaborate with each other. Collaboration often takes place in heterogeneous contexts that are not only defined by the actual situations of the collaboration partners, but also by individual and collective past experiences. The Web as a medium has an impact on collaboration and facilitates or enables certain aspects of collaboration while making others more difficult. In this PhD thesis we investigate Interaction Design related questions about web-mediated collaboration under a Pragmatic Web perspective. Our prime objective is to understand semiotic barriers to web-mediated collaboration and propose an approach to Interaction Design that reduces these barriers. Semiotic barriers are barriers related to communication, mediation and representation. These barriers emerge during web-based collaboration since many mechanisms of interpersonal face-to-face communication are not available. Depending on the context, semiotic barriers often have a negative impact on collaboration, but in some cases they might also have positive effects. The approach to Interaction Design proposed in this PhD thesis is rooted in the Pragmatic Web and uses Organizational Semiotics and Activity Theory as its theoretical and methodological frames of reference. The theoretic investigations were practically grounded in real world practices by participating in a research project in the domain of inclusive education. We materialized the proposed approach in the design of a prototype and the implementation of the corresponding tool that supports a practice of inclusive education professionals. Furthermore we proposed and applied a pragmatics-driven evaluation method in a longitudinal case study. Prototype design, tool implementation, and the conducted evaluation provided evidence that the proposed approach to pragmatics-driven Interaction Design can reduce semiotic barriers and thus promote web-mediated collaboration / Doutorado / Ciência da Computação / Doutor em Ciência da Computação

Through qualitative and exploratory research, this thesis project investigates how body stimulation from haptic feedback affects user’s feeling of presence in VR environments. It identifies that in current time,the development of haptic feedback in VR lags severely behind the advancements made in visual and auditory feedback, and that somecompanies disregard its importance. Simultaneously, new companies are emerging which focus entirely on haptics in VR. Since development is still an early stage, this thesis highlights now as a unique opportunity to explore the thoughts professionals have on the topic, as well as try to find out which exact haptics are important for feeling presence to serve as a guide to those developing such systems.Finally, to tackle this issue, it is imperative to understand certain theoretical concepts such as affordances and embodiment, and how they change in the world of VR. This understanding can contribute to Interaction Design knowledge.

This project explores storytelling tools for the collaborative work with persons in vulnerable situation, in this case, a group of unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan, living in Umeå, Sweden. The concept presented is the prototype of an eating experierence, BAHAM bolani: An idea for a social company where the participants are active into creating their own possibilities to stay in Sweden. With their own stories, they fill in the gap of how unaccompanied minors and asylum seekers are depicted in the dominant narrative. It is them providing meaning to the design concept. The theoretical approach is from a decolonising and feminist point of view, with collaborative design methods. In the discussion, I debate the need of more listening tools for the design community based on these theories, because they allow the designer to challenge their own cultural assumptions, and meet the participants in a more humble and equal way, especially when working with persons in vulnerable situations.

Globally in the medical and healthcare field, due to technological advancement and higher success rate of life-saving procedures, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of blood stem cell transplants performed each year. Consequently, the demand for blood stem cells from the donors is continual. The process of acquiring these cells from donors has its obstacles. Once volunteers are willing to donate and are identified as a potential match to the patient, they go through various stages, involving a long waiting period for the donors.  The aim of the project  is to apply and combine interaction design practices in the healthcare and medical world: how it would affect and shape specific experiences for the blood stem-cell donor. I would propose a digital service design that provides strategies to enhance the donation journey experience for the volunteer donors and the stakeholders involved in the process. The thesis project explores how we might design alternative ways to enhance a donor experience through digital services.