Digital commerce is a natural part of our everyday life. To fast and easily be able to make purchases from our home without stress has become a matter of course for us. But the new way to make purchases places new demands on the sales, not least at the important customer meeting. The interaction between customer and seller disappears completely and known marketing methods must be adapted to the new conditions. How does the customer journey change when the step from discovering a product to buying it is just a few clicks away? The study aims to investigate and develop a digital sales process for a mobile game aimed for children. The process is based on the marketing framework See-Think-Do-Care and tries to answer questions like which components are needed in a sales flow? How can a product be adapted to different types of users and can UX design be used to get interested customers to buy the product? The method is divided into two different sections. One section for evaluating the chosen marketing framework and another for the development of the sales process. The development of the sales process was made stepwise by prototypes in different degrees of fidelity. The first part of the result ended up in the implementation of the marketing framework, a developed customer journey, and a compilation of ten guidelines to adhere to for increasing the conversion of new customers. The sales flow was then developed step by step from only showing the routing to be a clickable solution similar to the intended end product. The di↵erent prototypes were evaluated by user testing and it was shown that the largest problem was not to make users understand the sales flow, it was to make them understand the actual product. The hope is that the result of the study will be able to be tested in production and be used in the real sales of the product.

User experience forskning blir allt mer viktigt den här tiden under den digitala eran där det är konstant utveckling och framsteg av digitala produkter. Denna typen av produkter introducerar ett behov av att designa och utveckla dess gränssnitt där informationen presenteras på bästa möjliga sätt och skapar möjligheter till interaktion för att möta användarens behov. Den interaktiva upplevelsen som en digital produkt erbjuder via gränssnittet avgör i stor utsträckning framgången av produkten. Användarens upplevelse av gränssnittet är en mycket större del av utvecklingen idag än tidigare. Vikten av att ta ansvar för kundupplevelsen och sätta denna i centrum blir som en överlevnadsteknik för hemsidor. Även om det finns många olika sätt att utvärdera användarupplevelsen som erbjuds av webbplatser, så är det en utmaning att skapa ett teoretiskt verktyg som tillämpas för att utvärdera User experience för kunskapsintensiva informtionsutrymmen.Syftet med denna avhandling är att utveckla ett teoretiskt verktyg baserat på heuristiker inom forskningsområdet user experience. Att bidra till en ökad förståelse för vad User experience är och för att se vilka heuristiker som kan appliceras för att utforska en användares förståelse av ett webbgränssnitt. För att grunda detta forskningsarbete och ge konkreta resultat har en fallstudie valts som metod för att komplettera litteraturstudien. Kundernas erfarenhet av att interagera med företaget Axis Communications valdes som ett relevant fall. Axis Communications utvecklar nätverkskameror och programvara för säkerhet och videoövervakning. Användbarhetsstudier utfördes med distributörer av Axis Communications produkter och genomfördes i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer och med hjälp av think-aloud teknik för att undersöka produkt och information sökande strategier. Resultaten från denna studie i samband med den heuristik som utvecklades som en följd av litteraturstudien användes för att se över användbarheten av Axis Communications externa hemsida. Fem nya heuristiker utvecklades som ett viktigt verktyg för att bestämma och designa användarupplevelsen av corporate webbplatser som hanterar kunskapsintensiva informationsutrymmen. Även om resultaten från fallstudier är svåra att generalisera, så har det teoretiska verktyget som skapats i detta forskningsarbete möjliggjort en form av generalisering, men viktigast introducerar forskningsfrågor för framtida arbete. / User experience research is becoming more important during this time of the digital era where there is constant advancements in digital products. Such advanced digital products introduce a need to design and develop its interfaces where information is presented in the best way possible and creates possibilities for interaction to meet the users needs. The interactive experience offered by a digital product through its interface to a large extent determines the success of such products. The user's experience of the user interface is a much larger part of the development today, than it was before. The importance of taking responsibility for the customer experience and putting this into focus becomes a survival technique for websites. While there are standard techniques to understand the user experience offered by websites, the lack of a theoretical tool to determine and design user experiences for information spaces containing knowledge-intensive information is a challenge. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a theoretical tool based on heuristics researched in the field of user experience. To contribute to a common understanding for what User experience is and to see which heuristics can be applied to explore a users understanding of a website. To ground this research work and to have concrete results, a case study has been chosen as an method to complement the literature review. Customer experience in interacting with Axis Communications’ corporate website was chosen as a relevant case. Axis Communications develops network cameras and software for physical security and video surveillance industries. Usability studies were conducted with distributors of Axis Communications products in form of semi-structured interviews and using think-aloud technique to investigate the product and information seeking strategies. The results from this study in conjunction with the heuristics developed as a result of the literature study was used in reviewing the usability of Axis Communications’ corporate website. Five new heuristics were developed as an important tool for determining and designing the user experience of corporate websites dealing with knowledge-intensive information spaces. While results from case studies are difficult to generalise, the theoretical foundations upon which this research work was built enables some form of generalisation but more importantly puts forth interesting research questions as future work.

This paper presents the reasoning behind and the results from usability testing of the user- and administrative side of FIPIC (Flexible Interactive Platform for Interviews with Children), a digital questionnaire tool for children. The user side was tested with 24 elementary school children between grades 1-6. They first chose which avatar and voice they preferred and then answered six questions using FIPIC while being timed on each question. The administrative side was tested with five researchers from different universities in Sweden using a scripted list of user tasks and the think-aloud method. The researchers would then answer some follow up questions after their test session. The results showed that the user side did not have any major issues that significantly affected the usability of FIPIC. The biggest issues were the non-clickable emoji’s under the slider function and having to scroll up and down. The solution is to make the emoji’s clickable and replace the drop down with a text field to avoid the scrolling. The results of the administrative side showed that most of the usability issues were present in the newer functionalities such as question groups and group connections. Functionalities that are not present in other common questionnaire tools. The suggested improvement is to make the design more intuitive. For example, the create question group button should be placed at the top of the questions page instead of having to first click the create question button. This makes hierarchical sense because a group is needed in order to create a question.

Tidigare forskning visar att om lärare utformar NO-lektioner med inslag av kritiskt tänkande, skapar elever ett större positivt intresse till undervisningen och attityderna förändras till dess innehåll. Syftet med studien är att ta reda på hur NO-lärare arbetar med att utveckla elevers kritiska tänkande samt om de kan använda färdigt material. Semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med sex olika mellanstadielärare och det visade sig att lärarna använder tre strategier för att nå dit, vilka är repetition, progression i olika NTA- laborationer samt skriva kritiska frågor och arbeta utefter EP A-modellen. Studien visar att de intervjuade lärarna anser att det är viktigt att utveckla elevers kritiska förmågor och lärarna arbetar aktivt med detta på lektionerna. Avslutningsvis framhåller studien att lärarna aktivt behöver arbeta med elevers kritiska tänkande och med NTA-materialet, samt att Concept Cartoons hjälper läraren i denna process. / Previous research shows that if teachers design their science classes with elements of critical thinking, pupils’ create a greater positive interest in the teaching and attitudes change towards its content. The purpose of this study is to find out how science teachers work to develop pupils' critical thinking and whether they can use ready-made material. Semi- structured interviews have been conducted with six different middle school teachers and it turned out that the teachers use three strategies to get there, which is repetition, progression in different NTA laboration and writing critical questions and working according to the Think- Pair-Share model. The study shows that the interviewed teachers believe it is important to develop pupils' critical abilities and the teachers work actively with this during class. In conclusion, the study highlights that teachers need to actively work with pupils' critical thinking and the NTA-material and Concept Cartoons help the teacher in this process.

A validity study can be used to investigate the effectiveness of an exam and reveal both its strengths and weaknesses. This study concerns an investigation of the writing portfolio Level Achievement Test (LAT) at the English Language Center (ELC) of Brigham Young University (BYU). The writing portfolios of 251 students at five proficiency levels were rated by 11 raters. Writing portfolios consisted of two coursework essays, a self-reflection assignment, and a 30-minute timed essay. Quantitative methods included an analysis with Many-Facet Rasch Model (MFRM) software, called FACETS, which looked for anomalies in levels, classes, examinees, raters, writing criteria, and the rating scale categories. Qualitative methods involved a rater survey, rater Think Aloud Protocols (TAPs), and rater interviews. Results indicated that the exam has a high degree of validity based on the MFRM analysis. The survey and TAPs revealed that although raters follow a similar pattern for rating portfolios, they differed both in the time they took to rate portfolios and in the degree to which they favored the rating criteria. This may explain some of the discrepancies in the MFRM rater analysis. Conclusions from the MFRM analysis, surveys, TAPs, and interviews were all used to make recommendations to improve the rating process of the LAT, as well as to strengthen the relationship between LAT rating and classroom teaching and grading.

Data-driven learning is a sub-discipline of corpus linguistics that makes use of the analyses and tools of corpus linguistics in foreign and second language classroom (Johns, 1991; Johns & King, 1991). With this approach, learners become researchers rather than passive recipients of language rules (Johns, 1991). This study was an investigation of the impact of this approach as a form of written corrective feedback for in-service teachers of English participating in an online writing course at a teacher training institute in Japan. Data-driven learning is commonly utilized in conventional, face-to-face classrooms, or computer lab settings in which there is close direction from the instructor on how to interpret the output of a corpus query. The purpose of this study was to investigate how data-driven learning can be implemented in a blended online environment by providing training to develop the participants’ corpus competence (Charles, 2011; Flowerdew, 2010), which is defined as the ability to interpret data obtained from querying a corpus. This competence has been associated with becoming familiar with corpus methods, which include interpreting concordances, and in turn can aid in accurately repairing writing errors. This training, while initially presented in a face-to-face session at the beginning of the course, was sustained with support from resources on the course’s Moodle website and my comments in Microsoft Word documents. In addition, I applied a fine-grained approach to the analysis of the to examine the quality of participants’ interpretation of concordances. The mixed method triangulation convergence design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007, 2011) used in this study was based on data from four sources to examine the effectiveness of data-driven learning in an online environment as well as to observe how the participants interpreted concordances. One data set involved an analysis of the participants’ responses in drafts of their own writing to concordance-based feedback. The participants were given a prefabricated concordance, which was a concordance I generated. That concordance was attached to an error in the participants’ document and the participants used the information provided by the concordance to repair their writing error. The resulting data set, which contains the concordance, along with before and after comparisons of the writers’ repairs, shows how the participants’ interpretations of concordances aided the repairs. With the evidence of several trials over the course of four writing assignments, it was possible to see how the participants used the supplied concordance to repair their writing errors and in turn revealed their degree of corpus competence. A second data set obtained from think-aloud protocols from select participants was utilized to reveal how they interpreted the concordance during an error-repair task. This data revealed what kind of thought processes or noticing that occurred in this task. A third piece of evidence was derived from data obtained from the Moodle website via log files and other resources such as online documents and training quizzes. The purpose was to document which resources the participants accessed relating to data-driven learning training to investigate if those resources aided in their development of corpus competence. The fourth piece of evidence was a quiz developed online to compare the participants with a standard set of items. The quiz was used to investigate which participants successfully or unsuccessfully interpreted the concordances. This instrument, which was analyzed with the Rasch model, allowed for further comparison between the participants’ skill of interpreting concordances. These four data sources were triangulated and in the final analysis cross-referenced to examine how data-driven learning can be successfully applied in a blended online learning environment and how the training of corpus competence aided the learners in interpreting the concordances. / Teaching & Learning

<p>This dissertation is about how think tanks produce and promote policy ideas. It is informed by 53 semi-structured interviews, financial and employee data for 30 think tanks over 11 years, documentary materials (including newspaper data, annual reports, strategic plans, communication reports, and publications), office visits at think tanks, and observation at public events. In substantive chapters, I address (i.) the funding environment underpinning think tank policy research in Canada, (ii.) the epistemic cultures shaping knowledge production, and (iii.) the rhetorical strategies of intellectuals --- affiliated with or oriented to think tanks --- challenging the scientific consensus on climate change in "the space of opinion."</p> <p>In chapter two, I present a comparative analysis of think tank funding that challenges predictions derived from elite and pluralist theories, and builds on recent field theory. I find that the availability of state and private donor funding creates an environment where think tanks mostly cater to two types of sponsors with diverging preferences. The relative separation of state and donor funding is politically patterned, with conservative think tanks being funded by private donors and centrists by the state. Rather than being "independent" or members of a "corporate-policy elite,"" think tanks face extreme versions of common organizational problems, in particular resource dependencies and conflicting institutional logics.</p> <p>In the third chapter, I draw on the sociology of ideas to propose that the production and promotion of policy ideas in think tanks vary in three ways. First, there are diverging tendencies towards universalism and contextualism in a broadly utilitarian epistemic culture. Secondly, think tanks vary in the extent to which they integrate their research and communication strategies in short and long term projects. Finally, among those active in the ``space of opinion,'' some are seeking leverage for negotiations with elites, others to shape public opinion in specific ways, and others to rise to the top of an intellectual attention space as authoritative intellectuals.</p> <p>Chapter four is a case study of intellectuals --- affiliated with or oriented to think tanks --- discussing climate change and climate science in "the space of opinion."" Based on an inductive qualitative analysis of 417 systematically collected articles, I discuss two tactics writers have used in an effort to de-legitimate the scientific consensus on climate change. Without a vetted body of knowledge ready to take centre stage, and without appealing to non-scientific cultural authorities, writers (i.) re-frame consensus as a political construct, and their own skepticism as supremely scientific, and (ii.) personalize climate science by smearing high profile environmentalists and scientists, and chipping away at the character of mainstream climate scientists. Together, these tactics portray skeptics as more scientific than climate scientists.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

One important phase in software development process is to create a design model of the system which follows all the architectural rules. Often the architectural rules are defined by the system architect and the system model is designed by the system designer. The architect defines the rules in a text file where no standard or pattern is followed. Therefore, there is always the risk of violating the architectural rules by the designer. So manual reviews on the system model should be done by the architect to ensure the system model is valid.In order to remove this manual checking which can be erroneous and time consuming ArCon (Architecture Conformance Checker) was developed by Combitech AB. ArCon is a tool which lets the architect define the architectural rules in the format of UML (Unified Modeling Language) models where the elements of the model have different meaning than the standard UML. ArCon can read this model and extract architectural rules from it and check the system model against those rules and then print all the rule violations.ArCon is an open source tool i.e. free for everyone to download and use. Currently, it supports Papyrus as the UML modeling tool. Papyrus is integrated to Eclipse platform and is a general purpose modeling tool. It supports users with all types of UML diagrams and elements.The idea for this thesis work was to implement a new feature for ArCon in order to facilitate the design process for system designers. The feature should provide the system designers only those types of elements which they are permitted to add to a specific fraction of the system model. The list of permitted element types should be extracted from the architecture model where all the architectural rules are defined in advance. This new support in ArCon was named Domain Specific Modeling (DSM) support.To evaluate the effect of DSM support on the system designers performance a few test sessions, called usability tests, were performed. The participants in the test sessions were a representative sample of software designers. After analyzing the data collected from the test sessions, the pros and cons of the new support were discovered. Furthermore, a few new ideas for enhancing DSM support were generated.

The thesis explores the potential of one way of facilitating and stimulating collaboration in Library and Information Science (LIS), through a specific scientific collaboration activity: creating, sharing and reusing data collection instruments, such as interview guides, questionnaires, and observation protocols. The four studies reported in the thesis can be read as a linear narrative, each study building on the previous and contributing to the following ones. Together the four studies describe the process exploring social and contextual aspects of LIS; developing requirements and designing a working prototype collaboratory; and evaluating how the prototype collaboratory was perceived by LIS professionals. Overall, the results show that whereas the benefits of an LIS collaboratory reported by the study participants focused on the greater good for LIS, the challenges reported focused on the individuals’ perspectives. Hence, a tension exists between supporting the greater good, and challenges for individuals concerning sharing and reusing data collection instruments in an LIS collaboratory. The thesis emphasizes the implications for the LIS discipline when new ways of working with data collection instruments would be introduced; the implications of addressing needs of a diverse target audience; and the implications for further design iterations of an LIS collaboratory, including rewarding contributions, and ensuring quality content in a collaboratory. / <p>Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Library and Information Science at the University of Gothenburg and the University of Borås to be publicly defended on Wednesday 11 June 2014 at 13.15 in lecture room E310, University of Borås, Allégatan 1, Borås</p>

本論文以我國對美外交工作中的對美智庫工作為標的，以政策評估之角度，對此項工作之有效性進行評估。 針對我國對智庫工作進行政策評估，其主要核心即在於討論我國影響美國智庫的能力，及美國智庫影響美國政府之能力等兩者，以求瞭解對智庫進行工作，是否最後能產生實現特定之國家目標的結果。整個影響過程，包括了我國□美國智庫□美國政府等三個主體，其中箭頭代表「影響」，整個三主體兩階段過程能夠順利建立，則代表美國政府之友我政策產出，我國的特定國家目標得以實現。為對上述兩階段進行檢視，在研究架構上本論文採取了政策評估研究為整體研究脈絡，並以決策研究及統計研究進行各次級項目的細部討論，以逐一檢視三主體兩階段過程中，每一段是否能夠成立。 首先，本研究則針對台美關係之歷史脈絡及美國目前重要智庫分佈情形進行彙整，並針對傳統上將學者及智庫分為紅隊及藍隊之恰當性進行討論。之後，則先由各項理論及影響管道等兩方面，針對智庫影響政府政策之能力（三主體兩階段架構之後段）進行探討。在論證此階段之影響力確實存在後，緊接著則針對國家影響智庫之能力（三主體兩階段架構之前段）進行研究。透過學理及統計分析等兩方面之研究結果均顯示，我國對美國智庫之工作，確實已對該智庫之言論取向及活動內容，發揮明確之影響力。吾人可稱三主體兩階段之影響架構確實存在，我國對智庫之工作確實可達成影響美國政策之政策目的，就本研究而言，在政策有效性之評估上，應已合乎要求。 在確認三主體兩階段之影響力均存在後，本研究彙整各階段研究之結果，並據以擬定智庫工作之模式：「台灣模式（Taiwan Model）」。 / This is a policy evaluation which takes Taiwan’s U.S. policy as it is enacted through U.S. think tanks as the subject for evaluation. The purpose is to evaluate the effectiveness of this policy in practice In evaluating Taiwan’s work on American think tanks, the core aim is to evaluate Taiwan’s ability to effect U.S. think tanks and, in turn, the ability of U.S. think tanks to influence the U.S. government. Through this study observers will gain a sense of whether Taiwan’s work on U.S. think tanks is effective in terms if achieving specific national goals. For the purpose described above, this study firstly introduces the historical background to Taiwan-U.S. relations and makes a general survey in the current situation of U.S. think tanks. It also discusses the appropriateness of the classifications “red team” and “blue team”. In the following chapters, I examine the ability of U.S. think tanks to influence the U.S. government through both theoretical and channel-observing approaches. I also examine the Taiwan government’s ability to influence U.S. think tanks through both theoretical and statistical approaches. I conclude that this effectiveness exists, and that Taiwan’s work on U.S. think tanks can survive policy evaluations in terms of effectiveness. In the last chapter, I collate the results from each stage of this study, and frame a model for work on think tanks. I call this the “Taiwan Model”.