Complex data are being stored daily in databases in an unstructured way. Visualizations techniques can be used to present complex data in a user friendly and understandable way. This thesis presents the implementation of a visualization interactive tool called Eco Donuts. It is part of a set of tools created to visualize complex food data called Ekopanelen. The feature Eco Donuts presents time-dependent food data which are ordered in categories. It gives the opportunity to users to explore their data over time by performing simple interactions. This thesis documents an exploratory study on how this visualization tool can be used to enhance the user experience and provide insights of complex data. The visualization feature was implemented and evaluated with ten participants. The participants were asked to evaluate the visualization tool by accomplishing nine different tasks. The sessions were recorded using a log system as well as video recording. This study shows that the proposed tool can be used to visualize complex information in a user friendly and presentable way.

Purpose – A user-friendly website is a and o for companies given today's technology and internet usage. It's about creating a website that visitors of different ages and with different technology experience easily can use and take part of. The purpose of this thesis is to find out how a web site to a company in the private sector that focuses on health and wellbeing can be designed so that the visitors can find the information they are looking for without encountering problems. Method – To achieve this, a survey was conducted and also interviews with people who work with user experience on the web, where an analysis part was performed pursuant to the thinking aloud method, and usability testing using the thinking aloud method. Findings – Using the method choices, the conclusion came forward that what is important to have in mind when designing a user-friendly website, is that the navigation system should be easily understandable, the structure and the amount of information on the site should make the site readable, and also the typography and the contrast between the colors are supposed to make it easier for the visitor to navigate on the website. Limitations – This work focuses exclusively on companies that focus on health and wellbeing in Jönköping, furthermore the work is all about user experience on the web and how visitors will be able to find important information on the website / Syfte – En användarvänlig webbplats är a och o för företag med tanke på dagens teknikutveckling och internetanvändning. Det gäller att skapa en webbplats som besökare i olika åldrar och med olika mycket teknikvana enkelt kan använda och ta del av. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att ta reda på hur en webbplats till ett företag inom den privata sektorn som inriktar sig på hälsa och välmående kan utformas för att besökarna ska kunna hitta den information de söker utan att stöta på problem. Metod – För att uppnå detta genomfördes en enkätundersökning, intervjuer med personer som jobbar med användarvänlighet på webben där en analysdel utfördes enligt thinking aloud metoden, samt användartester med hjälp av thinking aloud metoden. Resultat – Med hjälp av metodvalen kom slutsatsen fram att det som är viktigt att ha i åtanke vid utformning av en användarvänlig webbplats är att navigationssystemet ska vara lättförståeligt, strukturen och mängden information på sidan ska göra webbsidan lättläst, samt typografin och kontrasten mellan färgerna som ska göra det lättare för besökare att navigera på webbsidan. Begränsningar – Detta arbete fokuserar enbart på företag som inriktar sig på hälsa och välmående i Jönköping, vidare handlar arbetet om just användarvänlighet på webben och hur besökare ska kunna hitta viktig information på webbplatsen.

When looking at the Internet of Things the question arises how people, places and things will be connected to each other in the future. One option to create interoperability between devices and humans for the Internet of Things is to use open web standards. Researchers have named this approach the Web of Things and have studied the vision by showing the technical feasibility and by suggesting software architectures. What has been missing so far is a designer’s view on the challenges of connecting the virtual and the physical world with web technology. This thesis therefore aims to explore how current web technologies can be used as design material for the Web of Things. The results indicate that new web technologies like push notifications work well in the context of ubiquitous computing. Additionally, the repertory grid method was applied to evaluate how users experience the Web of Things. It was found that the prototypes were perceived as easy to use, personal and working instantly but the participants were also clearly aware of the dependency to a working smartphone.

In high-tech companies, user experience has become an important part of data-driven product development, but unfortunately the artifacts created by user experience work are often stored in disparate documents and databases, and it is difficult to get a big picture of all the artifacts that have been created and how they relate to each other and to other product development data. Data visualization is one way to approach solving these issues, but how can this data be presented to users in a meaningful way such that both the artifacts and the relationships between them are understood? Three hierarchical data visualizations - partition, sunburst, and zoomable treemap - were built around some early product development data. These visualizations were tested in a comparative exploratory usability test with six users to find how well users understood the data and the relationships between the data. The most significant results were that most users did not know how to interact with the partition and sunburst visualizations until prompted to do so, users had a difference in understanding the data between the sunburst and partition visualization, and some techniques worked very well to keep users oriented while others did not. Future work should first focus on adding a creative element to the tool, where data can be added and relationships can be built in the visualization itself, and then focus on testing the tool again with a more specific audience of strategic planners, UX designers, and requirements engineers.

Today’s society has moved towards a greater focus on users experiences from several different perspectives. It applies to the virtual world as well as to the environment outside computers. As markets are becoming saturated with products and services that are relatively similar, staging experiences is a possible way to increase product and service value. Within academic ceremonies at universities, the focus on the guests’ experiences is central. The aim of this thesis is to clarify how three key concepts can lay a ground for better understanding when going forward in the design of experiences in the context of academic ceremonies. The concepts are User Experience, Service Design and Ubiquitous Computing. The results shows that by dividing the processes of designing the ceremonies into smaller pieces and analysing them, using Patrick W. Jordan’s Hierarchy of Consumer Needs the current situation could be defined. A unified approach was taken towards the key concepts, which visualized the means we have to utilize in the possibilities of reaching upwards in the hierarchy and thus designing better experiences.

Abstract In order to respond to the challenges posed by technological development, new interdisciplinary concepts and methods in the fields of research and design of information and communication technology are required. The researchers in this fields have been trying to solve design problems by, for example, concentrating on designing for the user experience (UX). Nevertheless, the concept of UX has been widely disseminated and rapidly adapted in many areas of design without it being clearly defined or deeply understood. Not only theoretical study of the phenomenon is needed but also analytical tools to more comprehensively analyse and understand UX. Such an important tool would be a concept that can be used to study practical phenomena in a comprehensive manner. The theoretical objective of this thesis was to formulate a new, “expanded” concept of UX that can be used to describe human experience with technology so that both short-term and longer-term aspects of this experience can be taken into account. Based on the review of the literature, it seemed that Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience could provide a theoretical frame of reference for an approach aiming at understanding UX in a more comprehensive manner. A broad theoretical concept, such as Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience, is not directly applicable to empirical research, however. The practical objective of the thesis was to outline a method or a set of methods how the concept can be operationalised. A comprehensive and operational concept of UX is generated based on Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience that is divided into two levels utilising Leontjev’s activity theory. As a result of the research, the concept of expanded user experience (eUX) and the reflective research method for studying it has been created. This research has shown that by studying longer-term UX in addition to temporal UX and by focusing on analysing the user’s activity it is possible to see a larger and more meaningful view on UX. The reflective research method is particularly beneficial as a long-term research method focusing on the everyday environments of users. / Tiivistelmä Teknologian kehityksen asettamiin haasteisiin vastaaminen edellyttää uusia tieteen rajat ylittäviä käsitteitä ja menettelytapoja informaatio- ja kommunikaatioteknologian alan tutkimuksessa ja suunnittelussa. Alan tutkijat ovat alkaneet etsiä ratkaisuja suunnittelun ongelmiin mm. keskittymällä käyttäjäkokemuksen suunnitteluun. Käyttäjäkokemus käsitteen käyttö on yleistynyt ja se on omaksuttu nopeasti monilla suunnittelun alueilla huolimatta siitä, että käsitettä ei ole selkeästi määritelty tai syvällisesti ymmärretty. Käyttäjäkokemuksen tutkimuksessa tarvitaan paitsi tutkittavan ilmiön teoreettista tarkastelua, myös analyyttisiä välineitä käyttäjäkokemuksen kokonaisvaltaisempaan analysoimiseen ja ymmärtämiseen. Keskeinen väline on käyttäjäkokemuksen kokonaisvaltaista, moniulotteista ja reflektiivistä luonnetta kuvaava käsite, jonka avulla käytännön ilmiöitä voidaan tarkastella kokonaisvaltaisesti. Tämän tutkimuksen teoreettinen tavoite oli kehittää uusi ”laajennettu” käyttäjäkokemuksen käsite, jolla voidaan kuvata käyttäjäkokemusta ottamalla huomioon inhimillisen kokemuksen muodostumiseen vaikuttavia lyhyt- ja pitkäkestoisia aspekteja. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen perusteella vaikutti siltä, että Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsite voisi ratkaista useita aikaisemman käyttäjäkokemuksen tutkimuksessa ilmenneitä puutteellisuuksia tarjoamalla teoreettisen viitekehyksen lähestymistavalle, jonka tavoitteena on ymmärtää käyttäjäkokemusta aikaisempaa kokonaisvaltaisemmin. Laaja teoreettinen käsite, kuten Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsite, ei kuitenkaan ole suoraan sovellettavissa empiiriseen tutkimukseen. Näin ollen tutkimuksen käytännöllinen tavoite oli hahmotella menetelmä tai joukko menetelmiä, joiden avulla Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsite voidaan operationalisoida. Tutkimuksessa kehitetty, aikaisempaa kokonaisvaltaisempi ja operationaalinen käyttäjäkokemuksen käsite perustuu Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsitteeseen, joka on operationalisoitu jakamalla se kahteen tasoon Leontjev’n toiminnan teorian avulla. Tutkimuksen tuloksena syntyi laajennettu käyttäjäkokemuksen käsite (the expanded user experience), ja sen tutkimiseen tarkoitettu reflektiivinen käyttäjätutkimusmenetelmä (the reflective research method). Tässä tutkimuksessa havaittiin, että keskittymällä pidempikestoisen käyttäjäkokemuksen tutkimiseen hetkellisesti muodostuvan käyttäjäkokemuksen rinnalla sekä analysoimalla käyttäjän toimintaa, voidaan käyttäjäkokemus nähdä aikaisempaa laajempana ja merkityksellisempänä ilmiönä. Reflektiivinen tutkimusmenetelmä soveltuu erityisesti käyttäjien jokapäiväisessä arjessa tapahtuvaan pitempiaikaiseen käyttäjätutkimukseen.

Cultural and creative industries are a growing and profitable sector in the UK. The industry blends historical culture with modern creative design to promote one's culture and to make profits. A cultural feature is the main characteristic of a cultural product; however most of the current cultural products are printed or decorated in a way that lacks any emotional or meaningful cultural link with consumers. Emotional engagement is the key factor when people make their decisions. Therefore, a design toolkit was created to assist designers to enhance an emotional connection between consumers and products. the research approaches involved a literature review to classify categories of cultural features, a questionnaire to measure emotional responses to Chinese cultural products, expert interviews to develop the toolkit, and workshops to validate the toolkit. This research is the first study to highlight emotional aspect of cultural products in order to enrich user experience. The contributions of the research are investigating human emotions of cultural products and developing a novel toolkit to support designers when creating cultural products.

Algorithms currently have direct implications in our democracies and societies, but they also define mostly all our daily activities as users, defining our decisions and promoting different behaviors. In this context, it is necessary to define and think about how to design the different implications that these algorithms have from a user centered perspective, particularly in social media platforms that have such relevance in our information sources and flow. Therefore, the current thesis provides an introduction to the concept of algorithmic experience, trying to study how to implement it for social media services in cellphone devices. Using a Research through Design methodology supported by interface analysis, document analysis and user design workshops, the present paper provides results grouped in five different areas: algorithmic profiling transparency, algorithmic profiling management, algorithmic awareness, algorithmic user-control and selective algorithmic remembering. These five areas provide a framework capable of promoting requirements and guide the evaluation of algorithmic experience in social media contexts.

This thesis explores interactive translation dictation (ITD), a translation technique that involves interaction with multimodal interfaces equipped with voice recognition (VR) technology throughout the entire translation process. Its main objective is to provide a solid theoretical background and an analysis of empirical qualitative and quantitative data that demonstrate ITD’s advantages and challenges, with a view to integrating this technique into the translation profession. Many empirical studies in human-computer interaction have strived to demonstrate the efficiency of voice input versus keyboard input. Although it was implicit in the earliest works that voice input was expected to completely replace—rather than complement—text-input devices, it was soon proposed that VR often performed better in combination with other input modes. This study introduces multimodal interaction to translation, taking advantage of the unparallelled robustness of commercially available voice-and-touch-enabled multimodal interfaces such as touch-screen computers and tablets. To that end, an experiment was carried out with 14 professional English-to-French translators, who performed a translation task either with the physical prototype of an ITD environment, or with a traditional keyboard-and-mouse environment. The hypothesis was that the prototypical environment would consistently provide translators with a better translator experience (TX) than the traditional environment, considering the translation process as a whole. The notion of TX as introduced in this work is defined as a translator’s perceptions of and responses to the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using different methods, such as video and screen recording, input logging and semi-structured interviews. The combined analysis of objective and subjective usability measures suggests a better TX with the experimental environment versus the keyboard-and-mouse workstation, but significant challenges still need to be overcome for ITD to be fully integrated into the profession. Thus, this doctoral study provides a basis for better-grounded research in translator-computer interaction and translator-information interaction and, more specifically, for the design and development of an ITD environment, which is expected to support professional translators’ cognitive functions, performance and well-being. Lastly, this research aims to demonstrate that translation studies research, and translation technology in particular, needs to be more considerate of the translator, the TX, and the changing realities of the interaction between humans, computers and information in the twenty-first century.

This study is about the recruitment process. It started with a big picture of Work-life and narrowed down at the beginning of the career when candidates are applying for a job. There are different problems in the recruitment process. It is a stressful and uncertain experience for candidates. Also, the organizations will take damage by selecting an inadequate candidate. And, the recruiters have a hard time making a decent decision. This study investigates how to improve the experience of the stakeholders of candidates, organizations, and recruiters. The model of the design innovation process is the methodology of the project. The result is a candidate workshop framework that is a tool to get a deeper understanding of candidates. Designing a workshop can help to select an adequate person when there are the last few candidates. This workshop is complementary to a job interview, which can be before or after the job interview. It can be a physical or remote workshop. The workshop is about testing the abilities and soft skills that are not easy to measure by a traditional job interview. As a result, this solution can create an opportunity to gain better experience as teams and organizations meet people who are going to work with, and candidates get better feedback.