This thesis revolves  around the implementation and design of a social discovery web service called Go&Grow whose beta version was launched in september 2012. The aim of this study was to conduct a theoretical analysis of service design, putting it in comparison to other design disciplines, and finding key points in designing this web service. Another purpose was to start the implementation of the service using the web framework Django and further to evaluate different web techniques used to build such a system. Methods applied in this study were taken from literature describing the service design process.Based on these ndings, the identication of persons that should be involved in the design process was found. Also, prototypes of the design proposals were created to test user interaction and experience. The system has been implemented by using web techniques including Python and the Django framework, HTML, CSS, AJAX and JavaScript. Bothback-end as well as front-end development has been perfomed, though this thesis mainlyfocuses on the front-end aspects of implementation.The results of the study were a new design proposal of the web site as well as a launchedbeta version of the Go&Grow service.

The use of the World Wide Web (WWW) for political purposes, sometimes known as Cyberdemocracy, is growing rapidly. Web sites in particular have potential in improving people's participation in politics; which is one of the basic principles of democracy. However, currently very few studies have focussed on the usefulness and effectiveness of such web sites. This research, therefore, investigates the issue of web usability and proposes a framework for evaluating the usability of web sites particularly political web sites. It also highlights the potentials of the Internet technology as an effective political communication medium and emphasises the need for proper design, maintenance, and evaluation of web sites in order to improve their effectiveness. The research began with a literature search on web usability where seven major factors were identified namely Screen Appearance, Consistency, Accessibility, Navigation, Media Use, Interactivity, and Content - leading to the formation of a model called SCANMIC. Further exploration was conducted to elicit criteria relevant to each factor. The criteria and the model were then commented on and verified by experts in related fields. An online survey was carried out to identify the importance of these criteria from the perspectives of Internet users. Additional criteria which affect the usability of political web sites were also identified through interviews with frequent visitors of political web sites and web developers, and through content analysis of twenty political web sites in four different countries: Malaysia, United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. The findings from the usability criteria elicitation, expert reviews, survey and web content analysis resulted in a comprehensive list of web usability criteria, which formed the basis of the evaluation framework. The framework was based on a benchmarking approach; an approach that has proven its success in the business area but not widely used in web evaluation. It proposes eight cyclical steps for benchmarking web usability, including - decide what to benchmark, determine what to measure, identify who to benchmark against, identify who will benchmark, perform the benchmark, analyse data and determine gap, redesign, and monitor progress. The framework can be used to benchmark the overall usability of any types of web sites but is particularly suitable for political web sites. Furthermore, it can guide people with technical or non-technical background, who intend to benchmark the usability of their web sites against others. It is a very useful tool for an organisation to identify any gap which might exist between the usability of its web site and those of its competitors. The framework was tested for its applicability and practicality on several major political web sites in Malaysia, a developing country with a fast growth in terms of Internet access. The outcome of the testing was used to refine and finalise the framework. Research limitations are discussed in the last chapter and for each limitation, a suggestion for future studies is proposed. For example, there is an urgent need for a computerised tool to assist the benchmarking process. Testing the applicability of the benchmarking framework on other types of web sites also calls for future investigations. In addition, extending the applicability of the framework to include small displays technologies such as mobile phones and hand-held devices requires urgent attention.

Our employer, Gaddad, is a tattoo and piercing community that was created in 2006 with the basic idea to make it easier for people to get in touch with the tattoo artists and piercers from all over Sweden. With the homepage’s popularity at 2009 they decided to expand with the news page Inkzine. 2011 they contacted us with a plan to expand the homepage to Europe and then merge their two sites under the name Inkzine.The goal of this project was to create design suggestions for Gaddad / Inkzine that both the administration and the current users liked and would consider implementing on the website. In order to evaluate the current design and our suggestions we decided to use two questionnaires . The first questionnaire evaluated the currentdesign to provide us with information for the redesign. The second questionnaire evaluated our new suggestions.With these questionnaire we also carried out an analysis to see the differences in opinions among the users and also between the administration and the users.We also investigated other community homepages, company homepages that had been internationalized, and other tattoo homepages. To see what others had done to adapt to the international market and to investigate the design of tattoo homepages.We also did literary studies in redesign and internationalization, in order to obtain a theoretical foundation for our work.The results of the investigation of other homepages showed that in order to perform an internationalization of a web site no major changes to the looks were necessary, only linguistic changes. The results of our questionnairesshowed that users had in most cases put the majority of their votes on

This bachelor thesis dives into the topic of responsive images on the web. With more and more devices different devices accessing the web all with different conditions, serving the right image for each and every device is an important matter. This thesis looks into the topic and compares a few available techniques that potentially could solve this problem of providing the right image. This thesis will include a literature study as well as an experiment. When both these parts are done they will be presented, analyzed and summarized for the reader. The experiment is a performance benchmark of two different responsive image techniques, a non responsive image alternative is also tested in order to have something to evaluate the responsive image techniques with and see how big of a difference the techniques can make. Ultimately both responsive image techniques put through the experiment performed relatively even and both showed huge improvements in terms of performance over the non responsive alternative.

<p>This study is a thorough comparison between what people think about the website www.sl.se, which is a Swedish web-based travel planner for Stockholm metropolitan public transport (such as subways, busses and suburban trains), and how these views compares to the design of the actual website itself. The travel planner offers a wide range of functions and services for their targeted audience to find the fastest route between their current location and their destination. These functions are for example real time information on hold ups and malfunctions on different travel routes, and an interactive map of specific destinations so that the user can get a clear view of the area and nearby traffic stops. But how much does the average user care for these functions, and how often are they used on an average visit? What are the users’ motivations when they visit the site? Earlier research suggested that there are services and functions on this website that are useful and well crafted, but that some people may not be aware of. This report aims to find out whether it is possible that the web designers’ purpose for the site might differ from the actual users.The conclusion from this study showed us that SL got two different groups of users; the first group can be described as more open and will spend time to explore options and functions whenever it suits them. The second group however was there to use the travel planner and nothing else. We have come to this conclusion after analyzing each person’s answer that were given on the questionnaire and connected them to a number of theories.</p>

This study is a thorough comparison between what people think about the website www.sl.se, which is a Swedish web-based travel planner for Stockholm metropolitan public transport (such as subways, busses and suburban trains), and how these views compares to the design of the actual website itself. The travel planner offers a wide range of functions and services for their targeted audience to find the fastest route between their current location and their destination. These functions are for example real time information on hold ups and malfunctions on different travel routes, and an interactive map of specific destinations so that the user can get a clear view of the area and nearby traffic stops. But how much does the average user care for these functions, and how often are they used on an average visit? What are the users’ motivations when they visit the site? Earlier research suggested that there are services and functions on this website that are useful and well crafted, but that some people may not be aware of. This report aims to find out whether it is possible that the web designers’ purpose for the site might differ from the actual users.The conclusion from this study showed us that SL got two different groups of users; the first group can be described as more open and will spend time to explore options and functions whenever it suits them. The second group however was there to use the travel planner and nothing else. We have come to this conclusion after analyzing each person’s answer that were given on the questionnaire and connected them to a number of theories.

This thesis investigates how web agencys in Stockholm use, value and incoroprate the terms usability, user experience and interaction design in their work process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how creative professionals works with the notions of usability, user experience and interaction design with focus on the end user. Our definition of creative professionals is every employee at a web agency involved in the work process of developing digital artefacts in any capacity. We wanted to investigate how these notions are considered, consciously or unconsciously, during the workprocess. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three different web agencys with eight different employees. The result of the study has shown that all web agencys have a constant focus on the end-user during the entire development of digital artefacts towards their customers.This focus is kept during the whole process, from the development of a concept based on knowledge on both the customer and the end-users, until the release of the end-product. The work and design methods differs between the different web agencys in which way they incorporate end-users in the process.

This research uses two approaches, Kansei Engineering Modeling and Usability, to discuss how different web design elements of on-line radio influence the feelings and the usage of the web. This research also uses multidimensional method to demonstrate the relative relationship of the virtual websites built for this research, in order to understand the feelings and usage of the web sites in the unit of the whole website. In the discussion of Kansei Engineering, ¡§clear¡¨, ¡§neat¡¨ and ¡§friendly¡¨ feelings were found in the websites with menu in the top and the left side of the webpage. As for listen-on-line icon, it is better that the icon stands outside the menu. In the perceptual map, which discusses the websites in whole, indicates the obviousness of the listen-on-line icon separate the 8 websites into two, meaning it¡¦s a good discriminant of online radio websites. In the discussion of usability, ¡§activity and concert information¡¨ and ¡§the name of the song and the artist playing¡¨ are positive to the increment of learnability, efficiency, design quality, listening contentment, content variety and satisfaction as a whole. Independent listening window is positive to the increment of learnability and efficiency. The perceptual map of the 8 websites of the usability study, ¡§activity and concert information¡¨ and ¡§the name of the song and the artist playing¡¨ are the most important discriminant, which can be used to increase the usability of on-line radio websites. The findings of the research are only true under the circumstances that the assumption of linearity is being proved. Following research can try other statistical method in order to get results that are more accurate.

As the use of e-commerce websites continues to increase, and with cybercrime on the rise, trust in a website has become an important issue. Hence, online stores invest time, money and effort in their website design; they must design websites in a manner that creates a strong bond of trust between consumer and retailer. This thesis examines the relationship between web design features and trust while taking into consideration the cost of the items. Web design features were considered and classified into 5 dimensions: (1) Graphic Design, (2) Structural Design (3) Content Design (4) Social Cue Design and (5) Perceived Security. Three methods were used to study this relationship. The first was an online survey of the features of websites that generated trust. The survey specifically addressed the issue of item cost. The second was an experimental manipulation of web design features and item cost. Participants were asked to directly contrast four different website designs so to determine which features matter more to trust. Item cost was an explicit part of the manipulation, comparing the same websites promoting an expensive and an inexpensive item. The final task was a structured interview. Generally, it was found that different features did affect trust. Features that fell within the category of graphic design dimension were the least important while features classified as content design dimension were the most important. However, features from every category mattered. The effect of item price was more ambiguous, but some features mattered more for inexpensive items (a convenient layout for fast product selection) whereas other features tended to be more important for expensive items (i.e., product information and detail). This study also discovered (through the interview primarily) that interactivity in a website is a relatively new feature that has an affect on consumer trust. The type of interactivity varied as a function of item cost. / Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Electronic Commerce

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