The Internet and related Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been proposed as a way to vitalise (western) political democracy, currently marked by a decline in traditional forms of participation. Even if the Internet has established itself as a potential source of power and social change, the lack of clear results for democracy has left the initially mainly optimistic research community disappointed. Recognising the general lack of innovative ideas and successful examples of how to use technology for democratic purposes in the public sector, this thesis frames the notion of a ‘democratic Internet’ as a design endeavour that involves users of technological applications. The purpose of the thesis is two-fold: 1) to explore the possibility of engaging end-users, citizens and others, in the construction of public sector ICTs; 2) to identify a set of design recommendations for such applications, where promoting democratic participation is a central objective. It employs a qualitative methodology, and theories of participatory democracy, republican citizenship, critical theory, and Human-Computer Interaction, applied in a three-part study dealing with the production and usage of public sector ICTs. Three applications are investigated: a decision support system, a municipality’s external web site, and a central government web portal. Results show that there is a high level of awareness and concern for users and their needs among producers, which is for example reflected in the regular application of user tests. However, user-oriented design work is not always prioritised in terms of resources, formal knowledge, and expertise. Initiatives to promote usability and user-centred development are typically driven by civil servants rather than political directives. Motives for involving users in design have more to do with gaining acceptance for and improving existing solutions than innovation or democratic participation. The kinds of applications citizens participating in the study request to enhance political engagement partly coincide with what is offered by the examined public organisations. Still, it is clear that more remains to be done in terms of providing information, and even more so making public institutions open and receptive to the citizenry. Citizens, among other things, ask for accessible information on political institutions and actors, and dialogic uses of technology. Design considerations include the need to account for the fact that citizens-as-users represent diverse needs, recognise that levels of political and technological knowledge vary, enhance opportunities for exchange and mutual learning between citizens and public representatives, and aim for flexible solutions that can incorporate additional and changing needs over time. In general, participants gave proof of a critical distance to technology as well as an ability to contribute as both innovators and evaluators in a design process. A broad contextual approach to shed light on everyday political and technological practices, as applied in this study, is useful for exploring the needs users have regarding ICTs. However, future research has the task of investigating methods to facilitate creativity as well as citizen representation in public sector design work. Civil servants and representatives, using a decision support system in municipal planning and decision-making, are largely satisfied in terms of operation and structure of the application. However, timelier data delivery and other types of contents, for example opinion data on citizens, are requested. Wishes of this kind may not be easy to satisfy because of prevailing institutional and organisational priorities. The same is true when it comes to the employment of statistical data in municipal decision-making, which is not always well received by political actors. Design recommendations include taking closer heed of local municipal needs and non-expert users. It is also recommended that initiators and producers of decision support technology promote a pragmatic view of statistical data to increase its acceptance.

The transformation of a manual paper-based moderation process into an electronic moderation (eModeration) process poses unique challenges. These challenges concern academic processes, people and the user experience of interactive systems. eModeration can improve the user experience of assessment processes while lowering the risk of delaying the process or losing scripts. Despite the benefits associated with optimising assessment procedures, particularly examination procedures, the use of eModeration in South Africa is limited. There are several possible reasons for a lack of eModeration adoption ranging from infrastructure and technical issues through to organisational and human factors. The focus of this study is on the human factors involved in eModeration. Since no User Experience Evaluation Framework for eModeration existed at the time of this research, an in-depth study was conducted based on the experiences of eModeration users in the context of private higher education institutions. The study focused on identifying the most important user experience constructs for the evaluation of an eModerate system within the context of private higher education institutions in South Africa towards proposing a framework. The study was based in the fields of Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction with eModeration being the application domain. The research used a Design Science Research methodology, which involved the development and testing of a User Experience Evaluation Framework for eModeration. The data generation methods included interviews with deans, eModerators and management, as well as a survey that included responses from both moderators and deans. The research was conducted at Midrand Graduate Institute and evaluated at Monash University. The study makes a validated contribution towards identifying the most important user experience constructs. The identified constructs were utilised in the design and development of the User Experience Evaluation Framework for eModeration, which can be used along with the evaluation criteria tool to evaluate eModerate systems. / Information Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Systems)

The goal of this research was to create an educational, outdoor Augmented Reality tour for preschool children using Minnesmark editor and mobile application. It started with an ethnographic pre-study which aimed understand the children’s abilities, characteristics and interests. It was followed by a bodystorming session which allowed the children to contribute to the design process together with the designer. Based on all the findings, a context scenario was created which showed the concept of a practicable tour. All the functional and data requirements were specified before creating the tour. The design was intended to be user-centred and to have positive effect on the children’s learning of sustainability and biodiversity. The tour was refined and created as a final product. 10 children participated in the tour which was executed in a forest behind the preschool and the preschool garden. The tour was evaluated which identified the design problems and their possible solutions.

When developing a new system, it is a good idea to involve the end users from the start to prevent usability issues. This thesis has evaluated how one can develop a data visualisation system for the sawmill industry with a focus on user experience.  Semi-structured interviews with a snowball sample approach were used to acquire the demands of the end users. From these demands, paper prototypes were developed and then evaluated. Data on these prototypes were collected iteratively with the help of usability tests. This was done to understand how pleased users were when using the product but also to evaluate how efficiently they used it. Metrics have been used to measure the user experience of the product with both the paper prototypes and a hi-fi prototype, also described as the alpha prototype.  The conclusion answers the two research questions asked in this thesis. It concludes that the interview technique used in this thesis gave a good understanding of what information the users were interested in. Regarding measuring user experience, usability issues have been detected and reduced for each iteration, which indirectly results in a higher efficiency since the number of confusions are reduced. Something that can be seen from the system usability scale tests is that the high scores (about 89) they generated indicate that the users are pleased. With the different metrics used in this thesis, the conclusions are that the fewer the obstacles are for the user, the less annoyed they are when using the product and in turn perform their goals faster.

Abstract The popularity of social networking services emphasises the importance of user communities. As the next evolutionary step, social networking will evolve towards user communities that are dynamically established according to contextual aspects such as the shared location and/or activities of people. In this vision, distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies provide a respectable alternative to the centralised client-server technologies for implementing the upcoming community-centric mobile services. This thesis focuses on the development of enabling techniques and methods for a community-centric mobile service environment and on the evaluation of users’ perceptions and user acceptance of novel community-centric mobile services. The research was carried out by first examining the applicability of different P2P system architectures for implementing the management of user communities. Next, an experimental prototype of a community-centric mobile service environment was implemented. The experimental prototype was used for evaluating the performance of the community-centric mobile service environment and for conducting the user studies of novel community-centric mobile services. The evaluation was conducted in a real deployment environment with test users. The main results are the following: (1) a conceptual analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of P2P group management systems that are implemented using architecturally distinct P2P system architectures; (2) a performance evaluation of a P2P community management system, in which each community is implemented as an independent structured P2P overlay network; (3) a novel community-centric mobile service environment and its core component, a mobile middleware, which enables the use of P2P technologies and context information as part of Web-based applications running on a Web browser; (4) an evaluation of users’ perceptions and user acceptance of novel community-centric mobile services that are related to making a selection of an entertainment premise based on its music style and voting for music in a user community. / Tiivistelmä Käyttäjäyhteisöiden tärkeys on korostunut sosiaalista verkottumista edistävien palveluiden suosion kautta. Seuraavaksi sosiaalinen verkottuminen tulee laajentumaan yhteisöihin, jotka perustetaan dynaamisesti muun muassa ihmisten yhteisen sijainnin ja/tai toiminnan perusteella. Tulevaisuuden yhteisöllisten mobiilipalveluiden toteutuksessa hajautetut vertaisverkkoteknologiat tarjoavat varteenotettavan vaihtoehdon keskitetyille asiakas-palvelin -teknologioille. Tämä väitöskirjatyö keskittyy kehittämään tarvittavia tekniikoita ja menetelmiä yhteisöllisen mobiilipalveluympäristön toteuttamiseen sekä arvioimaan käyttäjien kokemuksia uusista yhteisöllisistä mobiilipalveluista. Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin aluksi arkkitehtuurillisesti erilaisten vertaisverkkojärjestelmien sopivuutta käyttäjäyhteisöjen hallinnan toteutettamiseksi. Seuraavaksi tutkimuksessa toteutettiin kokeellinen prototyyppi yhteisöllisestä mobiilipalveluympäristöstä. Kokeellista prototyyppiä hyödynnettiin sekä yhteisöllisen mobiilipalveluympäristön suorituskyvyn että uusien yhteisöllisten mobiilipalveluiden käyttäjäkokemuksen arvioinnissa. Arviointi suoritettiin aidossa käyttöympäristössä testikäyttäjien avulla. Väitöskirjatyön keskisimmät tulokset ovat seuraavat: (1) käsitteellinen analyysi arkkitehtuurillisesti erilaisten vertaisverkkojärjestelmien vahvuuksista ja heikkouksista ryhmänhallintajärjestelmän toteuttamisessa; (2) sellaisen yhteisönhallintajärjestelmän arviointi, jossa jokainen yhteisö on toteutettu erillisen ja itsenäisen rakenteellisen vertaisverkon avulla; (3) uusi yhteisöllinen mobiilipalveluympäristö, jonka keskeisin osa mobiili välikerrosohjelmisto mahdollistaa vertaisverkkoteknologioiden ja kontekstitiedon käyttämisen selaimessa toimivissa Web-sovelluksissa; (4) sellaisten uusien yhteisöllisten mobiilipalveluiden käyttäjäkokemuksen arviointi, jotka liittyvät vapaa-ajan viettopaikan valitaan musiikin perusteella ja soitettavan musiikin äänestämiseen käyttäjäyhteisöissä.

The introduction of new information technology (IT) in an organisation is one way of changing the conditions for how tasks and work processes can be designed and performed, as well as how people in the organisation interact with each other. Today, many Swedish workers rely completely on IT to be able to perform their jobs, while experiencing a combination of continuous and intermittent IT-related changes that affect this ability. The introduction of new or updated IT systems in an organisation is an example of what is referred to as an IT-related change process in this thesis. Because IT has become such an integral part of modern organisations, many change processes in organisations are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the IT systems involved in a change process. In this thesis, I introduce the concept of inertia in sociotechnical systems to analyse IT-related change processes in organisations, and how achieving the goals of these processes is complicated by organisational, social, and physical aspects in addition to technology. The context of this thesis is the Swedish public sector domains of health-care and higher education, and the result of research studies and experiences from four action research projects in these settings. The contribution of this thesis adds to the contributions of the included papers through the definition of inertia in sociotechnical systems and its subsequent application. The thesis shows that the concept of inertia in sociotechnical systems can be used to understand IT-related change processes as changes to the characteristics of a sociotechnical system, and, in the context of organisations, how these processes affect and are affected by an organisation’s characteristics. This is illustrated in the thesis through the application of the concept on examples of IT-related change processes from the included papers and research projects. In addition, the thesis shows that the use of vision seminar methods can benefit Swedish organisations, since new IT is often introduced without clearly defined, expressed, understood, and accepted goals.

Dans le milieu aéronautique professionnel (un des secteurs professionnels les plus sûr au monde), la gestion des conséquences des erreurs humaines doit être améliorée pour garantir une sécurité maximum. Pour ce faire, il est nécessaire de mettre en place des techniques de conception centrées sur l’utilisateur. Cependant, la mise en place de ces techniques est rendue difficile par les particularités des systèmes sociotechniques complexes (la certification, la complexité des systèmes conçus, le nombre de personnes impliquées…). Notre étude a pour but de développer et de valider des outils d’aide à la conception centrée sur l’utilisateur, notamment pour le traitement automatique de grande quantité de données. Pour ce faire, nous avons, dans un premier temps, réalisé une étude basée sur le jugement d’expert visant à identifier, dans une base de données, des scenarii susceptibles de contenir une erreur de l’équipage. Les résultats de cette méthode par jugement d’expert ont été comparés à ceux obtenus à l’aide d’outils de traitement automatique. Cette comparaison a permis :1/ D’identifier des algorithmes pertinents pour l’extraction d’information dans des bases de données (algorithme des plus proches voisins et de filtrage bayesien) ;2/ De proposer une méthodologie permettant l’extraction automatique de situations à risque pouvant donner lieu à des études plus approfondies, sur simulateur par exemple. Cette étape est primordiale dans cadre de la conception centrée utilisateur.Les liens établis avec les études des incidents/accidents laissent envisager des impacts positifs sur la sécurité aérienne. / In the professional aeronautical field (one of the safest in the world), human error management must be improved to reach a better safety level. To do this, a user centred design process has to be implemented. However, due to the complexity of socio technical systems, the implementation of an efficient user centred design process could be challenging. To ease this process, our study aims to develop and validate specific tools, particularly for processing large amounts of textual data. In our study, we will firstly undertake an extraction of scenarios that can contain human errors in a specific database. This extraction will be based on expert judgment (control condition). Secondly, we will confront the control condition with results obtained automatically. The results of this comparison allow:1/ The identification of relevant algorithms for automatic information extraction within large textual databases (Nearest Neighbour, Bayesian filtering);2/ The identification of a methodology to extract risk situations that could be included in specific studies. This step is very important for the user centred design process.Links that we have established between our results and incident/accident studies allow us to consider positive impacts on aviation safety.

Medical researchers are exploring the potential of patients’ mobile phones and wearables for medical studies. The contribution of volunteers in a form of citizen science, where citizens donate their data for research purposes, can enable studies on a large scale. This research area, known as mobile health, often relies on shared data such as tracked steps or self- reporting forms. Privacy, transparency and trust play a fundamental role in the interaction of users with related platforms that agglomerate medical studies.This project explores privacy concerns of potential users of mobile health citizen science apps, summarises similar user patterns and analyses the impact of transparency enhancing tools on the users’ trust. In this context, a prototype with different features that aim to increase the transparency is designed, tested and evaluated. The results indicate how users perceive the importance and the generated trust of the proposed features and provide recommendations for data donation platforms.

With rapid growth in technical and social sector, the amount of data produced and retrieved has grown exponentially. Hence, there is a dire need for a management information system (MIS) to manage and structure such data. This study was initiated to learn about the problems and needs of the employees of a truck manufacturer organisation while working for long duration projects. The information about processes and tasks is available but in an unstructured manner through excel spreadsheets which makes it difficult for users to retrieve required information during crucial times. An information system in the form of a dashboard was designed and proposed to overcome the problems faced by users. This study focuses on evaluating the user experience of employees while retrieving desired information about the procedures using both dashboard and excel spreadsheets. To investigate the work structure and problems of employees, interviews were conducted. The results were analysed and a dashboard solution was proposed and developed with real time data. With employees coordination, few usability tests were conducted and the feedback was recorded for future work. According to the study results, the efficiency of employees can be increased and the decision making can be improved using MIS. With better retrieval techniques user experience was also enhanced. The interactive visualisations of dashboard attracted users and was used efficiently for providing tons of information about procedures to be followed. / Med den snabba tillväxten inom teknisk och social sektor har mängden data som både produceras och hämtas ökat exponentiellt. Därför finns det ett brådskande behov av informationssystem för att hanterar och strukturera sådan data. Denna studie startade med att utforska de problem och behov som fanns hos anställda på ett företag som tillverkar lastbilar när de jobbar i långvariga projekt. Informationen om rutiner, processer och uppgifter är idag tillgänglig för de anställda i ostrukturerade Excel-kalkylblad, detta gör det svårt att hämta nödvändig information. Ett informationssystem i form av en instrumentpanel utformades och föreslogs för att lösa de problem som användarna möter. Denna studie fokuserade på att utvärdera användarupplevelsen hos de anställda medan de hämtade önskad information om rutinerna när de använde både instrumentpanelen och Excel-kalkylblad. För att undersöka arbetetsstrukturen och de problem som de anställda upplever så genomfördes intervjuer. Resultatet analyserades och ett resultat i forma av ett informationssystem (instrumentpanelen) föreslogs och utvecklades med realtidsdata. Med samordning av de anställda genomfördes användbarhetstester och deras återkoppling registrerades för framtida arbete. Enligt studieresultaten kan effektiviteten hos de anställda ökas och beslutsfattande kan förbättras med hjälp av ett informationssystem. Användarupplevelsen kan också förbättras genom bättre tekniker för hämtning av data. Den interaktiva visualiseringen av instrumentpanelen lockade användarna och användes effektivt för att ge information om rutiner som ska följas.

Precision cancer medicine is an area of research that involves complex bioinformatics software for the clinical analysis pipelines that sequencing data is passed through. A research team at Karolinska Institutet (KI) is running clinical trials to test new methods of precision cancer medicine and is working on creating a new web application that will be integrated with their two existing applications to aid bioinformaticians in their work of running pipelines and producing clinical reports for the hospitals. Recent publications show that web tools are used for improving usability of bioinformatics software, but have not discussed the inclusion of pipeline management into these systems. This study aims at exploring how the new web system can impact the complexity of the daily work within the trials for users with limited computational experience. This was done by developing a high-fidelity prototype of the new application using a user-centred design approach that included agile design work, usability tests and a focus group with the bioinformaticians at KI. The test sessions and focus group discussion indicate that the new application can speed up the weekly batch-wise sample processing by decreasing the need for users to interact with the command-line. It is also suggested that an integration of different applications can lead to a more efficient workflow within the team. The implication for the development of bioinformatics tools is that there are potentially important benefits to be found in making more usable interfaces for users with different experiences and areas of expertise. / Precisionsmedicin som cancerbehandling är ett forskningsområde som involverar komplex bioinformatisk mjukvara för de kliniska analyspipelines som sekvenseringsdata skickas igenom. En forskargrupp vid Karolinska Institutet (KI) driver kliniska studier för att testa nya metoder för precisionsmedicin mot cancer och arbetar med att skapa en ny webbapplikation som ska integreras med deras två befintliga applikationer för att hjälpa bioinformatiker i deras arbete med att köra pipelines och producera kliniska rapporter för sjukhusen. Nyligen publicerad forskning visar att webbverktyg används för att förbättra användbarheten av bioinformatisk programvara, men har inte berört hantering av pipelines som en del i dessa system. Denna studie syftar till att utforska hur det nya webbsystemet kan påverka tids- och komplexitetsaspekter i det dagliga arbetet inom de kliniska studierna. Detta gjordes genom att utveckla en high-fidelity prototyp av den nya applikationen, baserat på en användarcentrerad approach innefattande agilt designarbete, användbarhetstester och en fokusgrupp med bioinformatikerna på KI. Testsessionerna och fokusgruppsdiskussionen indikerar att den nya applikationen kan påskynda arbetet med de veckovisa omgångarna med prover genom att minska behovet för användare att interagera med kommandoraden. Det föreslås också att en integration av olika applikationer kan leda till ett effektivare arbetsflöde inom forskningsgruppen. Innebörden för utvecklingen av bioinformatiska verktyg är att det potentiellt kan finnas viktiga fördelar med att göra mer användbara gränssnitt för användare med olika erfarenheter och kompetensområden.