Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur den psykosociala arbetsmiljön hos svenska yrkesarbetare påverkades till följd av att de tvingats att arbeta hemifrån under covid-19-pandemin. Kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med nio deltagare, åtta kvinnor och en man i åldrarna 40-53 år, yrkesverksamma inom olika branscher i Sverige. Tematisk innehållsanalys resulterade i sex teman: Upplevelser av att arbeta hemifrån, Socialt stöd, Hälsa och välmående, Balans arbete –fritid, Arbetsgivarens roll och ansvar, samt Distansarbete som möjlighet. Studien visade att upplevelsen av att arbeta hemifrån påverkades av familjeoch bostadssituation, behov av social kontakt och arbetsuppgifternas karaktär, men var oberoende av bransch. Arbete hemifrån fungerade över förväntan, trots svårigheter med ergonomi, social isolering, zoomtrötthet och gränsdragning arbete-fritid. Deltagarna uppskattade flexibiliteten och ville gärna ha kvar möjligheten att arbeta hemifrån som ett alternativ även i framtiden. / The purpose of this study was to investigate how the psychosocial work environment of Swedish office workers was influenced as a result of their forced working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were held with nine participants: eight women and one man, aged 40-53 years, working within different work domains in Sweden. Thematic content analysis resulted in six themes: Experiences of working from home, Social support, Health and well-being, Work and life balance, Role of the employer, and Teleworking as an option. The study showed that the experience of working from home was influenced by family and housing situations, the need of social contacts and the character of the work content, but was independent of the work domain. Working from home was beyond expectations, though there were difficulties with ergonomics, social isolation, Zoom/MS-teams/Skype fatigue and managing work and life balance. The participants appreciated the flexibility and also wished to have the option of working from home in the future.

In response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, universities across the world moved coursework online and frequently used Zoom videotelephony software to replicate the experience of learning in a classroom. While this platform supported certain aspects of the traditional classroom, such as immediacy of responses and the facilitation of social interactions, learning via Zoom also differed in various ways from the familiar classroom experience. Although there has been considerable research on online learning, most studies focused on an asynchronous design and interaction. Thus, the understanding of learning within synchronous, video-mediated platforms, such as Zoom, is nascent. In this study, the data was derived from a focus group with eight university students from the United States that was conducted over Zoom. Using content analysis, the transcripts of the focus group's interaction yielded four themes: Zoom Challenges, Zoom Benefits, Faculty Proficiency, and Student Learning Experiences. Cameras, a distinguishing feature of Zoom, could strengthen engagement, yet they also heighten anxiety for some and fatigue for most users. However, when those challenges were mitigated and the benefits harnessed by faculty informed about how to support student learning, students experienced a deepened sense of connection to their peers, the faculty, and their learning. Family science educators who recognize the strengths and limitations of this platform have the opportunity to teach more effectively and support their students' socio-emotional learning and well-being.

Many companies implemented remote work procedures during the pandemic and for many organizations video meetings have since remained a staple. Remote working has enabled employees to be more flexible with their schedules and technical solutions such as live captioning has been identified as potentially enabling deaf/hard-of-hearing employees during meetings. However with new procedures comes concern about how we potentially can be affected by the changes. Some earlier research has shown that speech intelligibility can be improved by the inclusion of text support, but they also raised the possibility that it could have unwanted adverse effects on cognitive abilities (Zhong, Noud et al., 2022). This study was conducted with this focus, studying the effects of text support on specifically listening effort and comprehension during normal as well as adverse conditions (featuring added noise). To investigate the effects of text support a 2 (Noise, No Noise) x 2 (Text Support, No Text Support) design was used. The participants were shown 16 short videos simulating video meetings and after each video were asked to rate their perceived listening effort as well as a comprehension question about the contents of the discussion. Each of the four conditions were equally represented but the order of the specific video files and conditions that applied were randomised for each participant to mitigate undue effects. The results of the study indicate that the presence of captions decrease effort and raise comprehension in both normal and adverse conditions. Noise was found to strongly effect the listening effort required by participants but no significant effect was found upon comprehension. Some concerns regarding the ecological validity were identified during the course of the study such as only studying energetic noise and unrealistic presentation of captions. However the results are nonetheless believed to be generalizable in most regards and showcase that captions can have a positive influence during video meetings.

Cities involve several systems that work together as a network of urban relationships. These systems are in balance, and they work as a whole that articulates urban life. But what makes a city memorable and special are its events: those magical situations where the uniformity of the experience stops and something unique arise. Those are the moments where our memory is deeply engraved by a particular situation that will come back in our dreams and imaginative processes as an agent image. Four urban events — a space for film edition and writing, an urban stage, a footage archive and park, and a projection space- whose locations have been determined by a Cartesian game dictated by the Plan of Washington DC; and one common discipline, Film, will be the main focus of this research and a way of understanding the relations among Memory and its spaces, Architecture and Film in the City. Each event will respond to the particularities of its context by understanding first the sites and their relation with the city. These sites will be located in the four quadrants of Washington DC- NE, SE, SW and NW- and they will be consider as different communities that, by keeping their own idiosyncrasy, create one city. The question of urban scale as well as the concept of detail as part of an architectural cosmology will be present throughout the process of the thesis by the alternation of micro and macro analysis of each stage of the research. The question of scale will be present as well when comparing the four projects with their differences in shape and size. Characterization and monstrosity as architectural concepts will be incorporated into the project too, by understanding the role of Architecture in the city and what it wants to show or "monstrare" to its inhabitants. / Master of Architecture

Cette thèse présente BodyScape, un espace de conception prenant en compte l’engagement corporel de l’utilisateur dans l’interaction. BodyScape décrit la façon dont les utilisateurs coordonnent les mouvements de, et entre leurs membres, lorsqu’ils interagissent avec divers dispositifs d’entrée et entre plusieurs surfaces d’affichage. Il introduit une notation graphique pour l’analyse des techniques d’interaction en termes (1) d’assemblages de moteurs, qui accomplissent une tâche d’interaction atomique (assemblages de moteurs d’entrée), ou qui positionnent le corps pour percevoir les sorties du système (assemblages de moteurs de sortie); (2) de coordination des mouvements de ces assemblages de moteurs, relativement au corps de l’utilisateur ou à son environnement interactif.Nous avons appliqué BodyScape à : 1) la caractérisation du rôle du support dans l’étude de nouvelles interactions bimanuelles pour dispositifs mobiles; 2) l’analyse des effets de mouvements concurrents lorsque l’interaction et son support impliquent le même membre; et 3) la comparaison de douze techniques d’interaction multi-échelle afin d’évaluer le rôle du guidage et des interférences sur la performance.La caractérisation des interaction avec BodyScape clarifie le rôle du support des dispositifs d’interaction sur l’équilibre de l’utilisateur, et donc sur le confort d’utilisation et la performance qui en découlent. L’espace de conception permet aussi aux concepteurs d’interactions d’identifier des situations dans lesquelles des mouvements peuvent interférer entre eux et donc diminuer performance et confort. Enfin, BodyScape révèle les compromis à considérer a priori lors de la combinaison de plusieurs techniques d’interaction, permettant l’analyse et la génération de techniques d’interaction variées pour les environnements multi-surfaces.Plus généralement, cette thèse défend l’idée qu’en adoptant une approche centrée sur les fonctions corporelles engagées au cours de l’interaction, il est possible de maîtriser la complexité de la conception de techniques d’interaction dans les environnements multi-surfaces, mais aussi dans un cadre plus général. / This thesis introduces BodyScape, a body-centric framework that accounts for how users coordinate their movements within and across their own limbs in order to interact with a wide range of devices, across multiple surfaces. It introduces a graphical notation that describes interaction techniques in terms of (1) motor assemblies responsible for performing a control task (input motor assembly) or bringing the body into a position to visually perceive output (output motor assembly), and (2) the movement coordination of motor assemblies, relative to the body or fixed in the world, with respect to the interactive environment. This thesis applies BodyScape to 1) investigate the role of support in a set of novel bimanual interaction techniques for hand-held devices, 2) analyze the competing effect across multiple input movements, and 3) compare twelve pan-and-zoom techniques on a wall-sized display to determine the roles of guidance and interference on performance. Using BodyScape to characterize interaction clarifies the role of device support on the user's balance and subsequent comfort and performance. It allows designers to identify situations in which multiple body movements interfere with each other, with a corresponding decrease in performance. Finally, it highlights the trade-offs among different combinations of techniques, enabling the analysis and generation of a variety of multi-surface interaction techniques. I argue that including a body-centric perspective when defining interaction techniques is essential for addressing the combinatorial explosion of interactive devices in multi-surface environments.

Lorsque le système visuel est confronté à un nouvel environnement, un nombre trop important d’informations lui parvient en même temps. De façon précoce, avant tout mouvement oculaire, l’attention explore automatiquement la scène pour sélectionner les éléments d’intérêt. Des recherches récentes ont montré que cette exploration du champ visuel ne se faisait pas aléatoirement, mais se basait sur la saillance des éléments visuels. La saillance est une caractéristique qui émerge de la comparaison des éléments visuels entre eux, par exemple une fleur jaune dans un jardin de fleurs rouges va être considérée comme plus saillante que son voisinage. En permanence et de façon continue, une hiérarchie des éléments est établie à un niveau préattentif ; ils sont triés du plus au moins saillant, et l’attention se base sur cet organisation pour progresser dans le champ visuel. Les recherches présentées dans ce document avaient pour objectif d’investiguer les mécanismes de ce phénomène : quels sont les mécanismes cognitifs impliqués dans la progression de l’attention sur la base de la hiérarchie de la saillance ? Le présent document regroupe des articles qui cherchent à répondre à cette question grâce à des travaux en Psychologie expérimentale. Par ailleurs, de nombreux travaux de Psychologie, Neurophysiologie et Neuroimagerie se sont penchés sur le substrat neural de l’attention visuelle et ont révélé un ensemble de structures clés qui sous-tendraient les mécanismes responsables des fonctions attentionnelles. Cependant, vis-à-vis de la progression de l’attention sur la base de la saillance, seule une étude récente a pu apporter des indices quant au rôle de certaines voies visuelles. Les recherches présentées ici avaient donc également pour objectif de définir ces voies visuelles et les structures corticales et sous-corticales qui les composent, pour investiguer leurs rôles dans la hiérarchie de la saillance et la progression de l’attention. Le présent document regroupe des travaux qui ont exploré ces aspects par le biais de l’approche Psychophysique et Electroencéphalographique. / When confronted to a new environment, the visual system faces too much information intake and cannot process it all at once. Before any eye movement, early automatic attention explores the visual scene in order to select relevant items.Recent research revealed that the exploration of the visual scene is not a random process, but is based on the respective saliency of the items in the field. Salience is not a characteristic of an item per se but is emerging as a result of the comparison between an item and its visual neighborhood. For instance, a yellow flower in a garden of red flowers will be considered as more salient than the others in its visual neighborhood. Thus, a hierarchical ordering of the items is continuously established in a preattentive stage, and consists in a sorting of every element from the most to the least salient. Attention, then, relies on this hierarchy to progress in the visual field. The present dissertation had for objective to investigate the cognitive mechanisms involved in this phenomenon: what mechanisms support the salience-based progression of visual attention? Several papers are reported here and explored this question with experimental Psychology.Moreover, numerous works in Psychology, Neurophysiology and Neuroimaging took interest in the neural substrate of visual attention and revealed several key-structures that would subtend the mechanisms involved in attentional functions. However, when it comes to the salience-based progression of attention, only one study could bring cues of the involvement of certain visual pathways in this phenomenon. Another objective of the present dissertation was to define the cortical and sub-cortical structures that constitute those pathways, in order to explore their roles in the salience-base progression of attention. Several papers in the present report are investigating this aspect through Psychophysics and Electroencephalography studies.

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, large parts of Sweden's higher education, together with the rest of the world, needed to drasticallymake a switch to distance learning. This involved the use of new technology and video conferencing tools such as Zoom to reduce the virtual distance and get closer to each other without having to be close physically. Umeå University has also had to undergo this drastic transformation of their activities, with lectures, seminars and examinations which all had to suddenly be kept at a distance to reduce the spread of infection. This study consists of a quantitative survey which just over 600 teachers at Umeå University responded to, where their responses show that overall,they’ve had negative experiences where their workload has increased, job satisfaction has decreased and the interaction between the teachers and theirstudents has suffered. At the same time, they respond very positively about the quality of their digital tools and that they’re easy to use. Judging by the results and the answers of the survey, it can also be seen that even though teachers have been quick to adapt to the new distance-based reality, their way of teaching has notadapted in the same way which prevents full utilization of distance-basedtechnologies. All in all, it can be stated that the majority of those who responded to the survey give a picture that teachers prefer to keep their education in classrooms or lecture halls, to have a better interaction between teachers and students.

Diploma thesis examines the form of television market in the age of digitalized terrestrial broadcasting with regard to the extent to which there can be found genre innovations, wider scale of origin countries and the placement of its own or foreign programme premieres. For this purpose, it concentrates on eight new digital channels distributed in terrestrial network; available nationwide, not monothematic and having audience share of at least around one percent. In the theoretical part, there is briefly summarized the history of the digitalization process in the Czech Republic, there are profiles of examined TV channels and thesis also presents extinct or minor digital channels shortly. For research purpose, thesis uses quantitative analysis methodology; it allows to explore larger amount of materials and achieve the general knowledge. The results consist of the comparison between the eight channels in three categories, description of the evolution of programme in the course of the time compared to the first month of broadcasting and contextual contrast using partial analysis of broadcasting of main and then only analogue available channels . The major positive aspect of the new channels is a higher degree of ambiguity genre. However, U.S. still holds important role as origin country of the programmes.

Les vibrations aléatoires sont les sollicitations les plus représentatives à celles qui se trouvent dans l'environnement réel. Elles sont souvent rencontrées dans l'environnement de fonctionnement automobile, aéronautique, spatial, ferroviaire et d'autres. La particularité des vibrations aléatoires est l'utilisation de son analyse par fatigue. Grâce aux propriétés statistiques des signaux aléatoires que les méthodes spectrales permettent d'estimer la moyenne du dommage d'une façon efficace et économique mais avec certaines limitations. Une étude numérique sur un système électronique embarqué accompagnée des essais expérimentaux ont été mis en place dans cette thèse pour présenter une démarche complète d'une analyse spectrale des vibrations aléatoires. Une modélisation par éléments finis a été réalisée ainsi qu'une technique du 'zoom structural' en analyse spectrale des vibrations aléatoires a été proposée dans ce travail avec la présentation des équations de cette technique. Une application numérique a montré la validité de la technique proposée en appliquant une étude de l'endommagement par fatigue par l'approche temporelle et par l'approche spectrale. Les résultats numériques de cette application mènent à une estimation d'un temps à l'initiation de la fissure très proche du temps de défaillance observé dans les résultats des essais expérimentaux. Cette technique montre la performance et l'efficacité des méthodes spectrales dans l'estimation du dommage par fatigue aléatoire. Une étude de l'optimisation d'un système soumis aux sollicitations aléatoires a été développée. L'objectif de cette étude est de rechercher la conception optimale du système soumis aux vibrations aléatoires en posant des limitations sur le dommage qui en résulte. Ce dommage estimé par les méthodes spectrales de Dirlik et de Single Moment ne doit pas dépasser un dommage cible pour assurer la fiabilité du système étudié. / Random vibrations are the most representative excitations that can be found in the real environment. They are often encountered in the automotive, aeronautical, space, railway and other operating environments. The special feature of the random vibrations is their important role in damage fatigue analysis. The spectral methods allow to estimate efficiently and economically the mean of the damage using the statistical properties of the random signals. A numerical study on an embedded electronic system with experimental tests was set up in this thesis to present a complete spectral analysis of random vibrations methodology. A finite element model was performed as well as submodelling technique in spectral analysis of random vibrations with associated equations was proposed in this work. A numerical application has shown the validity of the proposed technique by applying the fatigue damage study using the time-domain approach and the spectral approach. The numerical results of this application lead to the estimation of a crack initiation time very close to the failure time observed in the experimental tests. This technique shows the performance and efficiency of spectral methods in the estimation of random fatigue damage. The optimization of a system subjected to random excitations has been developed in this work. The objective of this study is to retrieve the optimal design of the system subjected to random vibrations with limitations on the resulting damage. This damage estimated by Dirlik and Single Moment spectral methods must not exceed defined target damage in order to insure the reliability of the studied system.

This thesis introduces BodyScape, a body-centric framework that accounts for how users coordinate their movements within and across their own limbs in order to interact with a wide range of devices, across multiple surfaces. It introduces a graphical notation that describes interaction techniques in terms of (1) motor assemblies responsible for performing a control task (input motor assembly) or bringing the body into a position to visually perceive output (output motor assembly), and (2) the movement coordination of motor assemblies, relative to the body or fixed in the world, with respect to the interactive environment. This thesis applies BodyScape to 1) investigate the role of support in a set of novel bimanual interaction techniques for hand-held devices, 2) analyze the competing effect across multiple input movements, and 3) compare twelve pan-and-zoom techniques on a wall-sized display to determine the roles of guidance and interference on performance. Using BodyScape to characterize interaction clarifies the role of device support on the user's balance and subsequent comfort and performance. It allows designers to identify situations in which multiple body movements interfere with each other, with a corresponding decrease in performance. Finally, it highlights the trade-offs among different combinations of techniques, enabling the analysis and generation of a variety of multi-surface interaction techniques. I argue that including a body-centric perspective when defining interaction techniques is essential for addressing the combinatorial explosion of interactive devices in multi-surface environments.