Skizzen spielen im Designprozess als Denkwerkzeuge und Kommunikationsmittel eine wichtige Rolle. Im professionellen Designdiskurs im Social Web sind sie jedoch kaum sichtbar. Der vorgestellte Skizzenblog könnte die visuelle Diskussionskultur unter Designern befördern, indem er die Technik des Bloggens auf das Skizzieren überträgt.

Denna studie är en fallstudie av ett privat sjukvårdsföretag. Studien syftar till att undersöka hur olika gestaltningstekniker samt gruppers sammansättning kan påverka diskussioner kring design och därmed fungera som strukturerande resurser för samtalet. Studien vidgar begreppet prototyper till att hantera mer än de delar som behandlats i tidigare forskning: medium, detaljrikedom och närhet till slutprodukt. Datainsamling har skett vid sex fokusgruppstillfällen där tre olika grupper (inom olika delar av en och samma organisation: användare hos kund, användare hos systemleverantören och systemutvecklare hos leverantören) har fört en diskussion kring designen utifrån tre olika gestaltningstekniker (gränssnittsskisser, scenarios och dynamiska datorprototyper). Diskussionerna har sedan analyserats i termer av domäner för interaktionsdesign och aspekter av IT-systemet i användning. Studiens huvudsakliga slutsatser är att gestaltningstekniker påverkar vilka domäner och aspekter som diskuteras varför designern kan välja gestaltningsteknik efter vad han eller hon vill få ut av diskussionen. Skisserna bedöms ge den mest heltäckande diskussionen, medan scenarios fungerar bäst för dem som inte är teknikvana och tar då upp struktur och funktion. Datorprototypen lämpar sig bäst för diskussion kring interaktion och presentation. Men gruppens sammansättning påverkar diskussionen i högre utsträckning än gestaltningsteknikerna. Därför dras även slutsatsen att det är viktigt att designern känner sin publik och anpassar valet av gestaltningsteknik efter målgruppen. / This thesis investigates how different prototyping techniques and compositions of groups can influence discussions about design and therefore function as structuring resources for the discussion. This thesis widens the conception of prototypes to include more than the issues that have been discussed in previous research: medium, wealth of details and closeness to the final product. Data has been collected through six focus groups where three different groups (within different parts of one organization; users at client, users at system supplier, and systems developers at supplier) have discussed the design with the help of the different prototyping techniques (sketches, scenarios and dynamic computer prototypes). The discussions where analyzed in terms of domains for interaction design and different aspects of the system in use. The main conclusions of this thesis are that prototyping techniques influence which domains and aspects are discussed. Therefore the designer can choose prototyping technique depending on what he or she wants to discuss about the design. The sketches provides the most complete discussion, while scenarios works best with those that are not knowledgeable about IT-systems and then the discussion deals with structure and function. The computer prototype is best suited for discussing interaction and presentation. But the composition of the group has more influence on the discussion than the choice of prototyping technique. Therefore the conclusion is drawn that it is important that the designer knows his or her audience and adjusts the choice of prototyping technique to the composition of the group.

The aim of this thesis is to bring together two different approaches on the concept of sketches in an attempt to broaden the understanding of what a sketch is and does. The first of these approaches is based on a notion of generative art presented by professor of art history and founder of Skissernas museum in Lund Ragnar Josephson (1891-1966). The second approach is situated in philosopher Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schubacks collection of phenomenological essays Att tänka i skisser: essäer om bildens filosofi & filosofins bilder (2011). By letting these two theories and Henri Matisse’s Chapel du rosaire and some of his sketches speak with each other my thesis establishes that the sketch is a non static motion towards shape.

Skizzen spielen im Designprozess als Denkwerkzeuge und Kommunikationsmittel eine wichtige Rolle. Im professionellen Designdiskurs im Social Web sind sie jedoch kaum sichtbar. Der vorgestellte Skizzenblog könnte die visuelle Diskussionskultur unter Designern befördern, indem er die Technik des Bloggens auf das Skizzieren überträgt.

Audio ist einer der wichtigsten Aspekte bei mediengestützten Produktionen. Allerdings sind die Oberflächen zur Suche, Erstellung und Manipulation von Audio häufig getrieben durch die zugrundeliegenden technischen Parameter. Diese Parameter beschreiben in der Regel weder deren Bedeutung für den Sound noch welche Qualitäten im Sound zum Ausdruck kommen. Dadurch bieten solche Oberflächen selten eine intuitive, noch expressive Handhabe, da zuerst ein Übersetzungsprozess von der künstlerischen Idee hin zu den technischen Parametern erfolgen muss. Um die Oberflächen nahbarer und nachvollziehbar zu gestalten, wird daher die Verbildlichung der Strukturen von Sound auf verschiedenen Ebenen betrachtet. Insbesondere wie visuelle Momente zur Interaktion mit Audio genutzt werden können, wird herausgestellt. Auf diese Weise wird die grafische Erweiterung von technischer spektraler Editierung als Beispiel für die direkte Signalverarbeitung diskutiert. Auch werden metaphorische Visualisierungen für Audioeffekte thematisiert. Zudem wird das mentale Modell von Audio analysiert, welches hier assoziativ durch Skizzen als abstrakte visuelle Repräsentationen erhoben wird. Daher wurden Studien zur Erhebung und Bewertung von Skizzen durchgeführt, die je einen Sound abbilden. Aus den resultierenden Skizzenassoziationen ist ein Vorgehen zur Ableitung einer Klassifikation des skizzenbasierten mentalen Modells entstanden. Diese Klassifikation ist ein möglicher Ausgangspunkt für die Entwicklung von Werkzeugen und bietet ein Bewusstsein der Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten beim Einsatz grafischer Assoziationen bis hin zu Affordanzen im Design von Datensätzen für maschinelles Lernen. Denn es wurden auch statistische Zusammenhänge der Kenntnisse der zeichnenden Personen und den verwendeten Skizzenklassen untersucht. Dadurch kann die Art der Abbildung in Bezug zur gewünschten Zielgruppe gewählt werden. / Audio is one of the most important aspects of media-based productions. However, the interfaces for searching, creating, and manipulating audio are often driven by the underlying technical parameters. These parameters usually do not describe their meanings for the sound, nor what qualities are expressed in the sound. As a result, such surfaces rarely offer an intuitive, nor expressive way of interacting, since a translation process from the artistic idea to the technical parameters must take place first. In order to make the interfaces more approachable and comprehensible, the visualization of the structures of sound is therefore considered on different levels. In particular, how visualizations can be used to interact with audio will be highlighted. In this way, the graphical extension of technical spectral editing is discussed as an example of direct signal processing. Also, metaphorical visualizations for audio effects are addressed. In addition, the mental model of audio is analyzed, which is here elicited associatively through sketches as abstract visual representations. Therefore, studies were conducted to collect and evaluate sketches, each depicting one sound. From the resulting sketch associations, a procedure for deriving a classification of the sketch-based mental model has been developed. This classification is a possible starting point for tool development and provides an awareness of the expressive possibilities when using graphical associations up to affordances in the design of datasets for machine learning. In fact, statistical correlations of the knowledge of the people drawing and the classes of sketches used were also investigated. This allows to choose the type of illustration in relation to the desired target group.

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The traditional pen-paper sketching is extensively used in the early stages of product design as it supports creative exploration of product concepts and provides a fluidic mode for the expression of ideas. The Computer Aided Design (CAD) models support the later stages of design and manufacturing process. Faithful conversion of the designer’s ideas from concept sketches to the CAD models is a skill intensive and time consuming exercise which reduces the overall productivity of the organization. Providing computer based support can help the designer, in several ways, by reducing demand on the skill and allow focusing more on creative exploration of the concepts. Towards that, the thesis presents methodologies to understand the product concept sketches, support cognitive activities like perceiving the composition and behaviour, and create and interact with the sketches, directly in 3D. To begin with, traditional 2D sketches of product concepts are studied mainly to explores the psychological (cognitive) and physiological (musculoskeletal) activities of the designer in the context of the product being designed. A sketching application is created for capturing the sketches created using a tablet in digitized form. The captured data is analyzed based on the identified parameters. A grouping methodology is devised to group the stroke based on the observations which are akin to Gestalt laws of perceptual organization. This functional grouping or segmentation is used to identify the mental model of the product concept and the design rationale behind it. In concept sketches, annotations carry information like behaviour, functionality and usage. These wishful declarations need to be verified through simulation! To simulate the behavior of the components identified by the functional segmentation method, a kinematic model is defined where the designers interactively describe the constituents like joints, fixed links, inputs, etc. The interactive simulation changes the underlying kinematic model and makes the sketches to move to show the behavior. This system also provides methods to verify boundary constraints and allows creating patterns. Traditional 2D sketching suffers from several deficiencies. To overcome these, a novel direct 3D sketching methodology is proposed with stereo vision and haptic feedback. Different types of strokes creations like curves, strips and sweep surfaces, directly in 3D space, are demonstrated. Further, to provide control over stroke creation process, visual and haptic feedbacks are studied. Haptic rendering schemes for stroke generation are explored based on mechanics of sketching. Using the curve generation methods, surface generation schemes are devised. Mainly two types of schemes are explored (a) sweep surface and (b) Hatching surfaces. To support constrained concept exploration, two types of haptic constraints are modeled and their application is demonstrated in constraining a sketch within a boundary and outside a boundary. Motion constraints are implemented by simulating the behaviour of identified components’ motions. Two types of motion are implemented (a) Linear translation and (b) Rotation about an axis. Finally, a sketch based distributed collaboration method is presented to enable design interaction in the context of global product development. Several issues related to the realization of a sketch based collaborative conceptual design system are explored and, one such instance is demonstrated through experiments.

See title file for abstract / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

In this essay I defend the notion of deductive explanation mainly against two types of putative counterexamples: those found in genuinely indeterministic systems and those found in complex dynamic systems. Using Railton's notions of explanatory information and ideal explanatory text, deductivism is defended in an indeterministic setting. Furthermore, an argument against non-deductivism that hinges on peculiarities of probabilistic causality is presented. The use of the notion of an ideal explanatory text gives rise to problems in accounting for explanations in complex dynamic systems, regardless of whether they are deterministic or not. These problems are considered in the essay and a solution is suggested. This solution forces the deductivist to abandon the requirement that an explanation consists of a deductive argument, but it is argued that the core of deductivism is saved in so far as we, for full explanations, can still adhere to the fundamental requirement: If A explains B, then A is inconsistent with anything inconsistent with B.

See title file for abstract / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Psychology of Education)