As Mixed Reality (MR) technologies become more prevalent, it is important for researchers to design and prototype the kinds of user interface and user interactions that are most effective for end-user consumers. Creating these standards now will aid in technology development and adoption in MR overall. In the current climate of this domain, however, the interface elements and user interaction styles are unique to each hardware and software vendor and are generally proprietary in nature. This results in confusion for consumers. To explore the MR interface and interaction space, this research employed a series of standard user-centered design (UCD) methods to rapidly prototype 3D head-worn display (HWD) systems in the first responder domain. These methods were performed across a series of 13 experiments, resulting in an in-depth analysis of the most effective methods experienced herein and providing suggested paths forward for future researchers in 3D MR HWD systems. Lessons learned from each individual method and across all of the experiments are shared. Several characteristics are defined and described as they relate to each experiment, including interface, interaction, and cost. / Ph. D. / Trends in technology development have shown that the inclusion of virtualized objects and worlds will become more popular in both professional workflows and personal entertainment. As these synthetic objects become easier to build and deploy in consumer devices, it will become increasingly important for a set of standard information elements (e.g., the “save” operation disk icon in desktop software) and user interaction motifs (e.g., “pinch and zoom” on touch screen interfaces) to be deployed in these types of futuristic technologies. This research effort explores a series of rapid design and prototype methods that inform how a selection of common interface elements in the first responder domain should be communicated to the user. It also explores how users in this domain prefer to interact with futuristic technology systems. The results from this study are analyzed across a series of characteristics and suggestions are made on the most effective methods and experiments that should be used by future researchers in this domain.

The electric vehicle industry is under rapid development and the fleet of chargeable cars in society is increasing fast. As a result, a high demand for public chargers has emerged. Simultaneous to the expansion of the electric vehicle fleet and charging infrastructure the power grid is occasionally highly strained. Additionally, factors like cities expanding and the digitization of society also have a large effect on the power grid. This master's thesis investigates the characteristics of electric vehicle users and presents a prototype of an information display for electric vehicle charging stations. The design is is based on the user studies and founded in theory about sustainable user behaviour with the goal of encouraging behaviours that minimize the strain on the local power grid of Uppsala. It concerns the research topic of how to design for sustainable behaviour and address research questions of how to design electric vehicle charging station information to communicate multiple charging alternatives to a broad variety of users. The work reveals that electric vehicle users suffer from the charging infrastructure being underdeveloped, feel frustration towards payment solutions available and lack information regarding electric vehicle use. Also, electric vehicle user's common passion for tech and environmental consciousness are revealed in the study. These facts are used as the foundation for the mobile application design prototype suggested.

Despite the many technological advancements made in the music industry in recent years, there is still not a single widely adopted platform for musicians to play music together online. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent quarantine pushed the need for such a platform into the spotlight. As a response, the music company Elk Audio launched their new product: Aloha. Aloha is a combined hardware and web application that allows musicians to play music in real-time over the Internet. Aloha is currently only intended for musicians who already know each other to connect and play. However, Elk's ambition is to make it the go-to platform for musicians to expand their network.  The purpose of this Master's Thesis is to design the next version of the web application of Aloha, focusing on social interactions. This Master's Thesis investigates musicians' current social and musical behaviour, and their opinions of how this can be done online. Qualitative data was collected by performing semi-structured interviews with musicians of different backgrounds. The study revealed many different goals and needs of potential users of Aloha. Furthermore, we found several determining factors which enable and encourage musicians to form new musical relationships online. The final suggested design is based on the analysed data and founded in theory regarding persuasive and recommending system design, among others. / Trots de tekniska framstegen som gjorts inom musikindustrin de senaste åren, finns det fortfarande inte ett enda allmänt accepterat alternativ för musiker att spela musik tillsammans online. Covid-19 pandemin och den åtföljande karantänten förde behovet för en sådan plattform till rampljuset. I början av år 2020 insåg musikföretaget Elk Audio att de kunde fylla denna lucka med sin nya produkt: Aloha. Aloha är en kombinerad hårdvara och webbapplikation som möjliggör musiker att spela musik i realtid över Internet. Aloha är för närvarande endast avsedd för musiker som redan känner varandra. Elks ambition är dock att göra Aloha till en plattform för musiker där de kan utöka sitt musikaliska nätverk. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att utforma nästa version av Alohas webbapplikation, med fokus på sociala interaktioner. Detta examensarbete undersöker musikers nuvarande sociala och musikaliska beteenden och deras åsikter om musikaliska interaktioner online. Kvalitativa data samlades in genom att utföra halvstrukturerade intervjuer med musiker från olika bakgrunder. Studien avslöjade de många olika målen och behoven hos potentiella användare av Aloha. Dessutom fann vi flera avgörande faktorer som möjliggör och uppmuntrar musiker att skapa och underhålla nya musikrelationer online. Den slutliga föreslagna designen baseras på det analyserade datat och grundas i teori om design av rekommendationssystem, m. fl..

Recent advances in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) are placing its own vision, as a platform of interconnected services and devices, at the heart of the smart home concept. This consolidation promises a new wave of innovative products designed in the open, and in which the user takes center stage starting from the very first steps. Therefore, researchers as well as product designers in these increasingly related fields are now tasked with a more complex mission when investigating user behavior. In this thesis we consider rapid prototyping as the upcoming standard process for investigating user interactions in the future smart home. Although past research contributed with several self-contained solutions (built from scratch) to allow such investigations, no accounts were found tackling the problem from our perspective, in which the focus is on how to enable rapid prototyping in an existing proprietary smart home platform by using open standards, software and hardware. To answer this question, we conducted our research with participation of academic researchers and professional designers in the context of an academic and industrial partnership, in an ongoing smart home research project. We used an approach based on the design science research process in combination with the user centered design (UCD) and agile software development methodologies. During this thesis we performed an end to end design process starting from ideation to implementation and evaluation; an architectural blueprint was proposed and a working prototype of our visual smart home rapid prototyping environment (SHRPE) was implemented and tested. The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of enabling visual rapid prototyping capabilities in an existing smart home platform, by using the system integration process to introduce available open standards, software and hardware tools into the platform. In addition, evaluation results of user testing confirmed that using UCD to iteratively capture user needs in such complex context is a solid approach.