Goals of this study are to set up the frame-work for analyzing residential buildings using the functional scenarios method and to tests the applicability of the method on large scale projects. The metrics for the analysis are based on guidelines for designing spaces that promote healthy aging. In addition, the study was providing an opportunity to developing and refined the method. The result of the analysis determines that the functional scenarios method is applicable to large scale buildings as effectively as smalls scale buildings; design configurations can be extracted from the results of the analysis to inform future designs. The limitations of the analysis are due to the available resources. Opportunities for continued work include 1) developing standard ways of representing the results of the analysis; and 2) developing a systematic approach for extracting design configurations based on the research questions asked.

Detta dokument presenterar implementeringen av ett rekommendationssystem för tjänstebokningssidan Boka.se. Rekommendationssystem omfattar mjukvaruverktyg och teknik för att generera förslag till en användare enligt deras preferenser och förekommer ofta på e-handelssidor. Baserat på användarens feedback kan det föreslagna rekommendationssystemet generera förslag för tjänster som passar dem. Det här dokumentet ger en översikt över rekommendationssystem och visar implementeringen av ett user-based collaborative filtering system, baserat på en data som tillhandahålls av tjänstbokningssidan Boka.se. Den beskriver också olika fallgropar och begränsningar för att skapa ett rekommendationssystem baserat på data som inte har några identifierande attribut för varken användare eller objekt.

群播技術乃是一種應用在Internet上的資料傳遞技術，其特點是可允許一個來源同時對多個接收端傳遞相同的資料，群播應用散見於如多方會議、財經資訊的推播、IPTV中的廣播電視與分散式互動模擬等。僅管群播應用發展迅速, 但大多數的商用服務架構仍以電信運營商或內容提供商為群播來源，而終端用戶為接收端。本論文嘗試探討以終端用戶端為群播來源，並以此模式從資訊消費的價值鏈中探討其市場的接收度、服務部署的可行性與獲利模式，同時亦將針對目前已提供類似服務模式的業者個案作一比較，希望藉此進一步瞭解隱含其中的創新商業模式與機會。 / In current Internet communication architecture, most of the applications are built upon the unicast model which means there’s a dedicate communication channel between an information source (server) and a receiver (client). One of the challenges of scaling applications based on a unicast model is that both processing overhead at source and bandwidth consumption in the network are proportional to the number of receivers that interested in the information. The advent of IP multicast is thus providing an alternative approach to address the technical issues and scale up the deployment of applications, for example, multiple-party conferencing, info-casting, IP television, grid computing, and so on. In most of the commercial IP networks that offer IP multicasting services today are in a centralized architecture, that is, multicasting sources are provisioned by service provider or content providers, end-users (or subscribers) are receivers that passively consume the information. However, as digital contents sharing is getting popular and the business is getting market traction, there’s a potential opportunity for deploying multicasting services where end-users are acting as multicast sources and share the contents with other end-users (receivers). This paper will propose a business model, or an end-user-based multicasting service, where end-user is encouraged to be a multicasting source and sharing the information with the members within a community of interest. An end-user-based multicasting service, where the end-user is acting as multicast information source, is not yet popular in the commercial networks. However, given that digital content sharing portal on Internet, including YouTube, MySpace and Joost, are gaining market momentum in terms of traffic volume, content diversity and eye-ball duration, end-users are no longer passively receiving the information in an on-demand manner, multicast technologies allow end-user to push contents at the advantages of real-time and network bandwidth saving. Such advantages become the incentives for end-users, and even service and content providers, to embrace multicast technology as an alternative to unicast approach. Based on the observations described above, an end-user-based multicasting service would no longer exist in experimental network, but become the mainstream communication mechanism, as well as unicast, and being a source of profitability. Regarding to this model, five issues from different aspects are presented by asking the following: 1. What are the opportunities for end-user? 2. What are the opportunities for service provider? 3. What are the opportunities for content provider? 4. How to achieve a pricing scheme with fairness and incentive. 5. The strategies of market development and service deployment. This paper will first review the industry background and related multicast technologies include: 1. IGMPv2/v3 2. PIM/SSM 3. MSDP Furthermore, a typical architecture of multicasting network is given for a better illustration to the service deployment, and, for interests of network and service planning. The value-chain associated to this business model includes three major members, or stakeholders: 1. End-users: the information receivers that consuming the information, and also the sources, that co-developing or re-producing the contents. 2. Service provider: the infrastructure provider where multicasting services are based on. It can be incumbent or competitive Internet service providers. A multicasting infrastructure does not only pertain to the functions from a networking perspective, but also from a service perspective, for example, offering a security infrastructure that facilitates the membership management and a admission control mechanism to manage the overall quality of service. 3. Content provider: the major contributor, other than end-user, to multicasting contents. One of the differentiations, as described in this paper, from end-user is that content provider owns a more systematic content creation process, a more strict enforcement of content protection, and a billing system to effectively track the real usages of contents. As analyzed in this paper, each member on this value-chain has both direct and indirect influences to the success to this model whereby business opportunities are also embedded. The innovation of the model proposed in this paper is primarily from the differentiation to current business model. There are five sources of innovation that our model is mapped and elaborated include: 1. Knowledge structure 2. Industry structure 3. Capabilities to lead the design 4. Market requirements 5. Industry cycle To maintain the market momentum, as described in this paper, it’s crucial that all members in the value-chain to share and jointly define the values, rather than the traditional way where values are solely defined by the enterprise or supplier. The essence of value joint-development can be described by the following characteristics: 1. Communication 2. Experience accessibility 3. Risk assessment 4. Transparency The above nine dimensions are used in the analysis of case study and the findings to the first three issues presented. To facilitate the exploration of a feasible pricing scheme, this paper will review related researches on pricing by categorizing the following as the cost drivers to a multicasting service: 1. Information stream characteristics, for example, data-rate in bits per second. 2. The placement of multicast source and receivers in a network. 3. The scale of multicasting service, single-domain, i.e. confining to single network service provider, or cross-domain. Based on the cost drivers, relevant researches spent on approximating the cost of a multicasting network and services include: 1. Single fixed center-rooted tree. 2. Multiple fixed center-rooted tree 3. Multiple dynamic center-rooted tree There are researches taken more factors into the consideration when approximating the cost, include network complexity, delivery delay and quality of service. This can be another interest of researches for business development. Based on the approximation outcomes, two pricing schemes that widely considered: flat-rate and usage-based. Both schemes are employed in the case study presented. The goal of developing a feasible pricing scheme, as indicated in this paper, should provide incentives to every member in the value-chain to achieve an efficient and reasonable usage of network resource in an accountable way. The last issue is exploring the market acceptance, elaborating the deployment strategies and opportunities of profitability based on this model. Three cases will be presented: Verizon Business, Bloomberg and Internet2/Abilene, which provide multicasting services at different market sectors: residential market, financial enterprise market and academic sector. The cases are compared by the service models, deployment strategies and business development, which is further illustrated and compared by information and cash flows. Finally, findings are consolidated from the case studies and conclusions are drawn from these findings. Suggestions are made and further research interests are also highlighted.

Fler och fler spel öppnas upp för användargenererat innehåll, vilket ofta resulterar i större mängder material än vad en ensam spelare kan utnyttja. Den unika spelare vill ta del av det som passar just dennes smak.Studien genomfördes med designforskning som metodval och med hjälp av denna metod skapades en artefakt. Med hjälp av den utvecklade artefakten, ett plattformspel som är både enkelt att förstå och spela, kunde en datamängd samlas in ifrån olika spelare. Data byggdes upp av att användarna efter varje slutförd nivå, explicit fick lämna sitt betyg på nivån i en skala mellan 1 och 5.Genom att introducera collaborative filtering och där låta användarens tidigare betyg jämföras med övriga användare kan en predicering av kommande betyg ges. Vid jämförelser av olika collaborative filtering-algoritmer kunde den mest lämpliga upptäckas och senare även användas.Resultaten visar att mer precisa uppskattningar av kommande betyg kan göras av collaborative filteringen än genom att använda nivåns medelbetyg och resultaten leder därför till slutsatsen att collaborative filtering kan ge skräddarsydda spelupplevelser för en unik användare och således förhöja dennes spelupplevelse. / Program: Systemarkitekturutbildningen

The objective of this thesis project focuses on designing and implementing a game portal for web-based motion games whilst achieving high usability. Many systems lack the creativ- ity to design web-usability with all the technical requirements and this study addresses this problem by implementing a front-end system that uses agile methodology with competitive analysis and consumes the back-end system with RESTful architecture by using AngularJS web application framework. Users were involved in the implementation process repetitively and the usability test was done with think aloud protocol and System Usability Scale which involves a questionnaire on paper. It was concluded that a clear and interactive navigation bar made it very useful for users to hover through the website. Having the notifications fixed on the upper right side of the navigation bar made them easily perceived by the users and including all user-related functions under username helped the user reach them easily. It was also concluded that modal view prevented page reloading by gathering users, attention at one point. Adding visual feedback functions such as highlighting the hovered or clicked link were appreciated by the users.

Hardware sizing has come to play an important role when designing and implementing business critical applications because it is crucial that the existing or defined business and application requirements are interpreted into an appropriate hardware configuration. If it is not done correctly, it may destabilize the environment which means interruptions and unplanned downtimes that in turn will cause business loosing not only vital revenue but also customer confidence in the process. This is one of the reasons for why hardware sizing has become a discipline of its own and as such, each combination of workload and hardware configuration is treated differently. Many application vendors have their own set of tools and recommendations to perform the sizing. Once the sizing is performed, the results can be mapped to hardware that is already benchmarked. This also means the hardware can be configured specially to support the application workload in question. It also implies that sizing is one of the major activities when creating a technical architecture where it is used to select the right hardware.   The purpose of this document is to perform a complete sizing exercise based on the requirements for a mission critical business application and then translate them into an appropriate hardware configuration. Furthermore, a set of sizing methodologies and tools are analyzed in detail as well in order to give an as vendor neutral view as possible. Specific requirements such as high availability, scalability and other important areas are also taken into consideration when designing and creating the hardware architecture.

The news landscape has changed during recent years because of the digitization. News can nowadays be found in both newspapers and on different sites online. The availability of the digital newspapers leads to competition among the news companies. To make the users stay on one specific platform for news, relevance is required in the content and oneway of creating relevance is through personalization, to tailor the content to each user. The focus of this thesis is therefore personalizing newspush notifications for a digital  newspaper and making them more relevant for users. The project was made in cooperation with VK Media, and their digital newspaper. The task in this thesis is to implement personalization of push notifications by building a recommendation system and to test the implemented system with data from VK. In order to perform the task, a dataset representing reading habits of VK’s users was extracted from their data warehouse. Then a user-based and content-based recommendation system was implemented in Python.The idea with the system is to recommend new articles that are sufficiently similar to one or more of the already read articles. Articles that may be liked by one of the most similar users should also be recommended. Finally, the system’s performance was evaluated with the data representing reading habits for VK’s users. The results show that the implemented system has better performance than the current solution without any personalization, when recommending a few articles to each user. The results from the evaluation also show that the more articles the users have read, the better predictions are possible to make. Thus, this thesis offers a first step towards meeting the expectations of more relevant content among VK’s users.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Timothy D. Keane / Camp Adventure, a summer camp for the physically disabled, has obtained a site for the future Camp Adventure Conference and Retreat Center at Perry Lake, Ozawkie, Kansas. The camp serves youth and adults with cerebral palsy and spina bifida. Past rental facilities have been far from adequate for the camp’s basic needs of accessibility and has led the camp to seek a specially designed permanent home. As a counselor for 9 years, I have experienced firsthand the barriers and frustrations with inadequate facilities. Seeking to find solutions to the camp’s specific needs, I found William H. Whyte’s research methods and environmental psychology studies fitting to discover human preference and experiential qualities. To understand the best methods of adaptation, a series of user based research methods have been conducted to gather user input. The campers understand, from daily experience, what it takes to make an element or activity accessible, and their guidance will inform the design of select program elements. User input is not only being gathered from the camp, but from educational sources at Kansas State University, practicing professionals at Ochsner Hare and Hare, and local government representatives. Collaboratively molding the site’s existing form, the campers accessibility needs, and a complex program has created an exciting and challenging project. The program consists of 24 elements and activities, many of which are not traditionally handicap friendly. In-depth design studies and application of the user input has created the form and experience of seven program elements. This book contains literature and precedent studies, user based research results, the master plan for the entire site, and design details of seven program elements. It is to be used by Camp Adventure as a guide to implementation of the camp design. It is the path for Camp Adventure to achieve their dream: a barrier free, fully accessible, adventure; Camp Adventure.

Value is the reason to conserve places. It is necessary to assess all values and meanings of cultural properties to provide right conservation decisions. Today, all cultural products are recognized as a part of heritage. In this context, users became one of the main sources in identification and valuation of cultural places. However, there is no commonly accepted method to assess user-ascribed values and integrate them to planning process. Hence, the aim of the study is to define a process to assess user-ascribed values in relation with conservation decision-making process. The study evaluates two indicators to define the process. In the first one, the study evaluates multi-criteria decision analysis methods to define a thinking approach to integrate values to decision-making process and in the second one, evaluates the nature of users&amp / #8217 / valuations to identify data collection process. In this context, value assessment process is re-defined, by considering users valuations through problem solving thinking approach and a process is developed to assess user-ascribed values. The proposed process is examined with Tarsus case study. Conclusion of the study points out that, users are important sources in identification of cultural properties. In this context, problem solving thinking approach can provide a proper approach to integrate values to planning process and user-based data can be assessed through utilization of more than one method. The conclusion also clarifies the need for establishment of new definitions and tools to protect user-valued places.

Avui en dia, la música està esbiaixada cap al consum d'alguns artistes molt populars. Per exemple, el 2007 només l'1% de totes les cançons en format digital va representar el 80% de les vendes. De la mateixa manera, només 1.000 àlbums varen representar el 50% de totes les vendes, i el 80% de tots els àlbums venuts es varen comprar menys de 100 vegades. Es clar que hi ha una necessitat per tal d'ajudar a les persones a filtrar, descobrir, personalitzar i recomanar música, a partir de l'enorme quantitat de contingut musical disponible. Els algorismes de recomanació de música actuals intenten predir amb precisió el que els usuaris demanen escoltar. Tanmateix, molt sovint aquests algoritmes tendeixen a recomanar artistes famosos, o coneguts d'avantmà per l'usuari. Això fa que disminueixi l'eficàcia i utilitat de les recomanacions, ja que aquests algorismes es centren bàsicament en millorar la precisió de les recomanacions. És a dir, tracten de fer prediccions exactes sobre el que un usuari pugui escoltar o comprar, independentment de quant útils siguin les recomanacions generades. En aquesta tesi destaquem la importància que l'usuari valori les recomanacions rebudes. Per aquesta raó modelem la corba de popularitat dels artistes, per tal de poder recomanar música interessant i desconeguda per l'usuari. Les principals contribucions d'aquesta tesi són: (i) un nou enfocament basat en l'anàlisi de xarxes complexes i la popularitat dels productes, aplicada als sistemes de recomanació, (ii) una avaluació centrada en l'usuari, que mesura la importància i la desconeixença de les recomanacions, i (iii) dos prototips que implementen la idees derivades de la tasca teòrica. Els resultats obtinguts tenen una clara implicació per aquells sistemes de recomanació que ajuden a l'usuari a explorar i descobrir continguts que els pugui agradar. / Actualmente, el consumo de música está sesgada hacia algunos artistas muy populares. Por ejemplo, en el año 2007 sólo el 1% de todas las canciones en formato digital representaron el 80% de las ventas. De igual modo, únicamente 1.000 álbumes representaron el 50% de todas las ventas, y el 80% de todos los álbumes vendidos se compraron menos de 100 veces. Existe, pues, una necesidad de ayudar a los usuarios a filtrar, descubrir, personalizar y recomendar música a partir de la enorme cantidad de contenido musical existente. Los algoritmos de recomendación musical existentes intentan predecir con precisión lo que la gente quiere escuchar. Sin embargo, muy a menudo estos algoritmos tienden a recomendar o bien artistas famosos, o bien artistas ya conocidos de antemano por el usuario.Esto disminuye la eficacia y la utilidad de las recomendaciones, ya que estos algoritmos se centran en mejorar la precisión de las recomendaciones. Con lo cuál, tratan de predecir lo que un usuario pudiera escuchar o comprar, independientemente de lo útiles que sean las recomendaciones generadas. En este sentido, la tesis destaca la importancia de que el usuario valore las recomendaciones propuestas. Para ello, modelamos la curva de popularidad de los artistas con el fin de recomendar música interesante y, a la vez, desconocida para el usuario.Las principales contribuciones de esta tesis son: (i) un nuevo enfoque basado en el análisis de redes complejas y la popularidad de los productos, aplicada a los sistemas de recomendación,(ii) una evaluación centrada en el usuario que mide la calidad y la novedad de las recomendaciones, y (iii) dos prototipos que implementan las ideas derivadas de la labor teórica. Los resultados obtenidos tienen importantes implicaciones para los sistemas de recomendación que ayudan al usuario a explorar y descubrir contenidos que le puedan gustar. / Music consumption is biased towards a few popular artists. For instance, in 2007 only 1% of all digital tracks accounted for 80% of all sales. Similarly, 1,000 albums accounted for 50% of all album sales, and 80% of all albums sold were purchased less than 100 times. There is a need to assist people to filter, discover, personalise and recommend from the huge amount of music content available along the Long Tail.Current music recommendation algorithms try to accurately predict what people demand to listen to. However, quite often these algorithms tend to recommend popular -or well-known to the user- music, decreasing the effectiveness of the recommendations. These approaches focus on improving the accuracy of the recommendations. That is, try to make accurate predictions about what a user could listen to, or buy next, independently of how useful to the user could be the provided recommendations. In this Thesis we stress the importance of the user's perceived quality of the recommendations. We model the Long Tail curve of artist popularity to predict -potentially- interesting and unknown music, hidden in the tail of the popularity curve. Effective recommendation systems should promote novel and relevant material (non-obvious recommendations), taken primarily from the tail of a popularity distribution. The main contributions of this Thesis are: (i) a novel network-based approach for recommender systems, based on the analysis of the item (or user) similarity graph, and the popularity of the items, (ii) a user-centric evaluation that measures the user's relevance and novelty of the recommendations, and (iii) two prototype systems that implement the ideas derived from the theoretical work. Our findings have significant implications for recommender systems that assist users to explore the Long Tail, digging for content they might like.