Traditional design theories have focused on technical functions and more or less disregard a product’s user involvement. The existing methods of ergonomic designare mostly intended for analysis activities. There is a need for new dynamic methods that focus on user-product interactions. The aim of this research work is to develop design methods for user-product interactions, which should support synthesis activities in early product development phases. An observation study and a questionnaire survey were carried out in order to investigate product developers’ work and relation to the users for providing background information about the research problem. Furthermore, student projects in product development were followed, giving essential input. After the theories and methods were developed, a retrospective interview study was carried out in order to confirm the need for the developed methods. The studies showed, for instance, that companies use few formal methods and almost none of these are directed towards the user. It is also indicated that the product developers’ contact with users decreases with increasing company size. Few companies have a defined procedure for defining their intended users. Six methods are developed. They embrace three ways of classifying the users and their relations to products and other users (User identification, Use profile and User relations), an analysis of the users’ Activities, goals and motives behind their use of the product, a scenario technique (User-technical process scenario, UTPS), which shows the user process in parallel with the technical process, and a hierarchical decomposition of technical functions and user actions, which is named the Functionaction tree (FAT). All the methods, apart from FAT, were tested in real product development teams. All the tested methods stimulate communication between the group members of various competencies in the design group. Most of the methods are easy to apply and are valuable for understanding the design problem. The UTPS is also useful for comparing design solutions and generates new ideas about the design task. The other tested methods did not generate many new ideas, but the reason is probably that they were mainly tested on products that are already on the market. Thus, the methods are most valuable in the early design stages, when trying out a product idea or a concept. / QC 20100618

Depuis l’émergence d’une culture franco-ontarienne dans les années 1970, la poésie a été produite aux côtés du théâtre sur les scènes de la province. Si elle demeure une activité périphérique à la production théâtrale pendant plusieurs décennies, à l’aube des années 2000, elle s’allie réellement à la mise en scène dans le cadre de certaines productions phares. De fait, entre 1998 et 2004, trois metteurs en scène provenant des trois pôles traditionnels de production de l’Ontario français choisissent de porter à la scène les textes du poète Patrice Desbiens. Alors que la poésie est une forme littéraire qui se définit principalement par l’indissociabilité entre forme et contenu, ce mémoire propose une analyse des stratégies textuelles et scéniques privilégiées dans la plus récente des trois productions sus mentionnées : L’homme invisible/The Invisible Man, spectacle produit par le Théâtre de la Vieille 17 à Ottawa en 2004. À l’aide d’outils théoriques tirés des champs de l’adaptation et de la dramaturgie contemporaine, les spécificités propres au récit original et les opérations transformatives qui se sont opérées sont relevées. Les modalités organisatrices de la mise en scène sont ensuite étudiées. Les créateurs réalisent une « adaptation-non-adaptation » (Plana, 2004) dans laquelle, tout en conservant le caractère non-dramatique du texte, ils privilégient l’apparition d’un « métadialogue » (Sermon, 2005) qui s’appuie sur le caractère dualiste et bilingue du récit original. La mise en scène s’articule quant à elle dans la mise en tension de deux modes de figuration tributaires du récit poétique adapté : la métaphore et la métonymie, en faisant un détour par le mimétisme.

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Depuis l’émergence d’une culture franco-ontarienne dans les années 1970, la poésie a été produite aux côtés du théâtre sur les scènes de la province. Si elle demeure une activité périphérique à la production théâtrale pendant plusieurs décennies, à l’aube des années 2000, elle s’allie réellement à la mise en scène dans le cadre de certaines productions phares. De fait, entre 1998 et 2004, trois metteurs en scène provenant des trois pôles traditionnels de production de l’Ontario français choisissent de porter à la scène les textes du poète Patrice Desbiens. Alors que la poésie est une forme littéraire qui se définit principalement par l’indissociabilité entre forme et contenu, ce mémoire propose une analyse des stratégies textuelles et scéniques privilégiées dans la plus récente des trois productions sus mentionnées : L’homme invisible/The Invisible Man, spectacle produit par le Théâtre de la Vieille 17 à Ottawa en 2004. À l’aide d’outils théoriques tirés des champs de l’adaptation et de la dramaturgie contemporaine, les spécificités propres au récit original et les opérations transformatives qui se sont opérées sont relevées. Les modalités organisatrices de la mise en scène sont ensuite étudiées. Les créateurs réalisent une « adaptation-non-adaptation » (Plana, 2004) dans laquelle, tout en conservant le caractère non-dramatique du texte, ils privilégient l’apparition d’un « métadialogue » (Sermon, 2005) qui s’appuie sur le caractère dualiste et bilingue du récit original. La mise en scène s’articule quant à elle dans la mise en tension de deux modes de figuration tributaires du récit poétique adapté : la métaphore et la métonymie, en faisant un détour par le mimétisme.

The Walking Dead is a popular American tv-series set in the near future, or an alternative present. Society has fallen and colapsed into a more post-apocalyptic state. Till this date the seires has reached its third season, and each episode has several million viewers around the world. In this essay the author tries to see how the tv-series reprensatation of men and women looks like. Media, such as tv-series, acts as great source of inspiration when people tries to understand the world around them. If men and women are representated diffrently that may effect how the viewers treat people in general. The purpose of this study wass to examine how men and women were portrayed in the series. What wass classed as typical male and female and how men and women relate to each other in different situations. In order to properly answer to the studys purpose previous research on gender, femininities, masculinities and stereotypes were applied. The material were then examined in a qualitative content analysis with a semiotic approach where the text were studied to elucidate its denotative and connotative meanings. In short, thhe study shows that men and women are equipped with very different abilities. The woman is often portrayed as weak while the man, almost always, is portrayed as the stronger one.

La Tesis se propone estudiar, analizar y reflexionar sobre la situación del individuo humano en la actualidad en relación con el problema de la definición de su esencia. La superación de la metafísica, la crítica al proyecto ilustrado, la vuelta a las cosas mismas y la necesidad de superar la problemática del hombre actual hacen necesario plantear un nuevo ámbito para la imbricación del hombre en el mundo. Esta es la propuesta de Zubiri, en el contexto de lo que se considera el "tercer horizonte". Por eso, para alcanzar los objetivos de la tesis, se toma a Zubiri como hilo conductor y se mantiene un continuo diálogo entre este pensador y otras formas contemporáneas de humanismo: Nietzsche, Buber y, especialmente, Heidegger.El concepto de sustantividad y, en el caso del hombre, el de sustantividad individual se ofrece como un sólido principio con el que tratar de explicar la situación del hombre en el mundo y la posible evolución futura de sus notas esenciales. Respecto a las notas del ser humano, encontramos que el conjunto de aquéllas que son constituyentes y fundantes en el individuo es lo que podemos definir como "esencia del hombre". Para Zubiri, al igual que para Heidegger, "ser" y "tiempo" no son fundamento para la realidad sino todo lo contrario: el fundamento es, para Zubiri, "la realidad"; mientras que, para Heidegger, es el "se" del "se da", que representa lo esencial hacia lo que es perentorio dirigir nuestro nuevo pensar.Concluye el trabajo indagando sobre la compatibilidad entre una realidad como fundamento y la presencia del hombre en el mundo, una realidad en la realidad, que dispone de un proyecto vital que precisa de un pleno enfoque humanista como requisito para conseguir su realización durante y a través de la ejecución de este su proyecto vital. / The purpose of the Thesis is to study, analyze and reflect on the situation of the individual human being in the present, in relation with the problematic of the definition of the human essence. The overcoming of Metaphysic, the criticism to the 'Enlightenment project', the return to the realism of things and the necessity to go beyond the current problematic of Man make necessary to consider a new ambit for the overlapping of Man in the World. This is the proposal of Zubiri in the field of his consideration of 'The third Horizont'. In this Thesis Zubiri is considered as a conductor wire to be contrasted, in continuous dialogue, with other philosophers: Nietzsche, Buber and, mainly, Heidegger. The Zubiri's concept of 'sustantividad' and in the case of Man 'sustantividad individual' shows up as a solid principle to explain the human being situation in the World and the possible evolution of his essential notes. With respect to these notes, we find that the whole of them that are constituent and fundamental for the individual can be defined as the 'essence of Man

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The appearance of the electrical appliances has undergone a dramatic change in many aspects since the 1920&rsquo / s. Throughout years, along with their changed appearance, the way the appliances are perceived has altered. The interface of domestic products is mainly dominated by visual elements. Undoubtedly, the domination of the visual perception in the interfaces of the appliances might cause complications in the interaction between the product and visually impaired users. In this thesis, the interaction between the electrical household appliances and visually impaired user is examined to identify the strong points in the interaction as well as any complications that may occur during the interaction. Observations were conducted with ten users to explore the interaction between the visually impaired users and three electrical domestic appliances: washing machine, vacuum cleaner and iron. The findings of the observations indicate that visually impaired users can operate their appliances, with some limitations. Yet a number of common problematic points related to the interface elements, which hinder from using their electrical appliances with full functionality, were encountered. At the end of the study, a list of design recommendations, some of which offered in the literature previously, are suggested.

Due to their massive user base and request load, large-scale Internet applications have mainly focused on goals such as performance and scalability. As a result, many of these applications rely on weaker but more efficient and simpler authentication mechanisms. However, as recent incidents have demonstrated, powerful adversaries are exploiting the weaknesses in such mechanisms. While more robust authentication mechanisms exist, most of them fail to address the scale and security needs of these large-scale systems. In this dissertation we demonstrate that by taking into account the specific requirements and threat model of large-scale Internet applications, we can design authentication protocols for such applications that are not only more robust but also have low impact on performance, scalability and existing infrastructure. In particular, we show that there is no inherent conflict between stronger authentication and other system goals. For this purpose, we have designed, implemented and experimentally evaluated three robust authentication protocols: Proxychain, for SIP-based VoIP authentication; One-Time Cookies (OTC), for Web session authentication; and Direct Validation of SSL/TLS Certificates (DVCert), for server-side SSL/TLS authentication. These protocols not only offer better security guarantees, but they also have low performance overheads and do not require additional infrastructure. In so doing, we provide robust and practical authentication mechanisms that can improve the overall security of large-scale VoIP and Web applications.

Includes vita. / Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 258 pages. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: The overarching goal of this study is to suggest that Alexander Pope did not abandon his project for a "system of ethics in the Horatian way," but rather that in his final days he did find a way to unite the parts at hand into a viable whole. Constructing such an argument, however, requires a similar building up from the parts, and so the core focus becomes a study on the way the image of an arch can serve as a metaphor for Pope's reconciliation scheme in his Moral Essays as he "steers betwixt" seeming opposites. To justify this approach, I note the works of critics who have studied Pope's use of the sister arts, the works of architectural theorists and historians, as well the works of critics who focus on various reconciliatory strategies. Perhaps more importantly, I look back to Pope's correspondence and Joseph Spence's record to establish not only Pope's interest in architecture, but also his actual architectural endeavors. / ABSTRACT: From this foundation, I relate Pope's intentions for his opus magnum and indicate the connections that can be drawn between the four epistles of Essay on Man and the four epistles that Pope selected to comprise the "death-bed" edition of his ethic work, namely To a Lady, To Cobham, To Bathurst, and To Burlington. Finally, I examine Pope's method of reconciling the extremes he presents by exemplum in the Moral Essays by comparing the personal and societal pressures that form the basis of Pope's satire to the vertical and lateral thrusts that enable an arch to stand, even as they threaten its destruction should the forces become unbalanced. From such an architectural perspective, one can trace Pope's conception of man in his middle state as he makes the transition from the abstract plan established in Essay on Man, through the pendentive formed by the arches of the Moral Essays, and ultimately to the ideal state of existence that is represented by the dome. / ABSTRACT: The final result can be conceived of as no less than a monument to Pope's life and art. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.