Despite the destructive and limited nature of fossil fuels, most human-made systems are dependent on the use of oil, gas and coal. Especially agriculture relies on diesel machinery, fertilizer, transport, and cooling systems that are commonly powered by non-renewable energy sources. This independent project in design specifically focuses on the dependency on fossil fuels within agriculture. With the investigation “Vägen mot fossiloberoende jordbruk” (Utredningen om fossiloberoende jordbruk, 2021), or “Pathway to fossil independent agriculture”, Sweden is aspiring to make farming fossil-free by 2030. Consequently, a lot of responsibility to invest in new technologies and alternative energies lies on farmers. In collaboration with Länsstyrelsen Kronoberg, the author explores how farmers can be supported to transition towards renewable energies, focusing on the Swedish region Kronoberg. Through participatory design and design research, notions of fossil fuel (in)dependency are being explored in collaborative ways. Here, the farmers become the ‘experts of their experience’ (Sanders & Stappers, 2012). This independent design project examines ways to transition towards fossil fuel independent agriculture in Sweden, existing challenges and potential solutions. To communicate the complex network of energy and agriculture in Kronoberg to Länsstyrelsen, the author designed an Actor-Network-Model, which highlights the necessity of systems thinking and collaboration.

The application of information and communication technology (ICT) in socioeconomic development often referred to as “ICT for development” (ICT4D) is an increasingly relevant concern both academically as well as within development organisations on all levels.   This master thesis project has explored opportunities, constraints and challenges to designing and implementing mobile phone based ICT services for an organisation working with sustainable agricultural development in West Bengal, India. Through a participatory design process with smallholding farmers a simple, low-cost platform for prototyping and implementing mobile phone based ICT services using interactive voice response as interaction modality was developed. It was found that even inexperienced and illiterate users were able to understand and make use of such services with minimal training. On the basis of services deployed on this platform, context specific constraints and opportunities were identified as well as the appropriateness of the ICT design evaluated. Finally, use of participation was critically reviewed and found to be a necessary element of ICT design in this context yet requiring a high level of reflexivity and contextual understanding from the researcher or designer in order to contribute to development goals. / Användning av informations och kommunikationsteknologi (ICT) för socioekonomisk utveckling ofta kallat ”ICT for development” (ICT4D) är i allt högre grad en relevant fråga både akademiskt och inom utvecklingsorganisationer på alla nivåer. Detta exjobb utforskade möjligheter, begränsningar och utmaningar för introduktionen av mobilbaserade ICT-tjänster åt en organisation som arbetar med hållbar jordbruksutveckling i Västbengalen i Indien. Genom en deltagande designprocess med småskaliga bönder så utvecklades en enkel, billig plattform för att skapa prototyper och implementera mobiltjänster som använder sig av ”Interactive Voice Response” som interaktionsmodalitet. Även personer med begränsad erfarenhet av ICT samt begränsad läs- och skrivkunnighet kunde förstå och använda tjänster utvecklade på plattformen med minimal träning. Med grund i tjänster utvecklade på denna plattform så utvärderades lämpligheten för ICT i den lokala kontexten och flera kontext-specifika begränsningar och utmaningar identifierades. Slutligen så utvärderades ”deltagande” i design processen metodologiskt och fanns vara ett nödvändigt element av ICT-design i denna kontext samtidigt som det kräver en hög grad av reflexivitet och kontext-specifik förståelse från forskaren eller designern för att kunna bidra till utvecklingsmål.

With its starting point in social and community building activities of everyday life, this project seeks a complex understanding of a former industrial site in Malmö - Norra Sorgenfri - its past, present and possible futures. Critical and participatory mappings, speculations, policy making and small-scale interventions are part of the produced material that circulate around the feminist ethics of care, and how it can inform a socially aware architectural practice. The site, a celebrated regeneration project, produces an interstice in relation to the more controlled urban fabric surrounding it. It is more open to diverse modes of occupation and use, accommodating activities and groups that otherwise have a hard time to make a space for themselves in the city. I argue that a feminist ethics of care enables designers and involved participants to make a complex engagement with places. Care can help us to redefine the role of the architect and to alter architectural practice. In the 1980:s Carol Gilligan introduced care as an attached way of human connection, requiring listening and understanding differences and needs. In this light, I define a design practice where sustainability is understood in relation to responsibility and actions oriented towards other people. Urban caring is about carefully seeing and using what is here; the small-scale and subtle that might go unnoticed in planning/architectural projects. My proposals contain how to read, care-fully observe, interpret and act - as an urban-caretaker. Among the design proposals and methods are: critical mapping as a central participatory task, a manual of care as part of the mapping and from an intimate understanding of the site, a series of design tests -strategies, policy making and small-scale interventions- , a manifesto that suggests ways for this knowledge to be transferred to other sites, and the interactive map a care-full companion. Urban caring offers an open-ended process, enabling the site to develop in a number of directions. My role has not been to over-determine what the outcome might be, but instead to facilitate tools of enabling positive change toward possible futures. / Projektet strävar efter en komplex förståelse av ett före-detta industriområde i Malmö - Norra Sorgenfri. Det handlar om nya sätt för arkitekter och planerare att arbeta med en känslig plats: att ta hand om existerande egenskaper och villkor, platsens historier och möjliga framtider, samt inte minst de viktiga roller som sociala och samhörighetsskapande vardagsaktiviteter spelar i Norra Sorgenfri idag. Tesen som jag driver är att en feministisk omsorgsetik (ethics of care på engelska) kan möjliggöra ett hållbart engagemang med en plats, mer specifikt här ett industriområde med ett rikt småskaligt kulturliv, och på så sätt forma en socialt ansvarstagande urban praktik. Norra Sorgenfri är ett hyllat urbant utvecklingsprojekt och utgör ett ”mellanrum” i relation till den omgivande mer kontrollerade stadsstrukturen. Platsen är mer öppen för olika användningssätt och ackommoderar aktiviteter och grupper av människor som annars kan ha svårt att göra sin röst hörd i staden.  Med hjälp av konceptet care (omsorg) kan arkitektens roll och arkitekturfältet omdefinieras till att bli mer inkluderande och deltagande i samhällsförändringar. På 1980-talet introducerade feministiska etikern Carol Gilligan omsorg som ett mer empatiskt sätt att relatera till andra människor, med fokus på lyssnande och förståelse för skillnader och behov. I detta ljus definierar jag en arkitekturpraktik där hållbarhet förstås utifrån ansvar och handlingar gentemot andra människor.  Urban caring handlar om att omsorgsfullt se och använda det som finns här; det småskaliga och subtila som riskerar att gå obemärkt förbi i arkitektur- och planeringsprojekt. Mina förslag innehåller metoder för att läsa, omsorgsfullt observera, tolka och agera – som en urban caretaker. Bland förslagen finns: kritiska kartläggningar som ett centralt sätt att arbeta med deltagandeprocesser, en omsorgsmanual (manual of care) som en del av kartläggningen och utifrån en ingående förståelse av platsen, en serie av designtest – strategier och småskaliga interventioner, ett manifest som föreslår hur kunskapen från detta projekt kan överföras till andra platser, och den interaktiva kartan en omsorgsfull följeslagare (care-full companion).

Video calls have received growing attention since the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, accompanied by technological innovations, such as spatial audio or AI for simulating eye contact. The increased use of video calls in personal and professional environments poses opportunities for evaluating and shaping this technology by going beyond the notion of a single user and including people with different cognitive abilities. This study proposes a remote participatory design process with people with learning disabilities (LD), aiming to investigate considerations for the design of video call platforms. In cooperation with NetzStecker, the Office for Inclusive Media Education based in Münster, Germany, a four-stage research through design process is conducted with a group of adults with LD, including online workshops and mobile device-based diary studies. Perceptions and experiences are explored through the lens of phenomenology and lead to a set of design recommendations around the themes of spatiality and communication. Methodological conclusions discuss the challenges of using the medium of study as the principal medium of research and indicate a potential for proximity chats as design spaces.

UX designers define digital products that shape our modern world. They are at the very beginning of product development and can directly influence the impact the products generate. However, little attention is paid to sustainability values in day-to-day business, which has a counterproductive effect on all dimensions of sustainable development. This thesis explores how a digital co-design toolkit can help UX design (UXD) practitioners find ways to integrate sustainable values into their daily work. Thematically, this project focuses on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On the one hand, to ensure a holistic point of view on the topic of sustainable development. On the other hand, to provide an approach to contribute to the SDGs from the UXD field. This research builds upon Sustainable Interaction Design (SID) theories, and a participatory design approach is pursued using a co-design process. The result of this work is a digital toolkit, which is designed for a collaborative online whiteboard platform for UX practitioners. The thesis contributes knowledge to the field of Interaction Design by proposing a toolkit for sustainable UX design.

The participatory design previously proved to be a useful approach to design a system together with customers. Also, research has shown guidelines on managing distributed teams, which is now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, more relevant than ever. The gap that remains to be explored is the lack of guidelines on how to design a remote workshop in such a way that it enables people to share their work practice and picture their work contexts. In this work, we aim to gain knowledge about participants' abilities to collaborate online as well as accessing their different work processes by conducting a series of workshops involving a wide range of users. The results show that participants' hands-on performance was rather limited, and they tend to use more traditional ways of cooperation. Applying our methods, we were able to access details about the underlying processes of participants' work and their way of thinking that can be used to make the design of the workshop more suitable for participants.

This research focuses on the connection between voice-based interactions and harassment in online games, from the point of interaction design. It points out severe faults in privacy afforded by voice-based communication and explores beyond this medium to design a communication system that relies only on non-verbal communication (NVC). Such system was co-created with the players supporting the idea that inclusion starts even in the early design stages. Through the playtesting of the NVC system the research shows the many ways in which the type of communication impacts the game and how players experience cooperation, cohabitation, and inclusion in online games. However, to achieve this, this research had to create a framework and mapping methods that focus on the players and their communicative intention. Hence, the “levels of multiplayer communication” is proposed as a tool to analyze and a method to design for communication in games, and it stands as a knowledge contribution along with the information acquired through its use.

This thesis aimed to investigate ways to conduct participatory research practices that would gain knowledge of participants' relationships and experiences with/in their physical home environment by using a design probe. Through the probe, a new approach to participatory design research was formulated. This approach gives agency to participants through elements of auto-ethnography, thus shifting the traditional power structures that often exist between participants and designers. This new type of research could yield greater intimacy and mutuality between designers and their participants. Due to this, it has the potential to be meaningful when designing for the home environment, and therefore can be used for research and design within the Internet of Things.

This thesis looks to explore from a user-centered standpoint, which mobile application features are relevant in the social integration of new arrivals in Sweden. Mobiles are used by individuals who are moving away from home not only to stay connected to their close ones but also as a way for empowerment and adaption in their new homes. Access to information helps immigrants to face the new challenges new host societies present. Nowadays mobiles and more specifically smartphones are becoming the principal sources for new arrivals to obtain information. As mobiles become more common among immigration groups, governments and institutions are turning to them as new ways for addressing migration challenges such as integration. This thesis, through a participatory design study, explores possible mobile digital application features that could be relevant in the social integration of immigrants. The goal is to develop through a cooperative and co-design method a prototype of a mobile application that can fit better with the necessities of new arrivals and can also facilitate better ways for social integration. As a result, it could be determinate that features that provide users the ability to gather information from one source are the most important for immigrants. Additionally, users want to be able to have control over the information they are receiving according to what phase they are at the integration process. Also, digital features seem not to be enough and digital and offline cooperation are suggested. In the process, participants provided innovative ways on how integration challenges can be addressed.

Denna studie undersöker med hjälp av en fallstudie hos två filmproduktionsbolag, King Edward och Cinematik hur co-design som metod hade kunnat användas inom postproduktionsprocessen av reklamfilm. Med en teoretisk djupdykning i filmproduktionens fyra processer; förproduktion, produktion, postproduktion, distribution och metoden co-design har det legat som grund för undersökningen. Även teori kring filmens historia och reklamfilm har undersökts för att ge en bättre grund och tyngd till resultatet.Med kvalitativa intervjuer på båda företagen har information samlats in kring hur deras arbetsprocess ser ut och vad deras tidigare kunskap kring co-design var och om de själva hade ansett att det hade varit användbart. Genom en jämförelse av den insamlade teorin och resultatet från företagen har en prototyp skapats som visar vart i en postproduktionsprocess inom reklamfilm som implementering av co-design hade varit möjligt. Det sammansatta resultatet visar att co-design som det används inom produktdesign inte hade varit möjligt inom film, men att vissa delar av metoden, nämligen att låta kunden vara med tidigt i postproduktionsprocessen och dela med sig av sina erfarenheter beroende på vilken kund reklamen riktas åt hade varit möjligt att implementera. Genom att ha kunden med i det tidiga skedet av postproduktionen hos produktionsbolag hade färre revideringar gjorts i processen och färre möten med kund som tvingat fram ändringar i filmerna hade undvikits. / This thesis explores through a case study with two film production firms, King Edward and Cinematik how co-design as a method would be applicable in post-production of commercials. With a theoretical deep dive into the film production’s four phases; pre-production, production, post production, distribution and the method of co-design it has been the foundation of this thesis. Further information has been gathered for film history and commercials to give a better understanding and weight for the analysis. By doing qualitative interviews on both firms, information has been gathered regarding their production process, and their previous knowledge of co-design and if they themselves believe that it would be a useful method. By comparing the gathered theory with the results from the interviews, a prototype has been created showing where in a post-production process, in commercials, co-design as a method could be implemented. The combined result proves that the way co-design is used in production design would not be viable in film production, but that some parts of the method could be implemented depending on the client and the commercial, for example if the client has specific experiences needed for the film. By having the client be a part of the early stages of the post production process at a film production firm, less revisions would be needed and less meetings would be needed for fixes.