<p>This thesis project aims to create an animistic system for remote workers to promote a healthier work style and more interactions between remote workers and their colleagues. The Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 resulted in a significant increase in employees who started to work remotely, and with that came the benefits and challenges. Working from home allows remote workers to work with higher productivity and a more flexible schedule and improves the work and life balance of the remote workers. However, major communication issues were reported due to asynchronous working pace and less in-person interaction, which became a significant challenge for remote working. Other remote working challenges include difficulties setting up a home office, health concerns such as sedentariness and hydropenia, higher worker self-discipline requirements, etc. In this thesis, I took the approach of animistic design, focused on the context of a home office environment, and created an interactive system, Planto, a planter and mobile application system designed to improve the work-from-home experience. This thesis presents the Planto system’s research and design process, including literature review, peer product review, user research, ideation, the iterative process of a mobile application design and a product design, and a heuristic evaluation to assess the quality of the design outcome. Planto system seamlessly integrates product design, animistic design, and IoT design. More importantly, it aims to facilitate the complicated work-from-home experience, and the medium is a simple planter.</p>

The world is quickly changing and the transition away from fossil fuels is occurring at a rapid pace. The car industry has experienced a radical change in the last years replacing combustion cars with electrical ones. The infrastructure to support the new vehicles with charging facilities has not met the demand in terms of accessibility and technical performance. Neither have the chargers reached a sustainable number to support the ever-increasing number of electric cars on the road. To adapt to this need companies have started to pursue next generation chargers. This paper focused on creating the next generation of chargers with visual design, interaction, and manufacturing as the focus point. This project is a collaboration with the company Zpark to create a new visual branding for their products and improve the user experience for their user group.  The project takes a wide approach to initial research, looking at both AC and DC chargers on the market as well as the user groups' current opinions. This research was implemented to create a DC charger (fast charging unit), as the company had not yet created a product that could cover this market segment. In the design process, a visual branding was created to make Zpark a more recognizable company. Several features were distinguished that could be implemented on future products in their line-up, whilst also creating the possibility of re-branding to specific buyers. A suggested manufacturing process and material choice were made to work as a guideline to create a more sustainable product, with ecological and economic impact as factors.  Four main categories of needs for the charger were elaborated on to create a better interaction, both for users charging and owners of the chargers. These four categories were charging, payment, communication, and maintenance. All the solutions help to create a more sustainable charging solution that will aid the transition to electric with a future-proofing aspect in mind.

This paper explores the workshop as a tool to raise awareness about unconscious gender bias in AI voice assistants. To answer the research question of how tools can develop a norm-critical understanding of gender biases and stereotypes in AI voice assistants, a workshop was conducted. The workshop was executed with Computer Science students focusing on their perception towards voice assistants, different gendered voices, including a genderless voice, and the connection between biases and stereotypes within norms created by society. The results showed that the characteristics that students associated with female and male voices reflect earlier studies and are consistent with societal gender standards. Despite having people from many cultural origins, this demonstrates how deeply the common concept of gender norms are rooted. Participants were forced to confront their own underlying prejudiced thinking by pushing them to play extreme stereotypes, ask critical questions, and participate in a collaborative conversation. During the conversation, the students began to consider the origins of gender norms in society. After hearing a female, male, and genderless voice, all of the participants favored the female one, indicating that the genderless voice still need tweaking and improvement to meet market demands. Essentially, using a norm critical approach, the workshop forced unconscious biases to become conscious, spoken about, and collaboratively discussed. The students left the workshop feeling more aware and resolved to reflect on their unconscious gender thinking, according to the results of the reflective survey.

This project investigates the intersection between reflection through journaling and Artificial Intelligence (AI), more specifically Conversational Agents (CA) in interaction design. Journaling together with a CA is a relatively unexplored area in HCI and Interaction Design, especially when studying the experiential aspect. Furthermore, designing for reflection has been a rising topic within HCI and Interaction Design. The project used a modified version of the double diamond model as a design process to research, create and test a concept for multimodal interactive journaling using a conversational agent. The results suggest that conversational agents have the potential to play an influential and positive role in evoking reflection in an individual through collaborative and conversational interaction. The project provides design recommendations for designing an interactive journaling experience with a conversational agent and an example of how designers can design using interaction, AI, and language as a design material. The project contributes insights to designing artifacts for reflection and how a design process can be designed to design for AI and conversational interfaces.

Everyday technology is easier than ever to use and harder than ever to misuse, for this, we can attribute credits to how user friendly and error-proof minimal and autonomous artefacts are today. However, this puts a significant distance between users and the inner workings of their artefacts, the artefacts have become almost completely opaque black boxes. Users do not know how their artefacts function, and if something breaks, they want to modify them, or they have a need to create something of their own, they do not know how or where to start. This thesis project explores how you might, through the use of design, change user’s attitudes towards tinkering with their technology, by finding out how to make artefacts that can teach about themselves and how they function when being used. The thesis identifies three major factors to take into consideration when designing an artefact with the intention to achieve this. Designers can leverage people’s general preference to teleological explanations, and an artefact’s ability to tell a narrative, to help users create a mental model that reflects the actual events that make the artefact function. Designers can leverage how users use visual clues to make sense of an object and how it interacts with other objects. And designers can also leverage how users often create a metaphorical chain of steps to break down a big process into smaller ones.

Olika tekniker för att beräkna webbtjänsters upp-tid har länge vart en viktig huvuddel till att förbättra samverkan och systemintegration. Tillgänglighet är den mest vanliga metoden när man presenterar dessa uträkningar där målet är främst att locka kunder, men kanske ännu viktigare att med hjälp av resultatet se hur man som utvecklare eller användare kan förbättra webbtjänsten. Tillgänglighet varierar mycket beroende på vad det är för typ av tjänst, företag eller användning, och ett vanligt problem är definitionen av vad tillgänglighet egentligen är. Det här arbetet kommer att ge dess läsare en introduktion till området tillgänglighet, och förklara varför den varierar, vilket är grunden till teorin bakom interaktionsdesign. Tillgänglighet är ett mätvärde som kan beräknas på många olika sätt, och generar ett resultat som är komplext för användarna som tar del av det. Målet blir främst att ge läsaren en uppfattning och riktlinjer om hur man kan definiera den upplevda tillgängligheten baserat på ett systems tillgänglighet, men också presentera metoder till att definiera, beräkna och presentera variabeln i en användarvänlig procedur. Resultatet kommer i sin tur att bestå av en kostnadseffektiv modell för upplevd tillgänglighet och bli testad på ett multinationellt företag. / Techniques of measuring web-service uptime have always been a key metric to improve interaction and system integration. Availability is a usual metric in the field of statistics where the goal is to attract customers, but perhaps more importantly the users and providers which can improve the services through this metric. Since availability differs a lot depending on type of service, company and usage, a common problem is to define what availability really is. The thesis will give the readers an introduction to availability, and also explain the reasons why it may vary, which is the theory of interaction design behind a service. Though availability is a metric that can be calculated through many different ways, the result is very complex to understand for the public that is interested in it. The goal of this thesis is to give the readers an understanding and guidelines of how to define perceived availability based on the system availability, but also present a method of defining, calculating and present the metric in a user-friendly procedure. The result will in turn consist of a cost-effective model for perceived availability and be tested at a multinational company.

A careful, investigative look at what could be described as “metaresearch” (research on research) within Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design reveals that there is an issue regarding the conceptualizing and communication of complex ideas and meanings. The multidisciplinary nature of this field causes confusion and difficulty in expression when disparate terminology from its different fields is used in unison to express ideas unique to it or complex enough to need sketching, gestures or extensive explanation to get the message across. This thesis argues that creating a unified language that can join these forms of expression is something that could potentially solve this issue, and proposes a blueprint of what such a language would look like, backing its claims using literature research and expert interviews.

Shoplifting is a serious issue that causes loss to retail owners. However, the loss can be avoided by adding preventative measures to deter shoplifters from committing the crime. Surveillance [2] and a store's design and layout [3] are considered significant factors that could deter them. Considering that background music is a part of a store's design, this research combined surveillance and a store's design to discourage shoplifters by creating changes to the background music that could make the shoplifters feel observed. Ultimately, this research asked these questions: 1) If a change in background music could make the visitor feel observed, what are the possible design strategies? and 2) which design is preferable? In this research, eight participants watched a first-person view of a shopper going around the shop and lifting a clothing article. The participants were asked to create a sound alert that matched the lifting action, mixed with three different background music tracks. Afterwards, they were asked to hand in the documentation of their design. Apart from that, they were asked to fill in a quantitative survey evaluating all the designs (including other participants' designs) and describe the design with three keywords. This research discovered that there were three main approaches in designing the sound alert, and there were certain preferences of a design approach dependent on the type of background music. In other words, there is a correlation between the type of background music and the preferred design approach. This work also discussed its limitations and presented opportunities for future research. / Snatteri är ett allvarligt problem som orsakar förluster för butiksägare. Förlusterna kan dock undvikas genom förebyggande åtgärder för att avskräcka butikstjuvarna från att begå brottet. Övervakning [2] samt butikens design och planlösning [3] anses vara viktiga faktorer som kan avskräcka dem. Med tanke på att bakgrundsmusik är en del av en butikens design kombinerar denna forskning övervakning och butikens design för att avskräcka snattare genom att skapa förändringar i bakgrundsmusiken som kan få snattarna att känna sig observerade. Avslutningsvis ställde den här forskningen dessa frågor: 1) Om en förändring av bakgrundsmusiken kan få besökaren att känna sig observerad, vilka är då de möjliga designstrategierna? och 2) Vilken design är att föredra? I den här forskningen tittade åtta deltagare på en shoppare från hen som går runt i butiken och lyfter ett klädesplagg. Deltagarna ombads att skapa ett ljudlarm som matchade lyfthandlingen, blandat med tre olika bakgrundsmusikspår. Efteråt ombads de att lämna in dokumentationen av sin design. Dessutom ombads de att fylla i en kvantitativ enkät där de utvärderade alla konstruktioner (inklusive andra deltagares konstruktioner) och beskrev konstruktionen med tre nyckelord. Forskningen visade att det fanns tre huvudsakliga tillvägagångssätt vid utformningen av ljudvarningen, och att det fanns vissa preferenser för ett tillvägagångssätt beroende på typen av bakgrundsmusik. Med andra ord finns det en korrelation mellan typen av bakgrundsmusik och den föredragna designmetoden. I detta arbete diskuterades också dess begränsningar och presenterades möjligheter för framtida forskning.

How might we through emotional service design investigate how to support people in coping with social isolation by enabling for opportunities to be alone together? This is the research question this interaction design bachelor thesis, through applying theories of emotional and service design, has been aiming towards investigating. What is presented in the work is a merge of the terms, emotional service design. In addition to this, a service to help improve its user’s well-being and ability to cope with the effects of an isolated stay-at-home life is proposed.The conducted research has taken a qualitative approach, using methods of semi-structured interviews, affinity-diagramming, cultural probes, co-creative workshops and prototype testing, insights indicating that loneliness can be combated through two main ways: by finding an activity-based escape or by connecting with people or others. What is argued for is the importance of keeping emotional reactions in mind when designing for experiences.

Covid19 has brought up physical and mental challenges for all of us. However, this is even more pronounced for those who suffer from psychological pathologies, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). One of the main challenges that parents of children with ASD faced during the pandemic was to plan and structure a daily routine for their kids. The disruption of the routine, together with the difficulty of combining work and the care of the child has resulted in behavioral problems and stress and anxiety for both, parents and children.    This project focused on developing an adaptive robot that helps children with autism to plan and self-manage their day, with the end goal of becoming more independent. With adaptability, agencies, senses, and playfulness at the core of the design, Pepe is meant as a support tool for these children to use along the way. By collecting information from the performance of the kid, it is able to adapt its behavior to the child´s (and parent´s) needs and desires, and therefore progress with the child. It builds upon the principles of Positive Behavioral Support to prevent emotional crises by embracing a long-run negotiation process, by which the child gets gradually closer to the end goal of self-autonomy. Intending to be adapted to the accentuated needs of these children, it combines traditional and computational elements to make the most out of the experience. This project included in-depth user research together with parents and experts, an interdisciplinary design approach, and a prototyping phase in which a prototype was tested with children with ASD.