Användare kan idag boka taxi via TaxiCaller på webben, iPhone och Android. De vill även finnas på Windows Phone 8 och därmed stödja de tre största smartphoneplattformarna. Den här rapporten syftar till att undersöka hur en applikation kan utvecklas med hjälp av ett användarcentrerat arbetssätt för att uppnå hög användbarhet. Prototyping, card sort, användbarhetskrav är några av de metoder som tillämpats. Rapporten beskriver metoderna genom dess teori, hur de tillämpats i projektet samt dess resultat. Det grundläggande genomförandet var att samla in användarinformation för att sedan utveckla en prototyp som testades på användare. Sedan gjordes en ny prototyp utifrån resultatet från användartestet och denna process itererade fram fyra prototyper. Användbarhetsproblem från testerna samt tid för genomförande av specificerad uppgift redogörs. Resultatet är en prototyp för Windows Phone 8 som nästintill är helt färdig för publicering. Användartest är den metod som haft mest påverkan på resultatet av applikationen. Varje test har frambringat problem med användbarheten som sedan har kunnat åtgärdas för att förbättra applikationen. Med tanke på utvärderingar och de krav som specificerades är jag nöjd med resultatet som bland annat är avskalat och grafiskt tilltalande samtidigt som den önskade funktionaliteten från TaxiCaller är implementerad.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The objective of this study was to determine if introducing acceptance and commitment therapy in the prevention of mother to child HIV transmission (PMTCT) program using weekly mobile phone messages would result in improved mental health status of HIV-positive, pregnant women in Nigeria. The study used a quantitative approach using a Solomon four-group (two intervention and two control groups) randomised design to evaluate the impact of an acceptance and commitment therapy program. The study population was 132 randomly selected (33 per site), HIV-positive pregnant women attending four randomly selected PMTCT centres in Nigeria. Two were Intervention and two were Control sites which functioned as Intervention and Control groups. The intervention groups were exposed to one session of acceptance and commitment therapy with weekly value-based health messages sent by mobile phone for three months during pregnancy. The control groups received only post-HIV test counselling.

M.Sc. (Information Technology) / A new particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm that produces solutions to the xed spectrum frequency assignment problem (FS-FAP) is presented. Solutions to the FS-FAP are used to allocate frequencies in a mobile telecommunications network and must have low interference. The standard PSO algorithm's velocity method and global selection is ill suited for the frequency assignment problem (FAP). Therefore using the standard PSO algorithm as base, new techniques are developed to allow it to operate on the FAP. The new techniques include two velocity methods and three global selection schemes. This study presents the results of the algorithm operating on the Siemens set of COST 259 problems and shows that it is viable applying the PSO to the FAP.

The information security behaviour of technology users has become an increasingly popular research area as security experts have come to recognise that while securing technology by means of firewalls, passwords and offsite backups is important, such security may be rendered ineffective if the technology users themselves are not information security conscious. The mobile phone has become a necessity for many students but, at the same time, it exposes them to security threats that may result in a loss of information. Students in developing countries are at a disadvantage because they have limited access to information relating to information security threats, unlike their counterparts in more developed societies who can readily access this information from sources like the Internet. The developmental environment is plagued with challenges like access to the Internet or limited access to computers. The poor security behaviour exhibited by student mobile phone users, which was confirmed by the findings of this study, is of particular interest in the university context as most undergraduate students are offered a computer-related course which covers certain information security-related principles. During the restructuring of the South African higher education system, smaller universities and technikons (polytechnics) were merged to form comprehensive universities. Thus, the resultant South African university landscape is made up of traditional and comprehensive universities as well as universities of technology. Ordinarily, one would expect university students to have similar profiles. However in the case of this study, the environment was a unique factor which had a direct impact on students’ learning experiences and learning outcomes. Mbeki (2004) refers to two economies within South Africa the first one is financially sound and globally integrated, and the other found in urban and rural areas consists of unemployed and unemployable people who do not benefit from progress in the first economy. Action research was the methodological approach which was chosen for the purposes of this study to collect the requisite data among a population of university students from the ‘second economy’. The study focuses on the relationship between awareness and behavioural intention in understanding mobile phone user information security behaviour. The study concludes by proposing a behaviour profile forecasting framework based on predefined security behavioural profiles. A key finding of this study is that the security behaviour exhibited by mobile phone users is influenced by a combination of information security awareness and information security behavioural intention, and not just information security awareness.

Since smart homes will be more and more popular in the future, the needs of finding a friendly, comfortable and smart interface between users and home environments are growing. However, conventional interfaces have reached their limits. So, this paper describes a new concept of interface in a home environment. This work is distinguished by building a separable smart robot. A smart phone is used as a brain, and a robot car is used as a body. With the system, people will be allowed to carry the robot's brain when they are out of their home. In this case, the brain can not only be a normal smart phone, but also can monitor parameters such as the temperature at home. On the other hand, when people are at home, they will be allowed to put their phones on the robot car. By invoking the system, they will have an assist-robot. This assist-robot will act as a new interface in the smart home by following people and recognizing their voice commands in order to take notes, to read notes and to control smart home devices. This thesis also implements face recognition to improve the communication between users and the interface. Test results show that our proposed system is well accepted.

The diploma thesis deals with the specific collaborative tools used in given company. It aims to validate the hypotheses selected within the surveyed company. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part contains theoretical bases of the thesis. It outlines issues of information technology and communication tools since their beginnings towards the latest trends. The focus is on enterprise Microsoft and its products Microsoft Lync, Microsoft SharePoint and Windows Phone and enterprise BlackBerry and its contribution to the development and use of mobile communication devices. The practical part contains characteristics of surveyed company, the process of creating the survey, methodology, analysis and evaluation of given hypotheses.

Modern smartphones are being designed with increasing processing power, memory capacity, network communication, and graphics performance. Although all of these features are enriching and expanding the experience of a smartphone user, they are significantly adding an overhead on the limited energy of the battery. This thesis aims at enhancing the energy efficiency of modern smartphones and increasing their battery life by minimizing the energy consumption of smartphones Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). Smartphone operating systems are becoming fully hardware-accelerated, which implies relying on the GPU power for rendering all application graphics. In addition, the GPUs installed in smartphones are becoming more and more powerful by the day. This raises an energy consumption concern. We present a novel implementation of GPU Scaling Governors, a Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) scheme implemented in the Android kernel to dynamically scale the GPU. The scheme includes four main governors: Performance, Powersave, Ondmand, and Conservative. Unlike previous studies which looked into the power efficiency of mobile GPUs only through simulation and power estimations, we have implemented our approach on a real modern smartphone GPU, and acquired actual energy measurements using an external power monitor. Our results show that the energy consumption of smartphones can be reduced up to 15% using the Conservative governor in 2D rendering mode, and up to 9% in 3D rendering mode, with minimal effect on the performance.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / According to the WHO (2017), non-communicable diseases (NCDs) which include stroke, cancer, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes is the leading cause of death and is responsible for seventy one percent of deaths worldwide. Beaglehole et al., (2009) reported that management of chronic diseases depends primarily on early detection of early disease, identification of high-risk status, interventions including pharmacological and psychosocial intercessions and long term follow up with monitoring and promotion of adherence to treatment.

Cell phone use has become ubiquitous in many settings, including the college classroom. Research has shown many negative impacts of cell phone usage on classroom outcomes. For this reason, professors have implemented polices to reduce in-class cell phone use. An ABAB design was used to evaluate a reinforcement-based policy in an undergraduate course (N = 9). The policy involved allowing the students two 2-minute “technology breaks” throughout the three-hour course. Technology breaks conditions were alternated with baseline conditions in which there were no programmed consequences for cell phone use. Data on cell phone use was collected using the PLACHECK method in which trained observers counted the number of students physically interacting with their phones at 10 second intervals. Results showed that usage decreased during the intervention phase (M = 0.5%) from baseline (M = 0.8%). Researchers also calculated quiz scores for the two conditions. There was no statistically significant difference between intervention (M = 70.3%) and baseline conditions (M = 69.2%), (F(7) = 1.68, p = .24). Overall, the study showed technology breaks as a promising way to incorporate a reinforcement-based procedure to reduce classroom cell phone use, but the policy did not reduce cell phone usage to zero.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Background: Previous research has reported an association between texting messages sent and De Quervain's tenosynovitis (DQT) symptomatology. However, these studies do not report smartphone dependence and DQT symptomatology. Objective: We aimed to evaluate the association between problematic smartphone use (PSU) and DQT symptomatology among young adults. Design: Analytical cross-sectional study. Methods: We included adults between 18 and 25 years and evaluated DQT symptomatology's presence using the Finkelstein test. We used Experiences Related to Mobile Phone Use Questionnaire to measure the PSU. We carried out a generalized linear model from the Poisson family. We calculated the crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) with their 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: In total, we analyzed 491 subjects, the majority were women (52%), and the median age was 20 years. Of the total study population, 53% had positive results in the Finkelstein test, while 53% of the population had PSU. After adjusting our generalized linear model for confounders variables, we found that there is a higher prevalence of DQT symptomatology in those participants with occasional PSU and frequent PSU compared with participants without PSU, (aPR = 1.73, 95% CI: 1.47–2.05) and (aPR = 1.61; 95% CI: 1.29–2.00); respectively. We also found a higher prevalence of DQT symptomatology related to the number of hours per day in smartphones, pain with smartphones in the last week and using WhatsApp. Conclusion: We found a higher prevalence of De Quervain's tenosynovitis symptomatology in the people with problematic smartphone use. / Revisión por pares