In this Bachelor thesis I explore sound and room as elements in design of user interfaces, both theoretical and practical in a specific application domain, to identify some of the advantages and disadvantage associated with these elements. As application domain I studied email clients and their usage at home amongst students at Blekinge Institute of Technology. In the study I found an activity, which seems to be highly distributed in the physical room where the user is located. The activity was notification of email and could take place in an arbitrary location of the home. I then augmented this activity with ideas from my theoretical assumption about room and sound. The result was a rule-based agent for notification of email, which primarily uses sound as interaction style. / I fokus för mitt arbete står två begrepp, ljud och rummet samt att skapa en fusion mellan dem i ett gränssnitt. Båda är områden som med tiden har fått ökad betydelse för IT design.

This project has been devoted to design a computer system with a tangible user interface, in the context of future supervision of remote drop-in dialysis patients. The tangible computer system was developed as an example of how two concepts in human work, accountability and awareness, can be supported through tangible user interfaces. A current trend within CSCW discusses accountability in design in terms of how software should make its own actions accountable. We choose to use an alternative route, namely to use the tangible interface for explicating nurses and patients actions for each other. Explicating actions is key benefit with a tangible interface in work environments that is physical co-located. We conclude that our strategy can be investigated further in settings where the work is carried out in a physical co-located space.