The dramatic growth of big data presents formidable challenges for traditional clustering methodologies, which often prove unwieldy and computationally expensive when processing vast quantities of data. This study explores a novel clustering approach exemplified by Sow & Grow, a density-based clustering algorithm akin to DBSCAN developed to address the issues inherent to big data by enabling end-users to strategically allocate computational resources toward regions of noted interest. Achieved through a unique procedure of seeding points and subsequently fostering their growth into coherent clusters, this method significantly reduces computational waste by ignoring insignificant segments of the dataset and provides information relevant to the end user. The implementation of this algorithm developed as part of this research showcases promising results in various experimental settings, exhibiting notable speedup over conventional clustering methods. Additionally, the incorporation of dynamic load balancing further enhances the algorithm's performance, ensuring optimal resource utilization across parallel processing threads when handling superclusters or unbalanced data distributions. Through a detailed study of the theoretical underpinnings of this innovative clustering approach and the limitations of traditional clustering techniques, this research demonstrates the practical utility of the Sow & Grow algorithm in expediting the clustering processes while providing results pertinent to end users.

This study presents a case study that addresses a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system as a key component in managing customer relations for companies. Due to these systems being very complex and needing a complete understanding of the user requirements to support their actions, this user experience can potentially be hindered. This study aims to highlight these challenges by identifying key usability challenges faced by users and suggesting targeted design improvements from a developer perspective.   This qualitative study explored usability challenges within an existing CRM system through a user-centered approach, gathering data from the users of the CRM-system. Empirical data was collected using interviews in a semi-structured form to delve into the user experience and what issues the users was facing. This methodology has facilitated a great understanding of areas that would need further development of the CRM-system. Applying Nielsen’s usability heuristics as an analytical framework, multiple critical enhancements were identified. These recommendations for enhancements are aimed with the goal of simplifying the user interface and the work conducted in it. The active involvement of the users in this study addressed multiple critical factors of improvements in the CRM-system, with the likes of the importance of integrating direct communication tools within the CRM-system to facilitate direct customer interaction. Additionally, there emerged a need for further development of the system’s performance and responsiveness, as well as enhancing its personal flexibility to adapt the CRM-system to each user's individual work process. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on enhancing CRM-system effectiveness and user satisfaction through strategic design enhancements.

In the world of software development, the most common framework is the agileframework. This framework first arose as a counter-reaction to waterfall development,mostly to incorporate user-centered design. But today the user-centered design and theuser are often overlooked. Still, some believe that the integration of user-centereddesign and agile development could help improve software development. Thisintegration is called user-centered agile design or UCAD for short. The main reason forconsidering UCAD over agile development is that software stands and falls with gooduser experience. Something that the user-centered perspective can help with.This thesis therefore sought to research the usage of UCAD in daily work with anautoethnographic approach. This meant that the author could use their experiencesfrom developing a piece of software as the basis of the research. This software was awebshop application for Quintus Technologies AB that acts as a way for their customersto buy spare and wear parts. The results were therefore in the form of a story told infirst-person perspective about the whole development period of about 20 weeks.This project found amongst other things that UCAD does hold some merit and theauthor also enjoyed this way of working. There were of course some problems, with thebiggest challenge being the act of trying to balance UX and functional tasks. To combatthis problem the notion of gear-switching was conceptualized. One specific factor thatwas brought up by earlier research was also found to be important. This factor was thetask factor and most importantly this factor brought up the consideration of tasks overroles. Whilst this project indicates that UCAD might be a good evolution of the agileframework there is still a lot more research that needs to be done mostly in differentsettings. Such as bigger teams and with more mature software. Whilst more research isneeded, this project still shows great potential for the UCAD framework.

Idag är det många företag som misslyckas med sina implementeringsprojekt av affärssystem och många forskare anser att det beror på bristande användarinvolvering. Implementeringsprojekt av affärssystem blir allt vanligare i små företag, men effekten blir dock stor om ett mindre företag misslyckas med sitt projekt. Små företags misslyckanden är oftast relaterade till finansiella och humanitära kritiska framgångsfaktorer.   Ett affärssystem kan ge ett företag en rad olika fördelar och möjligheter. Men för att ett företag ska uppnå dem krävs ett lyckat implementeringsprojekt samt att användarna omgående efter driftstart kan använda affärssystemet. Därför måste företagsledare under projektet se till en rad olika kritiska framgångsfaktorer som är relaterade till användarinvolvering. För att kunna hantera användarrelaterade kritiska framgångsfaktorer och de problem som de kan orsaka finns det angreppssätt till stöd. Ett angreppssätt vars syfte är att stödja användarinvolvering och hantera användarrelaterade problem är Participatory design (PD) och dess metod User centered design (UCD). PD och UCD bygger på att involvera användarna tidigt och ständigt under ett implementeringsprojekt och det i form av bland annat testning och utbildning. Användarinvolvering är därmed en viktig faktor vid implementeringsprojekt av affärssystem.   Syftet med studien är att göra företagsledare medvetna om vilka användarrelaterade kritiska framgångsfaktorer och problem som kan påverka ett implementeringsprojekt och dess utfall. Vi anger ett antal åtgärder, baserade på användarinvolvering, som ska stödja företagsledare att bättre och effektivare kunna förutse och hantera användarrelaterade problem vid implementeringsprojekt.   Vi har med stöd av en kvalitativ undersökning och en empirisk studie påvisat sambandet mellan områdena affärssystem, affärssystemets implementeringsprocess, användarrelaterade kritiska framgångsfaktorer och användarinvolvering. Vi har konstruerat en egen modell och tabell, 4-A Modellen och 4-A Tabellen, som illustrerar hur de olika områdena relaterar och stödjer varandra under ett affärssystems implementeringsprojekt. Vårt bidrag är ett dokument vars syfte är att stödja företagsledare vid planering innan och under ett implementeringsprojekt, främst när det gäller projektets användarinvolvering. Dokumentet ska göra företagsledare medvetna om vad bristande användarinvolvering kan leda till, samt när och hur användare bör involveras under ett implementeringsprojekt. / Today many businesses fail in their enterprise recourse planning (ERP) implementation projects and many scientists believe it is due to lack of user involvement. ERP implementation projects are becoming more common in small businesses, but the effect will be large if a small business fails in their ERP implementation projects. Small businesses failures are usually related to financial and humanitarian critical success factors.   An ERP system can give a business a number of advantages and opportunities. But it requires a successful implementation project to achieve them and also that user immediately after start-up can use the ERP. Therefore, the manager during the implementation project needs to ensure a range of critical success factors that are related to user involvement. There are a number of approaches to manage user-related critical success factors and the problems they cause. An approach which aims to support user involvement and manage user-related problems is Participatory Design (PD) and its method User centered design (UCD). PD and UCD are based on involving the users early and continuously during the ERP implementation process and that in the form of testing and training. User Involvement is therefore an important factor in ERP implementation projects.   The aim of the study is to make managers more aware of the user-related critical success factors and issues that can affect an ERP implementation projects outcome. We foresee a number of measures, based on user involvement, which will support managers to better and more efficient anticipate and manage user-related problems in ERP implementation projects.   Supported by a qualitative and an empirical study, we have demonstrated the relationship between the areas ERP, ERP implementation process, user-related critical success factors and user involvement. We have constructed our own model and table, the 4-A Model and the 4-A Table, that illustrates how the different areas influences and support each other in an ERP implementation project. Our contribution is a document whose purpose is to support managers when planning a project’s user involvement, before and during an ERP implementation project. The document will make manager aware of what the lack of user involvement can lead to, but also when and how the users should involve in an ERP implementation project.

(in English): The diploma thesis deals with the use of design methods among Czech UX designers in the design of web and mobile applications. The aim of this work is to find out and critically describe how Czech UX designers use design methods in practice. The thesis analyse the design process of website, web and mobile applications, its various stages and procedures. The theoretical part of the thesis introduces the basic terminology of the User Experience field and current research in the field, with emphasis on relevant terms and processes that occur in design practice. This part of the thesis is based on data obtained in the practical part, according to which popular approaches, frameworks, processes and methodologies of the UX field will be identified and described on the basis of professional literature. In the research part, qualitative research will be carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with Czech User Experience designers, focused on the identification of methods, procedures and principles and ways of their usage. At the end of the thesis, the obtained data will be evaluated and it will be identified whether Czech designers in their practice adhere to academic approaches, or what existing and theoretically described methodologies and procedures their design process...

Preem verkar inom drivmedelsbranschen som styrs av en mycket hög omsättning med förhållandevis små marginaler. Det är därför viktig med en väl fungerande lagerkontroll. Det man idag är ute efter är en ökad precision i lageruppföljningen och därmed behövs ett nytt systemstöd till detta. Jag fick i min roll hos Preem uppgiften att titta närmre på GUI och processerna bakom. Det resulterade i denna rapport med ett framtaget förslag på användargränssnittet till det nya systemet och dess affärsprocesser som är kopplat till detta. Arbetet fokuserar på hur de två framställs i förhållande till varandra och vilka metoder som används för att konstruera dessa. Arbetet inkluderar illustrationer av as-is och to-be processmodeller enligt BPMN specifikation, wireframes och en sitemap. Denna rapport visar ett förslag på ett sammanfört system och ett intuitivare GUI med nya processer bakom, för just Preem, och hur balansgången går mellan att skapa affärsprocesser och ett grafiskt användargränssnitt ur varandra, beroende av vilka som är involverade i projektet. / Preem is a Swedish company that operates in the oil industry, which is controlled by very high sales and with relatively small margins. It’s therefore essential with a well working stock control. Today they are looking for a better way of monitoring the stock with a higher precision and therefore they need a new system for that. My role at Preem was to take a closer look at the GUI and the processes behind that. It resulted in this thesis that includes the user interface for the new system and the business processes that are linked to this. The work will focus on how these two methods are produced in relation to each other, and the methods that are used to construct them. The thesis includes illustrations of as-is and to-be process models of the BPMN specification, wireframes and a sitemap. This report shows a proposal of an integrating system and an intuitive GUI with new processes, at Preem, and how the balance is between creating business processes and a graphical user interface out of each other, depending on the people who are involved in the project.

Résumé : L’informatique diffuse est le passage du paradigme informatique vers l’informatique partout. L’émergence couvre principalement l’informatique mobile et distribuée, les réseaux de capteurs, l’interaction homme-machine et l’intelligence artificielle sous l’égide de l’informatique diffuse. Des efforts considérables ont été mis sur les recherches dans ce domaine, mais il n’existe pas de normes ou des méthodologies communément acceptées pour évaluer ces systèmes et de définir des nouvelles orientations de recherche dans le futur. Cette thèse s’attaque au problème d’évaluation des systèmes informatiques ubiquitaires. La question de recherche notamment le quoi et comment évaluer n’a pas encore été résolue. Dans l’objectif de trouver une réponse à cette question et d’élaborer un cadre général d’évaluation, nous avons procédé comme suit. Pour répondre à la première partie de la question, “Quoi évaluer”, nous avons tout d’abord classè les systèmes en se basant sur certains critères, et nous avons défini ensuite les principaux paramètres pour évaluer ces systèmes. Pour ce faire, nous avons étudié différents aspects de l’informatique diffuse et nous les avons classés en onze différents aspects d’évaluation. Pour chaque aspect, nous avons identifiè les principaux paramètres qui peuvent être caractérisés et mesurés. Cette taxonomie n’est pas assez exhaustive, mais elle reflète le schéma de classification le mieux adaptè pour des évaluations effectives. Cependant, pour que l’évaluation soit la plus complète possible, nous avons jugé nécessaire d’incorporer l’utilisateur dans le processus d’évaluation. À cet effet, nous avons proposè un modèle d’évaluation qui prend en compte les besoins de l’utilisateur, le contexte dans lequel la technologie sera utilisée, et l’environnement d’exploitation dans lequel le système va être déployé. Le modèle proposè constitue une première étape vers le développement des directives et standards d’évaluation qui peuvent être utilisés peuvent être utilisées pendant les évaluations formatives et sommatives. Une autre question complémentaire à l’évaluation des performances est la validation fonctionnelle d’un système en cours d’exécution, qui confirme que le système est conforme aux exigences fonctionnelles et ne contient pas de failles. Pour répondre à la deuxième partie de la question à savoir “comment évaluer”, nous avons adoptè les techniques formelles de vérification et de validation. Comme le champ d’application du projet est très large, nous sommes concentrés sur l’évaluation au premier stade de la conception afin de vérifier et de valider l’exactitude fonctionnelle de la conception de systèmes. Pour la preuve de concept, nous avons appliqué deux méthodes, dans la première méthode, nous avons étudié les approches de vérification automatique et nous avons choisi la technique la plus connue qu’est le “model checking” pour vérifier les exigences fonctionnelles d’un système de gestion des médicaments basé sur le contexte pour des personnes âgées dans une maison Intelligente. Cette approche est complémentaire aux tests et à l’évaluation et permet aux concepteurs de vérifier le comportement de leurs systèmes par rapport aux exigences fonctionnelles avant le développement du prototype de système. Certaines propriétés de base, telles que la disponibilité ou la vivacité, l’interblocage, la comparaison des spécifications et implémentations et l’analyse d’accessibilité, sont également vérifiées à ce stade. Dans la deuxième méthode, nous avons étudié les approches de vérification d’exécution et nous avons adoptè la technique de conception par le contrat pour modéliser et vérifier la sémantique et exigences de l’interopérabilité des services dans les environnements intelligents. L’avantage de cette approche réside dans la vérification automatique en temps réel de l’interopérabilité des services dans les environnements intelligents. // Abstract : Summary performance evaluations. The proposed model is a step towards forming standard evaluation guidelines that can be used during formative and summative evaluations. A complementary issue to performance evaluation is functional correctness of a running system, which confirms that the system fulfills its functional requirements and does not contain any flaws. To address the second part of the question that is “ how to evaluate ”, we have adopted the well-known formal verification and validation techniques. As the scope of the project is very big, the focus of this thesis is on early design stage evaluation to verify and validate the functional correctness of the systems design. For the proof-of-concept, we applied two methods: In the first method, we studied automatic verification approaches and used a well-known model checking approach to model and verify the functional requirements of a context aware medication management system for the elderly in a Smart House. This approach is complementary to testing and evaluation, it allows designers to verify their system behavior against its functional requirements before developing the system prototype. Some basic properties like the availability or liveliness, deadlock checking, matching of specification and implementation, and reachability analysis are verified. In the second method, we studied the runtime verification approaches and used design by contract technique to model and verify the semantic and pragmatic service interoperability requirements in smart environments. The analysis of this technique and results are presented. The benefit of the approach is automatic verification of services interoperability in smart environments on the fly.

Denna rapport redogör för det praktiska examensarbete som har inneburit en redesign av Birnas Trafikskolas webbplats. Webbplatsen var i behov av en ny design, struktur och innehåll. I detta arbete har designprocessen utförts utifrån ett användarcentrerat perspektiv baserat på design thinking. Arbetsprocessen har bestått av research kring användarna, prototyparbete, framtagande av en grafisk profil och genomförande av användartester. Utvecklingen av den nya webbplatsen har skett via CMS-verktyget Joomla samt med användning av HTML och CSS-kod. Resultatet av detta examensarbete presenteras i form av en webbplats med ny grafisk design och innehåll. / This report describes the practical thesis that entailed the redesign of Birnas driving school’s website. The website was in need of a new design, structure and content. In this work, the design process was carried out with a user-centered approach based on design thinking. The work process has consisted of user research, prototyping, the developement of a graphic profile, and user testing. The developement of the new site has been made through the content management system Joomla and the use of HTML and CSS code. The result of this thesis is presented in the form of a website with new graphic design and content.

Recommender systems such as Amazon, offer uses recommendations, or suggestions of items to try or buy. We propose a novel classification of reasons for including explanations in recommender systems. Our focus is on the aim of effectiveness, or decision support, and we contrast it with other metrics such as satisfaction and persuasion. In user studies, we found that people varied in the features they found important, and composed a short list of features in two domains (movies and cameras). We then built a natural language explanation testbed system, considering these features as well as the limitations of using commercial data. This testbed was used in a series of experiments to test whether personalization of explanations affects effectiveness, persuasion and satisfaction. We chose a simple form of personalization which considers likely constraints of a recommender system (e.g. limited meta-data related to the user) as well as brevity. In these experiments we found that: 1. Explanations help participants to make decisions compared to recommendations without explanations, we saw as a significant decrease in opt-outs in item ratings – participants were more likely to be able to give an initial rating for an item if they were given an explanation, and the likelihood of receiving a rating increased for feature-based explanations compared to a baseline. 2. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, our method of personalization could damage effectiveness for both movies and cameras which are domains that differ with regard to two dimensions which we found affected perceived effectiveness: cost (low vs. high), and valuation type (subjective vs. objective). 3. Participants were more satisfied with feature-based than baseline explanations. If the personalization is perceived as relevant to them, then personalized feature-based explanations were preferred over non-personalized. 4. Satisfaction with explanation was also reflected in the proportion of opt-outs. The opt-out rate for the explanations was highest in the baseline for all experiments. This was the case despite the different types of explanation baselines used in the two domains.

In today’s society there is a growing awareness of where food is produced and there is a trend to use locally grown produce in restaurants. One way for restaurants to differentiate themselves is to grow the produce inside the restaurant. This thesis has the aim on identifying the problems and user needs for an indoor cultivation solution and developing a new indoor cultivation product that solves the identified problems and meet the user needs. To achieve this aim, a usercentered design approach was utilised and the following three research questions were answered: How can the needs of the user be translated into a product specification for indoor cultivation in restaurants? What are the functionality, usability, and construction requirements for an indoor cultivation product in a restaurant? What product concept can be designed to grow classic herbs in restaurants based on the needs of the user? To identify the needs interviews were performed with the users. The needs were then translated, together with the company’s needs, into a product specification. This was done in two steps, identifying the metrics and setting values. Some of the most important requirements are that a hydroponic system is used, that the product is easy to clean and is moveable. The product development process was iterative and included different ideation, development and evaluation methods. The users were involved in some of the evaluation methods to give input on the final design. Their opinion, together with evaluations based on the product specification, were used when choosing the final concept Lärad. Lärad uses a circulating hydroponic system and have three separate growing containers each containing 16 plants. The growing containers can be pulled out to enable easy access of the plants. Both the water system and the LED grow lights, that replaces natural sunlight, are controlled automatically to minimise the users’ involvement. To test the concept, to see how well the product specification is fulfilled, both a CAD model and a functional prototype were created. The results from the tests were, even at the concept stage, that 97% of all the tested requirements were fulfilled which shows that the concept is suitable for indoor cultivation in a restaurant environment. Some further work that includes refining the design and optimising for production will be needed to launch the product.