Many within the industry, including designers, recognize the need to consider UX as the key to designing new products and services. As a consequence of this, the territory of UX has extended into many different industries and different disciplines. However, some practitioners still claim a UX project does not pay off even if they have improved UX. This way of thinking is induced from an old issue of UX. The term itself does not have a clear theoretical definition and it even makes a contradiction of itself. This phenomenon further aggravates the issue. The rapid expansion of UX territory made a gap between academia and practitioners. This research attempts to measure and examine the gap between academia and practitioners. A survey was conducted to observe how aware practitioners are of UX and their ability to recognize it as compared to the recent academia’s research.

Improving the user experience of an extensive existing web system can be a challenging task. There are a number of questions that have to be addressed. 1) What part of the system should be improved to achieve the most significant upgrade? 2) What changes should be made? 3) How should these changes be implemented?  The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what methods can be used to find answers to these questions, more specifically, what methods are suitable to evaluate the KollaCity platform .  The background study resulted in two methods for deciding which parts of the system should be improved. An online survey showed what the potential users were interested in, and Think-aloud protocol interviews highlighted the best and most complicated parts of the current platform.  A competitor analysis and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis gave an understanding of the market position of the platform and aided in the process of selecting which parts of the platform that was to be improved.  The design process started with sketching, followed by feedback, continued to a proto- type, and then finally an implementation.  A conclusion from the background study is that reading emails still is the most common online activity in 2011. This makes email marketing very effective and useful if it’s carried out in the right way. There are many pitfalls, but if the content is right and the structure and design follow the guidelines set up by governments and experts, there are big chances for success. However, keep in mind that designing HTML emails is not like designing websites. There are many limitations, and the difference between rendering engines is big.

Studien är baserad på intervjuer med praktiker som arbetar med user-experienceinom IT-projekt. Studiens mål är att identifiera potentiella hinder för praktiker medavseende på att tillämpa UX enligt sin egna tolkning av konceptet. För att undersökadetta har semi-strukturerade intervjuer utförts med fem UX-praktiker som arbetari UX-roller inom organisationer vars verksamhet är att producera webbsidor,mjukvara och andra typer av digitala system. Baserat på data från dessa intervjuerhar en tematisk analys använts för att sammanställa mönster i respondenternas svar.Resultaten indikerar att en praktikers egna förmåga att kommunicera innebördenav, och nyttan med UX är både en viktig och problematisk del i tillämpningenav UX inom IT. Vidare att denna förmåga härleds och är särskilt nödvändig tillföljd av en bristande förståelse och kunskap om UX, bland intressenter i ett projekt.Ytterligare framgår att den låga kunskapsnivån påverkas av en allmän uppfattningom att UX avser grafisk design och där med begränsas till pragmatiska aspekter ochkompetenser, snarare än holistik, användarcentrering och hedoniska aspekter. / This study is based on interviews with practitioners working with user-experiencewithin IT projects. The aim of the study is to investigate and identify potentialobstacles that hinders UX-practitioners to address UX in relation to their perceptionof the concept. To investigate this, semi-structured interviews were conducted withfive UX-practitioners in Sweden, working in UX-roles within organisations whoproduce IT-solutions such as websites, software and other types of digital systems.Based on these interviews a thematic analysis was used to investigate the topic.The result indicates that the practitioner’s ability to communicate the utility andbenefits that UX proposes, are essential for the application of UX. Further resultsindicate that this ability originates from a lack of knowledge and understanding forUX amongst stakeholders within a project, and that the experienced low level ofunderstanding for UX is affected by the general view of UX as being limited tographic design, and furthermore to pragmatic aspects and competencies rather thanacknowledging holistic, user-centered and hedonic aspects.

In this study, we focus primarily on the importance of organisation and UX-maturity for applying user experience (UX). What does this mean for designers when maturity is low or high? The study shows that the user is an expert based on his/her personal experience of a product, allowing the user to select and influence solutions that best meet his/her needs. UX maturity is a highlighted concept in this UX study. If UX maturity of an organisation is low then UX is likely only applied by few or no one within the design team. If the maturity on the other hand is high, the organisation and its design team work with an UX-approach. The approach therefore becomes a part of the organisational culture and through this shows how the business benefits of UX. This then creates a win-win situation for the user, designer and organisation. If however everybody practices UX, what will then happen to the UX-role? Is it however reasonable that only one person should be responsible for UX? We gathered 12 experts from companies in Gothenburg and talked about how it has been, present challenges and together we speculated about the future UX role. We also discussed the significance organisations maturity has for those who work with UX. The results show that knowledge of UX should be disseminated at all levels and that at a high maturity UX strategy becomes part of the overall plan. When the maturity is high practitioners of UX get the opportunity to narrow and broaden their skills. Is maturation however low more responsibility may be placed upon the individual designer. The designer may not have the same opportunity to become an expert in their field and are instead forced to have a wider and not as deep expertise. / Detta arbete fokuserar främst på organisationens och den upplevda UX-mognadens betydelse för den som tillämpar user experience (UX). Vad innebär det för designers när mognaden är låg respektive hög? Man menar att användaren är expert, detta baserat på sin upplevelse av produkten. Idag kan användare själv välja vilka lösningar som bäst motsvarar önskade behov. I denna studie om UX lyfts begreppet UX-mognad. Om UX-mognaden i en organisation är låg betyder det att eventuellt ingen eller få i designteamet tänker användarcentrerad design. Är mognaden däremot hög innebär det att organisation och designteam gemensamt jobbar med UX som förhållningssätt. Det skapar en win-win-situation för både användare, designer och organisation. Men om alla nu å andra sidan använder termen och jobbar UX, vad kommer då att hända med rollen UX? Är det rimligt att enbart en person skall ansvara för UX? Vi samlade 12 experter från företag i Göteborg och samtalade om vilka utmaningar som funnits, vilka som finns idag och tillsammans talade vi om UX-rollen. Vi diskuterade även om den betydelse som en organisations mognad har för de som arbetar med UX. Resultatet visar att kunskap om UX bör spridas i alla led och att med hög mognad blir UX-strategi en del av den övergripande planen. Utövare av UX får här tillfälle att ge sin kompetens en spets och ett djup. Är mognaden däremot låg kan det ligga mer ansvar på den enskilde designern, designern får heller inte samma möjlighet att bli expert på sitt område, utan tvingas ha en bredare och inte lika djup kompetens.

Aesthetics is an important part of a user experience and can affect users in several different ways. This study aims to examine how the aesthetics of games affect the user experience and furthermore, it tries to establish which aspects and elements of game aesthetics that are relevant for this purpose. However, this study only aims to examine the visual part of game aesthetics and therefore, sound has been precluded from the games that were used in this study. To gather information about these user experiences, eight respondents got to play five games each – Minecraft, Monument Valley, Portal, Pac-Man and Unravel. Their experience was then evaluated, partly through a semi-structured interview but also with the methods 3E – Expressing Emotions and Experiences and This-or-That. The gathered data was then analyzed through theories of game aesthetics, both according to its functionality and its impact on feelings and beyond this, theories of emotional design and the hedonic and pragmatic model of a user experience.

Det finns i dagsläget få tids- och kostnadseffektiva metoder och tekniker för att mäta och utvärdera användarupplevelse över tid. Detta trots att tidsaspekten av användarupplevelsen under de senaste åren har uppmärksammats som en viktig komponent av användarupplevelsen inom människa-dator-interaktionsforskning. UX Curve och iScale är två metoder framtagna för att mäta förändringar i användarupplevelse över tid med hjälp av retrospektion och skapande av grafer över utvecklingen av användarupplevelsens olika dimensioner. Mot bakgrund av dessa metoder togs ett webbaserat utvärderingsverktyg fram med målet att undersöka verktygets förmåga att mäta förändringar i användarupplevelse under en utvärderingsperiod. Verktyget testades på 9 deltagare i en utvärdering av en mailklient under två veckors tid. Resultatet indikerar att utvärderingsverktygets dimensioner samlar upplevelser av relevans för de dimensioner som undersökts men visar också på att ytterligare testning och validering av metod och verktyg behövs för att fastställa att mätningarna är reliabla och att det som mäts är vad som avses mätas.

Thesis deals with the UX research from the perspective of UX professionals. The main objective of this thesis is to determine the point of view these professionals on UX research. The first partial objective of this thesis is to identify problem areas and the causes of problems in the context of UX research. The second objective is to identify how the experts assess the impact of efforts carried out in connection with the UX. The third objective is to identify the benefits of conducting UX research. Methods for achieving these objectives are conducting qualitative and quantitative research in the form of interviews and a survey targeted at 164 UX professionals. The contribution of this thesis is capturing of the views and experiences of these professionals on issues, impact assessments and benefits of conducting UX research.

The modern design of web-based tools derives from well-established patterns and design principles that lead to the desired UX in form of comprehension and intuition. The intuitive impression is usually obtained from previous experience, however, from the use of other similar web-based tools. This thesis is conducted in collaboration with iMatrics AB. One of iMatrics ambitions is to build a long-term sustainable demo tool which is to be integrated into their web portal where their products and services are accessible from. To achieve a satisfying user experience, a large focus on the design and the needs is required to keep and increase the number of users. First impressions, intuition, usability, and overall satisfaction in terms of usability are all important factors of an interface. This paper aims at studying is the perception of these factors in a user-centered scope from both technical and non-technical users’ perspectives where remote contextual inquiry with applied design thinking will be conducted. Interviews, use case studies and surveys will be part of the data gathering process. Initially, the current autotagging demo will be studied and a new demo will be developed, evaluated and compared to the current demo. This study involves a total of 8 participants with a customer or employee relationship with iMatrics. Eventually, this study will point out the overall improvements in the new demo compared to the current demo and also suggest UX features benefiting for both technical and non-technical users.

I dagsläget finns det en mängd utmaningar och svårigheter inom den traditio- nella designprocessen för användarupplevelse (UX, User Experience). Dessa utmaningar har en påverkan på hur tidskrävande och kostsam en designpro- cess för UX kan vara. Några av dem är att få prototyper att likna slutpro- dukten och kommunikationssvårigheter mellan UX-designers och utvecklare vid Agil projektmetodik. Några svårigheter som finns vid visualisering av strömmande data är att göra den lättförståelig för användaren och möjliggöra användaren att nå önskad information. För att undersöka dessa svårigheter togs en designprocess för UX, att använ- das med datavisualiseringsverktyget Kibana, fram. För att kunna utvärdera och bedöma designprocessen för UX, skapades en interaktiv dashboard som presenterade Transportstyrelsens data från betalstationer. Framtagningen av designprocessen för UX resulterade i en optimering av prototypskapandet och testningen. Detta eftersom designprocessen för UX möjliggjorde utveckling av produkten, istället för prototypen, vilket förbättrade testningen med slutan- vändaren och därmed även slutprodukten. Det fanns dock nackdelar då Kiba- na användes vilka var begränsningar i modifieringen av användargränssnittet och att systemet behövde vara klart innan designprocessen för UX kunde på- börjas. / In the current situation there are a lot of challenges and difficulties in the traditional design process for UX, User Experience. These challenges have an impact on how time consuming and costly a design process for UX can be. Some of them are to create prototypes that resemble the end product and communication difficulties between UX-designers and developers that follow an Agile project methodology. There are also difficulties in visualizing streaming data, as information in data must be made easy to understand for the user and the users must be able to get desired information. To investigate these difficulties, a design process for UX was created to be used with the Kibana data visualization tool. In order to evaluate and assess the design process for UX, an interactive dashboard was created that pre- sented data from Swedish payment stations. The development of the design process for UX resulted in an optimization of the prototype-creation and test- ing. The design process for UX enabled development of the product, instead of the prototype, which improved the testing with the end user and therefor also the end product. However, there were disadvantages when Kibana was used which were limitations in modifying the user interface and that the sys- tem needed to be ready before the UX design process could begin.

As autonomous vehicles become more prevalent in urban traffic settings, the safety of vulnerable road users, predominantly pedestrians, must be placed in high regard relative to the design of the autonomous vehicle's (AV's) external human machine interface (HMI). Traditionally, there exist communication methods between drivers and pedestrians, such as hand gestures, eye contact, and verbal cues that convey the driver's awareness of the pedestrian's presence. However, with autonomous vehicles, there is a shift in communicative responsibility from the driver to the vehicle itself. It is the vehicle's responsibility to intuitively and clearly indicate its actions to the pedestrian. This research analyzes the factors contributing to AV skepticism and the ways in which the visual aspect of an AV's external HMI can be improved from traditional vehicle designs to accommodate visually impaired pedestrians. This was achieved by performing a study on 27 participants varying in age, gender, and vision impairment type. The study includes a survey and interview portion. Findings indicate that yellow and blue colors are viewed as most welcoming and memorable. It is suggested that these colors be used in the projected light system of the external HMI design. Quantitative results indicate that there is a moderate degree of correlation between the following: the use of cruise control and vision impairment severity (negative correlation), a participant's willingness to ride in an AV and vision impairment levels (positive correlation). The study also found a low degree of correlation in a participants willingness to ride in an AV and their trust in AVs. Based on these findings and under the assumption than an external HMI is needed on the AV, it is recommended that the external HMI contain a light projection system on the vehicle's front body. Based on qualitative results, the light projection system should use a teal color light and project a directional arrow onto the ground when identifying a pedestrian in its path while turning. Intuitive signals such as these help ensure pedestrian safety and promote trust and acceptance of the use of autonomous vehicles on public roads.