Increasing economic, social and environmental problems around the world have shown that current models of economic development cannot be sustained. Thus, new patterns of consumption are needed. According to the literature, global companies are well placed to attempt leveraging sustainable consumption, as their production lines; supply chains; products and services extend across many continents, and as such the cumulative effect of their actions are wide reaching. This research sets out to better understand the intertwined factors that companies in two different contexts (Mexico and the UK), need to consider in order to leverage sustainable consumption. Through the literature review it was seen that sustainable consumption requires a multitude of changes, which have to occur at a systems level. In response to this, user-centred design (UCD) principles were seen as a valuable approach to give a broader account of the complexities around consumption and consumer's behaviour that could be communicated to higher management. A series of interviews, a focus group and a document analysis was undertaken to collect qualitative data. The findings led to the construction of a theoretical framework supported by UCD principles. The theoretical framework was then translated into the Sustainable Consumption Leveraging (SCL) Model and its toolkit. The SCL Model is a mechanism that takes into account the interaction of elements in a specific business context to identify areas of opportunity to leverage sustainable consumption through a consumer-focused approach. During a series of workshops, the SCL Model and its toolkit were tested to distinguish further opportunities of improvement and to understand where global companies stand with regards leveraging sustainable consumption. The research concludes by saying that companies need to work in collaboration with other actors to build a strong sustainability and innovation strategy that could help them to find new ways of doing business that can enhance more sustainable lifestyles.

The role of visual communication design continues to increase in importance around the world. In Bahrain, organisations are increasingly considering visual communication design as a means of accomplishing organisational goals. The research aims to understand the process by which design managers in organisations in Bahrain manage and evaluate visual communication designs to gain strategic advantage. Even though the management of visual communication design has not yet been recognised as a separate category of design management in Bahrain, its processes and approaches may differ from other management applications. This research opens with a contextual overview of the visual communication design management field, before presenting an understanding of how visual communication design can be utilised as an innovative approach to the strategic structuring organisational thinking. Methods have been developed for investigating how Bahraini client design managers manage visual communication design projects. Observational studies and interviews with client design managers and creative directors have been conducted to obtain an understanding of the visual communication design process, together with evaluation procedures in the Bahraini context. These empirical investigations have led to the development of a conceptual framework that describes the visual communication design management process and the evaluation procedure that is carried out by client design managers in Bahrain. The remainder of this thesis explains the outcomes of each phase of the research. The unique contributions of this study are embodied in a discussion of the findings together with reflections and recommendations for those involved and interested in design management in Bahrain.

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This thesis focuses on the problem of scalable optimization of dialogue behaviour in speech-based conversational systems using reinforcement learning. Most previous investigations in dialogue strategy learning have proposed flat reinforcement learning methods, which are more suitable for small-scale spoken dialogue systems. This research formulates the problem in terms of Semi-Markov Decision Processes (SMDPs), and proposes two hierarchical reinforcement learning methods to optimize sub-dialogues rather than full dialogues. The first method uses a hierarchy of SMDPs, where every SMDP ignores irrelevant state variables and actions in order to optimize a sub-dialogue. The second method extends the first one by constraining every SMDP in the hierarchy with prior expert knowledge. The latter method proposes a learning algorithm called 'HAM+HSMQ-Learning', which combines two existing algorithms in the literature of hierarchical reinforcement learning. Whilst the first method generates fully-learnt behaviour, the second one generates semi-learnt behaviour. In addition, this research proposes a heuristic dialogue simulation environment for automatic dialogue strategy learning. Experiments were performed on simulated and real environments based on a travel planning spoken dialogue system. Experimental results provided evidence to support the following claims: First, both methods scale well at the cost of near-optimal solutions, resulting in slightly longer dialogues than the optimal solutions. Second, dialogue strategies learnt with coherent user behaviour and conservative recognition error rates can outperform a reasonable hand-coded strategy. Third, semi-learnt dialogue behaviours are a better alternative (because of their higher overall performance) than hand-coded or fully-learnt dialogue behaviours. Last, hierarchical reinforcement learning dialogue agents are feasible and promising for the (semi) automatic design of adaptive behaviours in larger-scale spoken dialogue systems. This research makes the following contributions to spoken dialogue systems which learn their dialogue behaviour. First, the Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP) model was proposed to learn spoken dialogue strategies in a scalable way. Second, the concept of 'partially specified dialogue strategies' was proposed for integrating simultaneously hand-coded and learnt spoken dialogue behaviours into a single learning framework. Third, an evaluation with real users of hierarchical reinforcement learning dialogue agents was essential to validate their effectiveness in a realistic environment.

The master’s thesis deals with trading the currency market. The aim of thesis is the creation of an automated trading system based on technical analysis. This thesis is divided into several parts. The theoretical aspects and analysis of current situation are followed by automated trading system proposal. The system is designed on basis of technical indicators and tested on historical data and then optimized.

People often have very little knowledge about the impact of unsustainable human population growth on the environment and social well-being especially in developing countries. Therefore, an efficient method should be explored in order to educate, and if possible, to convince the members of the public to realize the environmental and social problems caused by the unsustainable population growth. Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) has been highlighted by some studies as an innovative tool for learning enhancement. While only a handful of studies have scientifically evaluated the impact of DGBL on knowledge outcomes, the approach is an attractive tool to increase knowledge and motivate engagement with environmental issues surrounding population growth because of its potential to improve learners’ motivation and engagement thereby compared to traditional learning approaches. Therefore, the three primary research questions for this study are: 1) "Can a single-player digital game be an appropriate and attractive learning application for the players to gain insight about the relationship between the growing human population and the environmental issues?" 2) "How can we design environmental games for the players to gain insights about the relationship between the growing human population and the environmental issues via playing a game?" and 3) "What are the obstacles preventing the players from adapting environmental knowledge obtained from the learning mediums into the real-life?" To inform the development of an efficacious DGBL game to impact learning outcomes, critical reviews of environmental issues related to population growth as well as critical reviews of commercial and serious environmental games in terms of their educational and motivational values were undertaken in this study. The results of these critical reviews informed the development of a Guideline for Environmental Games (or GEG). The GEG was developed by combining the engaging game technology with environmental learning and persuasion theories. The GEG was then used to inform the development of a prototype game called THE GROWTH; a single-player, quiz-based, city-management game targeting young adolescents and adults. Multiple evaluation methods of the game were used to answer the three key research questions mentioned earlier. These methods included: 1) The Randomized Controlled Trial approach (RCT) where the participants were systematically divided into the experimental and the control group respectively and their knowledge scores (quantitative data) compared and analyzed, 2) The participants’ abilities to recall and describe the environmental and well-being issues were collected and analyzed qualitatively using The Content Analysis method (CA) and, 3) The participants’ overall feedback on the learning mediums was collected and analyzed to evaluate the motivational values of THE GROWTH itself. To this end, THE GROWTH was evaluated with 82 Thai-nationality participants (70 males and 12 females). The results showed that participants assigned to play THE GROWTH demonstrated greater environmental and social-well-being knowledge related to population growth (F(1,40) = 43.86, p = .006) compared to the control group participants assigned to a non-interactive reading activity (consistent with material presented in THE GROWTH). Furthermore, participants who played THE GROWTH recalled on average more content presented in the game when compared to participants who were presented with similar content in the reading material (t (59) = 3.35, p = .001). In terms of level of engagement, the study suggested that participants assigned to the game were more engaging with their learning medium on average when compared to participants assigned to the non-interactive reading activity. This is evidenced by the longer time participants spent on the task, the activity observed from participants’ recorded gameplay, and their positive responses in the survey. The semi-structured interviews used in this study highlighted the participants’ attitudes towards the environmental, social, and technological issues. Although the participants’ perceived behavioural intention towards the environmental commitments were not statistically differed between the two study group, their responses still provide some evidences that leaps may occur from the learning mediums to the real-world context. Furthermore, these responses can be valuable evidences for the policy makers and for the future development of environmental serious games. Overall, the results suggested that digital environmental games such as THE GROWTH might be an effective and motivational tool in promote the learning about sustainable population size, the environment, and the social well-being. The game’s ability to convince the participants to change towards sustainable lifestyles, however, might be subjected to the future research and other real-world circumstances such as the governmental and public supports. In summary, the research in this thesis makes the following contributions to knowledge: • The Guideline for Environmental Games (GEG) contributes to knowledge about making theoretically-based environmental games. It has particular significance because the guideline was validated by demonstrating learning improvements in a systematic randomized controlled trial. • The use of Multi-Strategy Study Design where multiple systematic evaluation methods were used in conjunction to provide conclusive findings about the efficacy of DGBL to impact outcomes. • THE GROWTH itself is a contribution to applied research as an example of an effective DGBL learning tool.

In this thesis, a conceptual framework and related methodological approaches for complex system design are developed and tested. The approaches are based on insights from the fields of Systems Engineering (SE) and System-of-Systems Engineering (SoSE), as well as Natural Resources Management (NRM). The focus of this thesis is on: 1) the development of the System-of-Systems Design Framework “FRESCO”, 2) the development of a methodological framework for participatory systems design, 3) the application of the framework in two case studies, and 4) the development of an evaluation scheme to qualitatively measure the effectiveness of the methodological framework. The overall objectives of this doctoral dissertation are to highlight synergies between SE and NRM and to develop a methodological framework for designing decision making processes in a human-nature-technology context. The complexity of coupled and complex adaptive systems (CAS) such as the Water-Energy-Food Nexus (WEF-Nexus) and sustainability strategies, influences the design of decision-making processes and strategy building. Integrated process design which is promoted by the developed frameworks can assist in such tasks on an urban, regional, and national level.