Many women have negative feelings towards their genitals, and studies show that this may be due to misconceptions about how normal vaginas look and work. This study aimed to create a prototype for an education material about the female genitals, focusing on the information needs of women between the ages of 18-30. To do this, user research was conducted in the form of two semi-structured interviews and a survey of 112 participants. The result showed that young women wanted more information about various things, such as the menstrual cycle, hormones, diseases and hygiene. The survey also revealed that several of the participants had low faith in the female health care, and that many of them had avoided going to the gynaecologist at least once when they had experienced genital problems. Most women had at least one worry about their genitals, which could be anything from pain, fear of not being able to have children or not looking according to the norm. This was incorporated in a paper prototype of a suggested education website about the female genitals. As many women experienced negative feelings towards their genitals, this is an important area to keep investigating, to further increase genital health and wellbeing. / Är jag normal?

En utvärderande studie av digitala touchpoints i ett besöksflöde. Teorier som nyttjas i studien är mentala modeller, situerad kognition och externa reprepresentationer. I metodvalet utvärderas kontextuell design samt service walkthrough angående vilken metod som är mest lämplig.  Totalt deltog 15 testdeltagare i en uppgiftsbaserad testning med kontextuell design, service walkthrough med paus och service walkthrough utan paus. Resultatet visar att alla digitala touchpoints möter testdeltagarnas bild tillräckligt bra för att de ska klara den uppgiftsbaserade testningen. Efter detta följer en diskussion angående hur teorierna kan länkas till resultatet och med detta även hur flödet kan förbättras och vad man ska tänka på vid vidareutveckling av systemet.

The threat of global warming calls for a major transformation of the energy system in the coming century. A positive and effective outcome of the development and implementation of municipal energy concepts relies heavily on public participation. Based on user research through qualitative interviews and an online questionnaire in Germany, this paper presents design implications regarding digital participatory technology for municipal energy concepts. The findings include reduction of barriers to enable participation, encouragement of discussion and debate, monitoring the progress and providing feedback. The proposed implications aim to increase public participation for municipal energy concepts and motivate citizens towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Further work is needed to validate if the design implications entirely fulfill their purpose. / <p>Självständigt Examensarbete (Forskningsartikel)</p><p>Independent Master's Thesis (Research article)</p>

The societal problem regarding the housing shortage has made the housing market inaccessible. With the reduced number of rental apartments and longer housing queues, people face more challenges finding a suitable home. Swapping intermediaries have emerged over the years to facilitate the search process to swap apartments. However, tenants are still struggling to find apartments to swap with. Limited research has been conducted about tenants' experiences and perspectives regarding the swapping process. Through an exploratory approach, this study examines what problems tenants encounter during the swapping process. The research findings indicate several opportunity areas for improving and streamlining the swapping process. The made recommendations were regarding the search process, listing information, and apartment viewings. Further, to create an efficient market, the platform needs to consider thickness, overcome congestion, and make participation safe and simple. / Det samhälleliga problemet gällande bostadsbristen har medfört en oåtkomlig bostadsmarknad. Med minskade antalet hyresrätter samt längre bostadsköer står människor inför större utmaningar att hitta ett passande boende. För att underlätta bytesprocessen av hyresrätter har antalet bytesplattformar ökat under åren. Dock kämpar fortfarande många hyresgäster med att hitta en lägenhet att byta med. Begränsat antal studier har genomförts på hyresgäster gällande deras upplevelser samt perspektiv på själva bytesprocessen. Genom användande av en undersökande metod, undersökte denna studie vilka problem hyresgästerna stöter på under bytesprocessen av hyresrätter. Forskningsresultatet indikerade att flera möjligheter finns för att förbättra och effektivisera bytesprocessen. De rekommendationer som gjordes inkluderade sökprocessen, annonssidan, samt lägenhetsvisningar. Vidare, för att skapa en effektiv bytesmarknad, måste plattformen beakta tjocklek, övervinna trängsel, samt göra användandet säkert och enkelt.

This thesis project is exploring future smartwatch use within elderly care. The user-centered designing phase uses a design intervention approach, where design and research happen simultaneously.The research question is: “How can a smartwatch be used within the elderly care, based on the existing TES mobile phone app, and how can these interactions be designed as smartwatch features?”. The results are four iteratively explored design opportunities, presented as design propositions with concept sketches, and two prototypes.The main participants in the field studies and workshops are end-users, caregivers within the elderly home care and an elderly care center. The outcome shows they are positive towards an imagined future containing smartwatches as a work tool. They see advantages with the wearable and glanceable technology, like freed hands, less to carry and simpler interactions in comparison to a smart phone.The study also shows positive effects of using interaction design for a company’s design process, and exploration of new technology.

This thesis presents a user-centred approach to data visualisation through a design project in collaboration with Inter IKEA Älmhult. Interaction Design is often included at the end of visualisation processes, but how could Interaction Design be included to affect the entire design process? The design presented here shows how approaching complex datasets from user perspectives allows Interaction Designers to contextualise data and design interactions that empower users. This was done by designing a proof-of- concept visualisation that displayed an overview of Inter IKEA’s digital solution landscape. As a result of the design process, a discussion of governance, employee ethics, data management, and accountability was brought up. The implication of a user-centred visualisation design for companies is better awareness of democratic data access and more efficient internal processes. The implication for Interaction Design is a future design space that encompasses Data Visualisation, Interactive Visualisations, and Software Development Governance.

Video games have become the largest portion of the entertainment industry and everyday life of millions of players around the world. Considering games as cultural artifacts, it seems imperative to study both games and players to understand underlying psychological and behavioral implications of interacting with this medium, especially since video games are rich domains for occurrence of rich affective experiences annotated by and measurable via in-game behavior. This thesis is a presentation of a series of studies that attempt to model player perception and behavior as well as their psychosocial attributes in order to make sense of interrelations of these factors and implications the findings have for game designers and researchers. In separate studies including survey and in-game telemetry data of millions of players, we delve into reliable measures of player psychological need satisfaction, motivation and generational cohort and cross reference them with in-game behavioral patterns by presenting systemic frameworks for classification and regression. We introduce a measurement of perceived need satisfaction and discuss generational effects in playtime and motivation, present a robust prediction model for ordinally processed motivations and review classification techniques when it comes to playstyles derived from player choices. Additionally, social aspects of play, such as social influence and contagion as well as disruptive behavior, is discussed along with advanced statistical models to detect and explain them. / <p>Note: The papers are not included in the fulltext online</p><p>Vid tidpunkten för disputationen var följande delarbete opublicerat: delarbete I (manuskript).</p><p>At the time of the doctoral defence the following paper was unpublished: paper I (manuscript).</p>

No description available.

There is a saying that we should not attempt to fix what is not broken, but we cannot afford to stick tothat mindset if we want to be able to design products and services that matter to the user. We shouldbroaden our views, explore new things and see what we can learn from them and use that knowledge toexpand on our existing methods. In recent years there have been a lot of work regarding how normsinfluence us to act and feel in certain ways, what if the knowledge behind norms could be utilized withindesign? To answer this question a study was conducted where two so called norm creative methodswere tested in a series of focus groups to see what potential the methods held in regard to improvingexisting methods or serve as basis for the creation new methods within user research.

Personas are fictitious characters that represent the needs of the intended users, and scenarios complementing the personas describe how their needs can be met. The present doctoral thesis considers the usage of personas and scenarios and how they are used in system development projects. The study is motivated by the relative lack of empirical data on the persona method in actual use. The study was carried out in the context of a large international research project called Nepomuk and involved two conceptually dif­ferent field studies. On the one hand, field studies in user settings were conducted, which aimed at creating personas and scenarios, and for which a user-centered design approach was applied using partici­pant observation, contextual interviews, video brainstorming and proto­typing. On the other hand, a field study in the setting of the Nepomuk project itself was conducted, which aimed at observing how the per­sonas and scenarios were received and used in the project work. The work conducted in the project setting was a multi-sited ethnographic field study, which was documented through ethnographic writing. The project setting field study showed that the persona method was difficult to put into consistent use, and the support of persona advocates guiding usage would have been helpful. The method was used without much effort to communicate about the needs and desires of the intended users, but was less successful in compelling project members to use personas and scenarios during various design activities. The field study also revealed alternative usages of the method that can be supported and utilized. The contributions of the thesis include an account of the effect the storytelling aspect has on the creation as well as usage of personas and scenarios. Also, the essential elements of constructing personas and scenarios are discussed as well as the prerequisites for making personas and scenarios support the design process in system development projects. Lastly, the thesis describes how personas and scenarios can support the communication of user needs and desires to project members and stakeholders as well as support design activities in system development projects. / QC20100629