Umeå universitet håller i nuläget på att utveckla ett nytt intranät som är tänkt att användas av anställda på Umeå universitet. Detta intranät har ett inloggat och utloggat läge. Det utloggade läget är öppet för allmänheten och det inloggade är tänkt ska vara en personaliserad del där den anställde ska kunna anpassa sitt inloggade läge efter behov. Denna inloggade del kommer till stor del bestå av sociala forum, såsom aktivitetsflöde där man kan läsa statusuppdateringar eller delade dokument från andra anställda på Universitetet som användaren prenumererar på. Det ska också gå att bilda grupper kring projekt, kunna samtala och ha samarbetsytor för gemensamma dokument. För att den inloggade mobila versionen ska fungera bra på mobilen krävs det att det finns ett uttänkt gränssnitt som är baserat på hur användaren resonerar. Vikten av att den mobila versionen är situationsanpassad, det vill säga att den är designad utifrån var användaren kommer att använda det mobila intranätet är stor. För att kunna tillgodose användarens behov har i detta projekt en mobil prototyp skapats för att se hur ett intranät i mobilen skulle kunna se ut, och hur denna ska skapas för att användaren ska behöva fundera så lite som möjligt vid interaktion. Efter att ett flertal olika typer av prototyper skapats har det slutligen blivit en kvar. Denna prototyp är helt och hållet baserad på de olika designregler som finns att utgå ifrån. För att användaren ska kunna känna igen sig finns det också vissa exempel på delar som påminner om utseendet på webbplatsen. Eftersom det är viktigt att det dock finns en skillnad mellan webbplatsen och mobila gränssnittet har jag försökt att skala av så mycket som möjligt för att få fram en mobil prototyp som fungerar för någon i farten, där användaren ska kunna göra snabba ärenden men också för längre läsning om man så önskar. Strukturen för menyn är uppbygd på ett sådant sätt där det finns möjlighet att lägga in många steg och därför kunna rymma all relevant information.

This thesis examines the problems of how to design scalable, robust, and distributed real-time media applications for the Internet. An agent based framework for solving this problem is presented. The framework promotes several important design requirements such as modularity and reusability of software modules, remote management of applications, adaptiveness, robustness, accessibility, symmetry and the most important scalability. The issue of scalability is examined on several levels including data-distribution, different end-user platforms, scalability of real-time media flows, bandwidth adaption and scalability of sessions. The design of the framework is based on the important concept of IP-multicast, which allows for scalable distribution of data on the Internet. How this decision has influenced the design of the framework is examined in the thesis. The design of the framework have been verified by building a reference implementation in Java and building a number of high-level end-user applications for real-time e-meetings, e-learning (net-based learning) and social awareness via the e-corridor. / Godkänd; 1999; 20061004 (ysko)

This thesis presents the use of wearable computers for aiding human communication over a distance, focusing on interaction aspects that need to be resolved in order to realize this goal. As wearable computers by definition are highly mobile, always on, and always accessible, the ability to communicate becomes independent of place, time and situation. This also imposes new requirements on the user interface of the wearable computer, calling for natural and unobtrusive interaction with the user.One of the key challenges in wearable computing today is to streamline the user’s interaction, so that it is tailored for the situation at hand. A user interface that takes too much effort to use, interrupts or requires more than a minimum of attention, will inevitably hamper the user’s ability to perform tasks in real life. At the same time, human communication involves both effort, interruptions and paying attention, so the key is to find a balance where wearable computers can aid human communication without being intrusive. To design user interfaces supporting this, we need to know what roles different aspects of interaction have in the field of wearable computing. In this thesis, the use of wearable computing for aiding human communication is explored around three aspects of interaction.The first aspect deals with how information can be conveyed by the wearable computer user, allowing a user to retrieve advice and guidance from experts, and remote persons to share experiences over a distance. The thesis presents findings of using wearable computing for sharing knowledge and experience, both for informal exchange among work colleagues, as well as enabling more efficient communication among health-care personnel. The second aspect is based on findings from these trials and concerns how the wearable computer interacts with the user. As the user performs tasks in the real world, it is important to determine how different methods of notifying the user affects her attention and performance, in order to design interfaces that are efficient yet pleasant to use. The thesis presents user studies examining the impact of different methods of interruption, and provides guidelines for how to make notifications less intrusive. The third and final aspect considers how the user’s physical interaction with the wearable computer can be improved. The thesis presents rapid prototyping of systems employing user centric design. Furthermore, a framework for ubiquitousmultimedia communication is presented, enabling wearable computers to be dynamically configurable and utilize resources in the environment to supplement the user’s equipment.All in all, the thesis presents how wearable communications systems can be developed and deployed, how their human-computer interaction should be designed for unobtrusive operation, and how they can come to practical use in real world situations. / <p>Godkänd; 2006; 20080521 (ysko)</p>

The proliferation of multimedia and deployment of wireless networks over the last decade have made it possible for users to communicate and share information using e-meeting services from almost any location at anytime. While these new services offer new ways to communicate, they are not always easy to use because of the heterogeneity of networks and devices, which must be managed by the users to take full advantage of the possible benefits. Switching to another communication service running on another terminal requires even more configuration efforts. In addition, it is expected that the configuration efforts required by the users will become more time-consuming in the future as the need for richer communication grows and the diversity of services and networks increases. This doctoral thesis proposes and evaluates new methods to create a ubiquitous multimedia communication system, which makes it easier for users to participate in online e-meetings using the most suitable network or terminal. The thesis makes several contributions related to mobility and bandwidth management. One contribution is a new mobility protocol called the Resilient Mobile Socket and an algorithm called Competition-based Soft-Handovers Management designed to manage host mobility and seamlessly migrate media streams between different network connections. To deal with bandwidth variation, the thesis proposes a method based on microeconomic theory to adapt and share bandwidth efficiently between media within an application, thereby relieving the users from manually adjusting bandwidth utilization after switching network. In regards to switching terminals, the thesis proposes a concept called media resources, and a framework for managing media resources using context-awareness. The most beneficial media resource is automatically selected using an algorithm, which is also presented in the thesis. The proposed methods, frameworks, and algorithms have been evaluated through a combination of theoretical analysis, controlled laboratory experiments, user studies, and exploratory experiments using prototypes. The results from these investigations show that it is possible to create a ubiquitous multimedia communication system that enables richer communication in mobile settings by better utilizing available networks and combining multiple terminals. A final conclusion is that it is crucial to minimize configuration efforts, but the user should always have the final decision if a configuration procedure cannot be automated with complete accuracy. / <p>Godkänd; 2006; 20061208 (haneit)</p>

This dissertation presents work on designing multimedia conferencing systems that better support informal communication among groups. In this case the term “informal” refers to the ability of the system to support unplanned communication and side conversations between members of the group. This contrasts from the classical goal of video-conferencing systems, which was to support room-to-roommeetings between participants at scheduled intervals. The work in the dissertation includes problems related to computer communication and human computer interaction in order to achieve this goal. More specifically, work in the field of computer communication is presented on how to design multimedia systems that use available network resources more efficiently so that a larger number of end users can be supported. This problem of scalability is important when trying to support informal communication because the room-to-room model of deployment is viewed as the primary reason why classical conferencing systems could not support side conversations between participants. Thus, while it may be an option to pack a large number of participants into a few conferencing rooms for a formal meeting, informal communication is better achieved when each participant can join from their own conferencing client. Other work in the field of human computer interaction deals with various usability issues related to improving the flow of unplanned communication. This includes work on the visualization of file systems in order to make it easier for users to locate shared files when coordination and planning on the structure of the file system has not taken place. It also includes user studies that focus on identifying new requirements and new design goals for supporting spontaneous communication. In addition, some interdisciplinary work is also included that seeks to make it easier to unify research in computer communication and human computer interaction so that network resources may be allocated to the various functions in these applications while giving the user the most benefit. A variety of methods are used to investigate the problems including the design and testing of prototypes and algorithms and studies of users in laboratory and naturalistic settings. / <p>Godkänd; 2005; 20060916 (ysko)</p>

This doctoral thesis examines different attributes of large scale group communication systems such as scalability, security and mobility by studying two different prototype systems - mIR (multicast Interactive Radio) and MES (Mobile E-meeting Services). mIR is a system for large scale real-time music distribution, designed as an interactive radio system for the Internet. MES is a collection of tools for improving the use of e-meeting and video conferencing tools in a mobile environment. The mIR prototype has been used to study scalability and security. Scalability in mIR concerns how to support as many users as possible without degrading the experience. This is achieved using IP multicast together with algorithms that limits the bandwidth usage regardless of the number of users. The work on security have focused on copy prevention through digital watermarking. By adding a unique watermark, i.e. a fingerprint, to each media copy a pirated copy can be traced back to a specific user, which can act as a deterrent. The thesis shows how we can combine the different goals of fingerprinting and IP-multicast while still maintaining the scalability features of multicast. Many issues need to be considered if e-meetings and video conferencing will become widespread and popular. Scalability and security, discussed in the first part of the thesis are two examples, and the second part of the thesis tries to address a third issue: mobility. In particular we are interested in enabling access to an e-meeting in a mobile environment, where we often have difficult conditions such as bad network connections, the user only have access to the Internet through a web browser or the available devices are small and limited. In many cases it is currently impossible to participate in an e-meeting when you're not in the office. The prototype system developed in the second part of the thesis aims to enable participation from any location and device that have some sort of Internet connection. We try to achieve this by allowing a mobile user to access an e-meeting session from a web browser or from a Java enabled mobile phone. Further, the system makes it possible to review missed events in an e-meeting as it is likely that there are many times where no Internet connection at all is available. The general style of work has been prototype driven with a goal of creating usable prototypes - i.e. the prototypes should be easy to deploy and it should be possible to use and test the prototypes daily. Most the prototypes described in this thesis have indeed been deployed and have seen daily use. / <p>Godkänd; 2005; 20061004 (ysko)</p>

The aim of the study is to contribute to research in the field of maintaining long-term engagingness in chatbots, which is done through rapport building with the help of user and agent specific memory. Recent advances in end-to-end trained neural conversational models (fully functional chit-chat chatbots created by training a neural model) present chatbots that converse well with respect to context understanding with the help of their short-term memory. However, these chatbots do not consider long-term memory, which in turn motivates further research. In this study, short-term memory is developed to allow the chatbot to understand con-text, such as context-based follow-up questions. Long-term memory is developed to re-member information between multiple interactions, such as information about the user and the agent’s own persona/personality. By introducing long-term memory, the chatbot is able to generate long-term memory-based questions, and to refer to the previous conversation, as well as retain a consistent persona. A question answering chatbot and question asking chatbot were initially developed in parallel as individual components and finally integrated into one chatbot system. The question answering chatbot was built in python and consisted of three main components; a generative model using GPT-2, a template structure with a related sentiment memory, and a retrieval structure. The question asking chatbot was built using a framework called Rasa. User tests were performed to primarily measure perceived engagingness and realness. The aim of the user studies was to compare performance between three chatbots; a) individual question asking, b) individual question answering and c) the integrated one. The results show that chatbots perceived as more human-like are not necessarily more engaging conversational partners than chatbots with lower perceived human-likeness. Although, while still not being near human level performance on measures such as consistency and engagingness, the developed chatbots achieved similar scores on these measures to that of chatbots in a related task (Persona-Chat task in ConvAI2). When measuring the effects of long-term memory in question asking, it was found that measures on perceived realness and persona increased when the chatbot asked long-term memory generated questions, referring to the previous interaction with the user.

This report covers a master’s thesis project done at the University Of Utah for the OpenSpace project. OpenSpace is a open-source astronomy visualization software and the thesis focus was to visualize the ever-increasing number of man-made space debris. Two different visualization methods have been used in this thesis. One was a volume rendering and it was evaluated how it works in relation to an orbital trail representation, which was the other method. If the volumetric representation would reduce cluttering, is one of the aspects that will be evaluated, as well as a more open ended exploratory question which is if the volumetric representation can provide any new insights about the data. In short, will a volumetric representation give anything that an orbital representation cannot? A volume rendering can use different types of grids. The thesis evaluates the pros and cons of a cartesian- and spherical grid, as well as the different resolution of the grid and tweaks in the transfer function. An orbital trail representation was previously implemented in OpenSpace (which will be called the individual scene graph node implementation in this report) that had its pros. One con, however, was that it did not scale very well with increasing number of data elements. Visualizing all the data sets containing each trackable piece of space debris simultaneously using this implementation causes the software to slow down significantly. An alternative implementation (which will be called single draw call implementation in this report) was therefore tested in hopes to solve this issue. To see the performance difference, tests were performed where frame time for the whole scene was measured.

I detta kandidatarbete har två medietekniska studenter försökt att ta reda på effektiviteten av att lära sig spelutveckling genom ett digitalt spel som de har utvecklat med två andra medietekniska studenter. För att utveckla detta spelet använde sig av omvärldsanalys, brainstorming, scrumban, moodboards, whiteboxing och lo-fi prototyper för att avsluta på en hi-fi prototyp. Vägen till resultatet har varit väldigt krånglig och ett projekt som redan var stort blev plötsligt svårare när en pandemi svep över världen och studenterna var tvungna att jobba hemifrån med något där kommunikation är det mest väsentliga. Men de fortsatte med att jobba trots omständigheterna. De programmerade, modellerade och designade tills de hade ett digitalt spel som förhoppningsvis nådde målen de hade lagt upp för sig själva. När de kände att spelet var redo för bli testad, skapade de ett formulär för att se om spelet uppnådde det önskade resultatet. När resan är över diskuterar studenterna vad de hade gjort annorlunda om de fick chansen igen.

This report presents the work of our Master´s thesis carried out remotely at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center. In collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Linköping University and Predictive Science Inc. The report presents and evaluates an implementation of an interactive 3D visualization of a Solar Particle Event in OpenSpace, an open source astrovisualization software. Data from a model developed by Predictive Science Inc. was used to implement the visualization. The visualization is done by visualizing fluxes of particles as points and utilizing a volumetric data set by applying 2D textures to geometrical shapes. The goal of these visualizations is to help describe the effect of space weather phenomena to the general public. The research conducted is focused on how to visualize a big Solar Particle Event to emphasize or showcase different aspects, such as the radiation exposure close to Earth. The result of the work is an interactive real-time visualization of a Solar Particle Event designed for public outreach. The project culminated in two live streamed events with AMNH, in collaboration with NASA and Predictive Science Inc.