This thesis examines how usability and design improvements affect user engagement on a website. By conducting interviews and analysing user behaviour and feedback related to a job application form, the study demonstrates that enhancements in usability and design can lead to improved quality in user responses. Specifically, an increase in the length and quality of text field input was observed, along with improved responses regarding profile pictures, links, and documents. However, there are certain limitations to consider, including the fact that participants were aware of the monitoring during the interviews, which could influence the authenticity of the results. Additionally, other factors that could have influenced user engagement were not taken into account, making it difficult to solely attribute the changes to usability and design improvements.

Despite the importance of pets in people’s lives and the possible emotional value of purchasing a pet, there is a lack of niche pet marketplaces. There is also a gap in research regarding the design of online marketplaces for finding pets and how users experience them. With this thesis project, I aim to touch upon that gap and provide insights to build upon in future research. This is achieved by providing recommendations of features that can enhance the user experience by addressing existing needs and concerns. To answer the research questions, interviews and a workshop were conducted followed by an analysis. Based on the findings, prototypes were designed and evaluated. Finally, the results of the study are discussed from a user experience perspective. / Trots betydelsen som husdjur kan ha i människors liv och det möjliga känslomässiga värdet av att köpa ett husdjur så finns det brist på nischade marknadsplatser där man kan köpa djur. Det saknas även forskning kring utformningen av digitala marknadsplatser för djur och hur användare upplever dessa. Med denna studie strävar jag efter att beröra detta ämne och bidra med insikter att bygga vidare på i framtida forskning. Detta uppnås genom att tillhandahålla rekommendationer om funktioner som kan förbättra användarupplevelsen genom att ta hänsyn till befintliga behov och problem. För att svara på forskningsfrågorna genomfördes intervjuer och en workshop följt av en analys. Baserat på resultaten utvecklades prototyper som sedan även utvärderades. Slutligen diskuteras studiens resultat ur perspektivet för användarupplevelse.

This study examines the extent of which older internet users can identify dark patterns in e-commerce sites. The purpose of this is to understand which types of dark patterns that older people 55+ can identify to which degree after receiving adequate knowledge about the subject of deceptive design and specifically dark patterns, and also if there is any connection between the results and factors such as demographic differences and the communicative nature of each dark pattern. This study shows the type of dark patterns that was identified correctly the most by the respondents was Low-stock message, which we categorized as having linguistic communicative attributes. The least correctly identified type of dark patterns was Aesthetic manipulation with its graphic communicative nature. Over all the respondents were able to identify dark patterns correctly to an extent of 50 %, and no distinctive demographic patterns relating to the outcome were found other than that higher education seemed to equal higher results. Regarding how the communicative attributes of each dark pattern affected the respondents' results, we did find that dark patterns of linguistic type were easier for the respondents to identify, whereas graphical dark patterns were the hardest. To gather the data a web-based survey was used and distributed through Facebook which generated 28 respondents in total. The data was then analyzed using frequency tables and simple descriptive statistics, and some of them were later translated into diagrams to visualize the results in an effective way.

This study examines young men and their use of the social media platform Instagram. In this study I focus on Instagram since it is more popular than ever, especially among young people. The platform is also the social network that has been least studied. To answer the purpose of the study the empirical material has been collected through a survey study about Instagram use with 21 men aged 18-30. With support from relevant research and literature. The results of the study shows that Instagram is easy to use, which of course is an advantage for people that want to use the product. However, the results also shows that the majority of the young men uses Instagram as a time-killer. The function and features that Instagram has to offer doesn’t seem to have any major significance for their use.

With the increasing popularity of Agile methods in software development projects, an emerging question is how Agile incorporates user needs to their process – which is the staple of User Centered Design (UCD). Existing reports indicate that integrating Agile and UCD has shown to improve the process and end product and that they are a natural fit. However, there is also a general lack of guidelines of how an effective integration may be done, and further research is requested. This study aims to provide that by portraying some aspects of how Agile and UCD may be integrated in practice, but also some factors that may affect such an integration. This is done through an empirical study, by gaining insights from the perspective of UX-designers who are part of Scrum teams. TenUX-designers took part in semi-structured interviews, and based on a thematic analysis, results are portrayed in terms of suggested factors to consider when integrating Agile and UCD methods. / Samtidigt som Agila metoder ökar i popularitet inom mjukvaruutvecklingsprojekt, så uppstår även frågan om hur Agilt arbete integrerar användarcentrerade krav i sin process ett område som är i fokus inom Användarcentrerad Design (ACD). Tillgängliga rapporter indikerar på att integrationen av Agilt och ACD har givit förbättrade processer och slutprodukt, samt att båda processer är kompatibla med varandra. Det anses dock finnas en brist på riktlinjer i hur man kan integrera båda processer, och det efterfrågas vidare studier i ämnet. Denna studie ämnar till att erbjuda just detta genom att presentera några faktorer av hur Agilt och ACD kan integreras i praktiken, men också exempel på faktorer som kan påverka hur väl integration lyckas. Detta tas fram genom en empirisk studie, genom att ta del av insikter från UX-designers som jobbar i olika Scrum projekt. Tio UX-designers deltog i semistrukturerade intervjuer, och baserat på en tematisk analys så presenteras resultat i form av föreslagna faktorer att ta del av när man vill integrera Agila och ACD metoder.

Företag blir mer effektiva när deras medarbetare mår bra och därför kan det vara till stor nytta att ta sig an en strategi som uppmuntrar detta. Wellr är en tjänst som fokuserar på helhetshälsan och är utformad för att främja en hälsosam livsstil bland medarbetare, samtidigt som det leder till ett mindre antal sjukskrivningar på arbetsplatser. De vill nå ut till så många medarbetare som möjligt på de företag som köper in tjänsten och därför är deras framtida mål att utveckla applikationen med ytterligare gamification-element som motiverar användarna. Tidigare forskning visar att utveckling av applikationer med gamification har haft ett större fokus på tekniken snarare än människan, men hävdar att det krävs en förståelse för användarens perspektiv och vad som motiverar den för att lyckas med implementeringen.  I denna studie undersöks generella designprinciper för gamification tillsammans med relevant teori för utveckling av en applikation som tillfredsställer användarnas behov. Detta kombineras med en kvalitativ enkätundersökning bland fallföretagets användare för att identifiera behov och en marknadsundersökning för att ta hänsyn till hur andra produkter på marknaden är utformade. Studien resulterade i identifierade användarbehov hos en bred målgrupp som kan fungera som ett framtida stöd vid design och utveckling av digitala hälsoplattformar som inkluderar gamification.

In this thesis, the user interface design was developed for an internal website to help employees' competence development by getting them to attend more activities for competence development. Since it is generally up to the employee to develop their competence, they must be motivated. Therefore, this thesis aimed to design the website to motivate employees to search for, choose and participate in more competence development activities. The method chosen to design this user interface consisted of 3 phases. The first phase consisted of a preliminary study to understand what motivated employees to apply for activities. This phase proved very important to the final design as most design decisions related to motivation were made during this phase. The second phase involved developing a LoFi prototype based on the preliminary study and refining it based on results from user tests conducted during this phase. The final phase involved designing and implementing a HiFi prototype in code based on the LoFi prototype and then testing the HiFi prototype for motivation. The results from the HiFi prototype tests showed that the website's user interface motivated employees to search for, choose, and attend more activities for competence development. These results showed that the method used did yield good results. However, because many key findings from this motivation-focused preliminary study were related to usability, it is impossible to know how the results would differ if the preliminary study had focused on usability instead of motivation. Although it could not be concluded that the focus on motivation was necessary to achieve these results, it did seem to force the designer to understand users’ needs on a deeper level which could contribute to better results.

This study aims to create a design concept for a digital twin to understand how it could be used to increase the health adherence of users through risk communication. This was done while also looking at how such a system could counteract potential health anxiety. The massive digitization and available data has enabled better opportunities to accurately represent and affect a person’s health in the form of a digital twin. The primary way of conducting the study was by using the ’Design Thinking’ method which incorporates five steps: Empathizing with the users’ needs, defining the problems, ideating, creating prototypes, and finally testing these. A literature study, four user interviews as well as two interviews with healthcare professionals were conducted to get a better understanding of what problems needed to be solved. The findings from these together with a brainstorming session resulted in low fidelity (LoFi) and high fidelity (HiFi) versions of a mobile prototype. A single overview page of a desktop version for health professionals was also created. The mobile prototypes were user tested, and input was asked from stakeholders and healthcare professionals regarding the risk communication and visualization via walkthroughs of the prototypes. The usability results of the tests were positive with the HiFi version scoring 83.5 / 100 on the System Usability Scale which measures usability, and this score is deemed to be ’good’. The risk communication used received positive feedback, and the findings showed that a digital twin could potentially help with adherence and prevention by the use of summaries, visualization, as well as combining icons with the use of absolute risk and frequencies. To minimize the risk of health anxiety, a digital twin could reduce health information that is not very serious or important through a ”less-is-more” approach. Other effective means could be to show positive visualization and by being mindful of the ordering of risks and benefits, showing the user the positive aspects after the negative ones. Despite this, because of the lower sample size and hypothetical test scenario, further studies need to be conducted to verify the validity in more real-life scenarios. More isolated testing should be done to understand the effects better, both in terms of risk communication and usability. Additional things that could be beneficial to look at could be the implementation of gamification elements in the digital twin, further development of a desktop version for healthcare staff, as well as using more personalization options.

The Occurrence of Dark Patterns in the Airline Industry is a thesis in Information Design with a focus on Interaction Design. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how dark patterns in airline ticket bookings affect the user experience of inexperienced users. Dark patterns are design tricks that manipulate users into making decisions that benefit the company behind them. Although the use of dark patterns may seem like a good way to increase sales, they can harm the company's reputation in the long run. Many companies have been fined large sums of money, and more are likely to follow as rules and regulations regarding the use of dark patterns become more common. This thesis examines how users perceive and react to the occurrence of dark patterns in the booking process of airline tickets. It does this by using methods such as interviews and scenarios. The findings serve as the basis for a design proposal to redesign two different booking processes where dark patterns occur less frequently. This proposal investigates the relationship between the occurrence of dark patterns and the user experience.

Engineering students at Linköping University are given the opportunity to improve their soft skills through the course Professionalism for Engineers. Soft skills are becoming more and more important in succeeding professionally as well as personally, especially among engineering students, who are more used to improving their hard skills. The course presents the students with a mixture of in-class and out-of-class activities, in which the latter makes use of three different platforms to provide the students with necessary information regarding the course.  This study has focused on combining the three platforms by creating a new E-learning platform, where further improvements and additions have been added to create a more supporting environment, in which the out-of-class activities are at the centre. The platform was evaluated through qualitative user tests and the quantitative User Experience Questionnaire, in which four students, enrolled in the course Professionalism for Engineers, participated. Every category in the User Experience Questionnaire received a positive value, implying that the users were overall pleased with the platform and experienced it as being intuitive, efficient and motivating.  The proposed platform, with the added functions and design elements, has the potential to support the students in doing their out-of-class activities, and the circumstances whilst doing these activities has been changed to enhance the students' active learning experience.