There is a huge need for information when you arrive as an immigrant in a new country. The purpose of the study is to find out recommendations for an information portal for newly arrived immigrants in Sweden. First, a survey was conducted to the webmasters of relevant authorities online resources regarding their ways of considering the needs of immigrant users. The answers showed that the webmasters of the official websites showed interest in considering the needs of immigrants in their websites by including pages in different languages, but most of them considered this to be difficult, expensive and problematic. To know more about a particular user group, a survey, interviews and observations have been done. A survey to newly arrived immigrants showed that their ICT skills are comparable to the average of Swedish citizens. In spite of differences within the immigrant group, like age, gender and cultural factors, they also shared common characteristics. Most of the immigrants trusted Swedish websites and Swedish authorities websites as reliable information resources more than websites in their mother-tongue. Test-persons were faced with the task of finding information about the possibility to borrow money for furniture for the first home in Sweden, our observations showed that very few of the test-persons managed to find their way to the correct authority webpage (Studiemedels-nämnden). Most test-persons tried by using many ways to search for the information, but all except two gave up. None of the test-persons managed to find the pages that were translated to their mother-tongue. The study points out the need for a systematical approach to web information for newly arrived immigrants to help them with their integration process and benefit from Swedish e-government services. A central multilingual portal website should be the heart of this program. This approach can be introduced in SFI schools given that all SFI schools are supplied with computers.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T16:28:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo2196_1.pdf: 3933488 bytes, checksum: 2b8d81786bbb15b4591a62e76baf3a78 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / A partir dos anos 1980 presenciamos o advento dos produtos digitalizados que, concebidos em progressão geométrica tornam-se cada vez mais imateriais, abrindo então as linhas de projeto de softwares. No design destes artefatos digitais imateriais, softwares, detectamos um forte vácuo projetual de ofertas por reuso de soluções e transferência de conhecimento. Verificamos, portanto, como os paradigmas projetuais baseados em padrões e em plataformas contribuem neste sentido, reduzindo tempo, riscos e custos de projeto através de um extensivo reuso de soluções e transferência de conhecimento. Nos estudos de caso, foram concebidos games e websites utilizando padrões e plataformas. Permitindo ilustrar claramente, na prática, como efetivamente eles contribuem ao design de artefatos digitais, atuando diretamente nas demandas supracitadas

This research makes a case for treating an electronic commerce web site as a social actor and argues that LT-enabled support for personalization systems and virtual communities has a significant impact on the perceived communication characteristics of a web site. This research studied the impact of two communication characteristics - adaptiveness and connectivity of a web site. Adaptiveness indicates the extent to which a web site adapts itself to support the needs of its customers whereas connectivity refers to the ability of a web site to link potential customers with other visitors. Further, synthesizing research from communication, media choice and technology adoption literatures, this thesis proposes social presence as the experiential construct and perceived usefulness as the utilitarian construct that will mediate the relationship between communication characteristics of a medium and customer loyalty. A survey and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the linkages proposed above. The survey showed that while adaptiveness impacted on both social presence and perceived usefulness, connectivity had an impact only on social presence and an insignificant impact on perceived usefulness. Social presence did not influence perceived usefulness while both social presence and perceived usefulness had a significant impact on customer loyalty. By filtering Amazon.com real-time, the lab experiment was conducted to specifically study the causal impact of a web site's support for personalization and virtual communities. Support for personalization had a strong impact on adaptiveness, whereas support for consumer reviews had strong effect on connectivity. Interestingly, support for personalization had a weaker, but significant effect on connectivity and support for consumer reviews had a similar effect on adaptiveness. Data from the experiment was also analyzed using mediation analyses as well as partial least square analysis to show that the general pattern of results observed were consistent across methods thus improving the confidence in the research model proposed. This research by proposing social presence as a crucial experiential predictor of customer loyalty has addressed an important gap that exists in our current understanding of web users' behavior. It also makes a key contribution by empirically showing that a web site's support for IT-enabled personalization and virtual communities do have a significant impact not only on the perceived communication characteristics, but also on customer loyalty through social presence and perceived usefulness. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

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One of the most important aspects of developing a large Web-based project is getting the correct requirements from the client. Time and money can be lost if the requirements are incomplete or inaccurate. Traditional Web design sources tend to gloss over this important activity. Software engineering is a mature field that can help in the quest for more complete and accurate requirement gathering. This paper explores the ways that traditional software engineering techniques can be applied to Web projects. A methodology is presented based on both existing and new techniques. Several experiments are conducted to determine the usefulness of each method in the methodology. The conclusion points out that active participants in the Web development field do perceive there to be a problem in requirement gathering. Most who tested the methodology found that it would be useful in addressing this problem.

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This thesis explores the role aesthetics plays in informational websites. In commercial interfaces, aesthetics (the perceived visual appeal and appropriateness of an object) has shown to correlate positively with many aspects of usability and emotional satisfaction. This thesis examines whether aesthetics has similar positive correlations in informational websites. Heuristics or guidelines for evaluating informational websites are developed based on empirical research and practitioner expertise. Categories for heuristic evaluation include usability, credibility, visual clarity, visual richness, and emotional satisfaction. A class of graduate students browsed three academic websites, evaluated them, and critiqued the heuristics. Results indicate that aesthetics does correlate with overall impression, usability, satisfaction, and credibility. The data also suggests that there are two dimensions of aesthetics: visual richness and visual clarity. Overall impression correlated with the average of all categories. The heuristics used in this pilot study are now ready to be tested on a larger population.

Submitted by Natalie Mendes (nataliermendes@gmail.com) on 2015-07-24T23:03:43Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTA??O JEFFERSON LIMA.pdf: 3300501 bytes, checksum: 8c06dd928d778a1d915ba4bcc49c535d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-24T23:03:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTA??O JEFFERSON LIMA.pdf: 3300501 bytes, checksum: 8c06dd928d778a1d915ba4bcc49c535d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-18 / This work was motivated by my interest in combining issues concerning planning principles applied to graphic - visual products (printed) and, especially , the chart - virtual products (Internet). The main issue was to start by understanding the projective bases of these media , the world of virtual sites or web sites . Faced with so many projective factors ( eg . , Aesthetic, ergonomic, technological ) to be considered in a good graphic - virtual product , certainly , it appears that some methodological knowledge is needed to be set up so much information on a single type product service . For this it was necessary to use a qualitative research approach with in- Tuito to describe, understand and explain the phenomena involved in such design practice , in order to produce sufficient and necessary to the foundation of the work knowledge, which was directed by descriptive and exploratory research , supported mainly by the use of literature and the field study , which respectively aim to recog - lher information or prior knowledge about the problem and understand the prag - matic form the object of study from the viewpoint the observer . This research sought to show that even with so many books already released on " interface design for the web" , the apparent ease with which you can design a product to WWW allows few understand web design as one of the specialties of Design, whose practice project , however, is essentially founded on the teachings of industrial Design . In short , this work is intended for all those who need to create graphical interfaces for web and not having a more intimate relationship with the design , they are advertising , computer engineers , design students at the academy freshmen , self-taught , etc. . whose premise rests on knowing and understanding the conceptual basis of the design of interfaces for web , whose practice is primarily founded on the teachings of Industrial Design. / Este trabalho foi motivado pelos meus interesses em aliar quest?es relativas aos princ?pios de planejamento aplicados a produtos gr?fico-visuais (Impressos) e, principalmente, a produtos gr?fico-virtuais (Internet). A quest?o principal foi come?ar por compreender as bases projetuais desses suportes, o mundo dos s?tios virtuais ou web sites. Diante de tantos fatores projetuais (p. ex., est?ticos, ergon?micos, tecnol?gicos) a serem considerados em um bom produto gr?fico-virtual, certamente, deduz-se que algum conhecimento metodol?gico se faz necess?rio haver a fim de configurar tantas informa??es num ?nico tipo de produto de servi?o. Para tanto se fez necess?rio ? utiliza??o de uma abordagem qualitativa na pesquisa com o intuito de descrever, compreender e explicar os fen?menos envolvidos em tal pr?tica projetual, com o intuito de se produzir conhecimentos suficientes e necess?rios ao embasamento do trabalho, o qual foi direcionado pela pesquisa descritiva e explorat?ria, amparada sobretudo pela utiliza??o da pesquisa bibliogr?fica e pelo estudo de campo, que respectivamente visam recolher informa??es ou conhecimentos pr?vios sobre o problema e compreender de forma pragm?tica o objeto de estudo do ponto de vista do observador. Tal pesquisa buscou evidenciar que mesmo diante de tantos livros j? lan?ados sobre o tema ?design de interfaces para web?, a aparente facilidade com que se consegue projetar um produto para web permite que poucos compreendam web design como uma das especialidades do Design, cuja pr?tica do projeto, por?m, ? essencialmente fundada nos ensinamentos de Desenho industrial. Em suma, este trabalho se destina a todos aqueles que precisam criar interfaces gr?ficas para web e que n?o possuem uma rela??o mais ?ntima com o design, sejam eles publicit?rios, engenheiros da computa??o, estudantes de design rec?m ingressos na academia, autodidatas, etc. cuja premissa repousa em conhecer e compreender as bases conceituais do design de interfaces para web, cuja pr?tica ? essencialmente fundada nos ensinamentos de Desenho industrial.