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Thesis (M. Sc. (Computer Science)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The task of automatic speaker recognition, wherein a system verifies or identifies speakers from a recording of their voices, has been researched for several decades. However, research in this area has been carried out largely on freely accessible speaker datasets built on languages that are well-resourced like English. This study undertakes automatic speaker recognition research focused on a low-resourced language, Sepedi. As one of the 11 official languages in South Africa, Sepedi is spoken by at least 2.8 million people. Pre-recorded voices were acquired from a speech and language national repository, namely, the National Centre for Human Language Technology (NCHLT), were we selected the Sepedi NCHLT Speech Corpus. The open-source pyAudioAnalysis python library was used to extract three types of acoustic features of speech namely, time, frequency and cepstral domain features, from the acquired speech data. The effects and compatibility of these acoustic features was investigated. It was observed that combining the three acoustic features of speech had a more significant effect than using individual features as far as speaker recognition accuracy is concerned. The study also investigated the performance of machine learning algorithms on low-resourced languages such as Sepedi. Five machine learning (ML) algorithms implemented on Scikit-learn namely, K-nearest neighbours (KNN), support vector machines (SVM), random forest (RF), logistic regression (LR), and multi-layer perceptrons (MLP) were used to train different classifier models. The GridSearchCV algorithm, also implemented on Scikit-learn, was used to deduce ideal hyper-parameters for each of the five ML algorithms. The classifier models were evaluated on recognition accuracy and the results show that the MLP classifier, with a recognition accuracy of 98%, outperforms KNN, RF, LR and SVM classifiers. A graphical user interface (GUI) is developed and the best performing classifier model, MLP, is deployed on the developed GUI intended to be used for real time speaker identification and verification tasks. Participants were recruited to the GUI performance and acceptable results were obtained

This paper is a literature study with an additional empirical approach to research how to improve user experience in data visualization web applications. This research has been conducted in collaboration with Caretia AB to improve their current data visualization tool. The research studies previous research on the topics of UI design, user experience, visual complexity and user interaction in the attempt to discover what areas of design and intuitivity that improves the user experiences in these kinds of tools. The findings were then tested together with Caretia through a proof-of-concept prototype application which was implemented with said findings. The conclusion of the results is that mapping ontology groups and prior experience as well as reducing visual overload are effective ways of improving intuitivity and user experience.

Tillgängligheten och användandet av grupprum vid universitet är viktigt för studenter då majoriteten av studenternas studietid är på egen hand. Grupprum erbjuder en plats för diskussion och studier, vilket är viktigt för att uppnå en god studiemiljö. Vid Mittuniversitetet existerar det en webbaserad bokningstjänst för studenter att boka grupprum. I det aktuella bokningssystemet existerar det heller ingen direktkoppling till bokningstjänsten och det finns inget sätt att verifiera att bokningen faktiskt används. Därför har denna studie syftat till att undersöka och utveckla en mobilapplikation för bokandet av grupprum vid Mittuniversitetet. Det presenteras nya funktionaliteter och användargränssnitt för att lösa nuvarande problem. Studien har blivit utförd med hjälp av relaterande arbeten, diskussioner med Mittuniversitetets IT-arkitekter, enkätundersökningar och user stories för att bilda en kravfångst. Därefter skapades en prototyp baserat på kravfångsten, denna prototyp användes som designplan för utvecklingen av mobilapplikationen. Sju deltagare deltog att testa applikationen, där första användartestet var att testa en uppsättning funktionaliteter. Därefter utvärderades applikationen för vidareutvecklingen. I det andra testet genfördes en tidmätning mellan det befintliga bokningssystemet och nya bokningssystemet, detta för att genomföra ett antal funktionalitetstester. Resultatet var att det mobila gränssnittet var snabbare för att utföra testerna vid jämförelse med det aktuella webbgränssnittet. Deltagarna ville också ha möjligheten att använda en mobilapplikation i framtiden för att boka grupprum. / The availability and usage of study spaces in universities is important for students due to that majority of their study time is on their own. Study spaces provides a place for discussions and studies, which is important to achieve a good study environment. At the Mid Sweden University, a web-based booking service is available for students to reserve study rooms. In the current booking system, there exist no direct link to the booking service and there is no way to verify that a reservation that has been made is being used. Therefore, the objective of this study has been to examine and develop a mobile application for booking study rooms at Mid Sweden University that presents new functionalities and user interfaces to solve these problems. The study has been conducted with the aid of previous works, discussions with the IT architects, student surveys and user stories to capture requirement specifications. Thereafter a prototype was made based of said requirements, this prototype was then used as a blueprint when developing the actual mobile application. For testing the application, seven participants were chosen to test a set of functionalities and thereafter evaluate their experiences for further development. After the first test, a second test was done by comparing the time it took for participants to perform a set of tasks using the mobile interface versus the existing booking interface. The mobile interface was faster to perform tasks on and participants would like to use a mobile application for future reservations.

PC-Dart is a software that the Swedish Armed Forces use to communicate when active on the field. They are limited to using the program only on Windows operating system, and their devices are not suitable for challenging contexts. It is not convenient for the army to bring impractical devices to the field, and it requires the soldiers to bring sleds of batteries and charging equipment with them. This thesis explores the possibilities of recreating the graphical user interface onto other platforms such as Android and Linux. It helps to increase the mobility on the field for the troops of the Swedish Armed Forces, which also means that there is not any restrictions by using their program on one platform. The development of the program required a pilot study on what available cross-platform frameworks to use in terms of developing an application that works on multiple platforms. Together with a relevant framework and a custom user-centered agile work process, this thesis strives to create an application that is cross-platform and with a graphical user interface that old users of the previous program can relate to. The project results show that a graphical user interface can be developed with a cross-platform framework while working in a user-centered agile process. However, it also shows that it can be a lot of work for one person, negatively affecting the process.

Screen readers for visually impaired users are poorly optimized for e-commerce websites hence the exclusion of the content. It creates a societal need for accessibility of the content in e-commerce websites for the visually impaired users. This study explores how six blindfolded participants could co-design a Voice User Interface (VUI) in an e-commerce website to convey its information that creates a good user experience for visually impaired. The result of a co-design workshop with interaction design practices showed that a VUI should be humanlike and convey relevant information. Failed speech recognition and overwhelming information had a negative impact on the user experience. To cope with the problems, the VUI should provide more control to the users by conveying explicit confirmations and retrospective information from past shopping trips. Due to the difficulties in finding visually impaired participants, the design process was not completed hence the ideation needs an additional design process.

Spel har förvandlats till en mainstream underhållningskälla och har utvecklats tillsammans med teknologin. Till en nivå som nyttjar en spelares alla sinnen för att fördjupa de i ett spel. Uppmärksamheten kring tillgänglighet inom spel har dock försvagats.Detta examensarbete undersöker de tillgängliga lösningarna som syftar till att hjälpa döva eller hörselskadade, främst när det gäller situationsmedvetenhet genom att ersätta ljud med en visuell representation. De i skrivande stund tillgängliga lösningarna jämförs sedan med resultaten i relaterad forskning och en undersökning som genomfördes för detta arbete. Målsättningen var att hitta vad som fungerade som en visuell representation av ljud, med undersökningssvaren som ger insikt i döva och hörselskadade individers perspektiv på lösningarna.Dessa resultat kan fungera som en referenspunkt för utvecklare som vill implementera en visuell representation av ljud eller liknande funktion i deras spel. / Video Games have turned into a mainstream source of entertainment and have evolved alongside technological improvements. To the point of being able to bring the player immersive gaming experiences that rely heavily on their senses. However, the attention to the accessibility aspects of video games has been lagging behind.This thesis explores the available solutions that aim to help Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) players, primarily in terms of situational awareness by substituting audio with a visual representation. The currently available solutions are then compared with the findings in related research and a survey that was conducted for this paper. The objective was to find what worked as a visual representation of audio, with the survey responses providing insight into DHH players perspective.These findings can serve as a reference point for developers who want to implement a visual substitute for audio or a similar feature intheir game.

User experience forskning blir allt mer viktigt den här tiden under den digitala eran där det är konstant utveckling och framsteg av digitala produkter. Denna typen av produkter introducerar ett behov av att designa och utveckla dess gränssnitt där informationen presenteras på bästa möjliga sätt och skapar möjligheter till interaktion för att möta användarens behov. Den interaktiva upplevelsen som en digital produkt erbjuder via gränssnittet avgör i stor utsträckning framgången av produkten. Användarens upplevelse av gränssnittet är en mycket större del av utvecklingen idag än tidigare. Vikten av att ta ansvar för kundupplevelsen och sätta denna i centrum blir som en överlevnadsteknik för hemsidor. Även om det finns många olika sätt att utvärdera användarupplevelsen som erbjuds av webbplatser, så är det en utmaning att skapa ett teoretiskt verktyg som tillämpas för att utvärdera User experience för kunskapsintensiva informtionsutrymmen.Syftet med denna avhandling är att utveckla ett teoretiskt verktyg baserat på heuristiker inom forskningsområdet user experience. Att bidra till en ökad förståelse för vad User experience är och för att se vilka heuristiker som kan appliceras för att utforska en användares förståelse av ett webbgränssnitt. För att grunda detta forskningsarbete och ge konkreta resultat har en fallstudie valts som metod för att komplettera litteraturstudien. Kundernas erfarenhet av att interagera med företaget Axis Communications valdes som ett relevant fall. Axis Communications utvecklar nätverkskameror och programvara för säkerhet och videoövervakning. Användbarhetsstudier utfördes med distributörer av Axis Communications produkter och genomfördes i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer och med hjälp av think-aloud teknik för att undersöka produkt och information sökande strategier. Resultaten från denna studie i samband med den heuristik som utvecklades som en följd av litteraturstudien användes för att se över användbarheten av Axis Communications externa hemsida. Fem nya heuristiker utvecklades som ett viktigt verktyg för att bestämma och designa användarupplevelsen av corporate webbplatser som hanterar kunskapsintensiva informationsutrymmen. Även om resultaten från fallstudier är svåra att generalisera, så har det teoretiska verktyget som skapats i detta forskningsarbete möjliggjort en form av generalisering, men viktigast introducerar forskningsfrågor för framtida arbete. / User experience research is becoming more important during this time of the digital era where there is constant advancements in digital products. Such advanced digital products introduce a need to design and develop its interfaces where information is presented in the best way possible and creates possibilities for interaction to meet the users needs. The interactive experience offered by a digital product through its interface to a large extent determines the success of such products. The user's experience of the user interface is a much larger part of the development today, than it was before. The importance of taking responsibility for the customer experience and putting this into focus becomes a survival technique for websites. While there are standard techniques to understand the user experience offered by websites, the lack of a theoretical tool to determine and design user experiences for information spaces containing knowledge-intensive information is a challenge. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a theoretical tool based on heuristics researched in the field of user experience. To contribute to a common understanding for what User experience is and to see which heuristics can be applied to explore a users understanding of a website. To ground this research work and to have concrete results, a case study has been chosen as an method to complement the literature review. Customer experience in interacting with Axis Communications’ corporate website was chosen as a relevant case. Axis Communications develops network cameras and software for physical security and video surveillance industries. Usability studies were conducted with distributors of Axis Communications products in form of semi-structured interviews and using think-aloud technique to investigate the product and information seeking strategies. The results from this study in conjunction with the heuristics developed as a result of the literature study was used in reviewing the usability of Axis Communications’ corporate website. Five new heuristics were developed as an important tool for determining and designing the user experience of corporate websites dealing with knowledge-intensive information spaces. While results from case studies are difficult to generalise, the theoretical foundations upon which this research work was built enables some form of generalisation but more importantly puts forth interesting research questions as future work.

This interaction design thesis aimed to explore how users could be introduced to the different functionalities of a gesture-based touch screen interface. This was done through a user-centred design research process where the designer was taught different artefacts by experienced users. Insights from this process lay the foundation for an interactive, digital gesture-introduction prototype.Testing said prototype with users yielded this study's results. While containing several areas for improvement regarding implementation and behaviour, the prototype's base methods and qualities were well received. Further development would be needed to fully assess its viability. The user-centred research methods used in this project proved valuable for later ideation and prototyping stages. Activities and results from this project indicate a potential for designers to further explore the possibilities for ensuring the discoverability of touch-gesture interactions. For future projects the author suggests more extensive research and testing using a greater sample size and wider demographic.

Chatbots are the new kind of technique for organizations to implement in their operations. Although chatbots have been around for a while they have spiked in the last few years. With this new technique also comes new ways for users to interact and communicate with the organizations. The traditional usability tests do not fully cover the chatbots characteristics and new methods must be created. This paper will create an evaluation model based on chatbots and theories about usability testing and apply the evaluating method to three commercial chatbots and their interaction with a user. The result shows that the evaluation model in some ways was successful and fulfilled its purpose while further research and development is necessary for the model to perform as desired.