Background: The business support system has become a necessary tool for managing activities in any organization. Usability is a key area in realizing effectiveness and ensuring users to properly interact with the systems. Still, today, many systems fail in key areas such as gaining the acceptance of the end users. To understand how the systems in use are perceived by its end users is suggested to be a needed key capability to be successful. Aim: To assess perceived usability in three generations business support systems. This knowledge is further to be compared and connected to length of employment and how that factor affects perceived usability and preference to a specific system. Methodology: The study assumes a positivistic position based on a deductive approach. A quantitative strategy was assumed in order to support evidence connected to the three case systems, which were further contrasted by a comparative design. Empirical findings were based on self-completion questionnaires responded by fifty-nine employees of the retail division in a Nordic bank. Completions and results: Even if this study could not show evidence that length of employment affected which business support system an individual preferred in the case firm, it still had a significant effect on perceived usability in general. In general it was shown that respondents who had been employed for a longer time assessed the usability factors of the systems higher than the category of short time employees.

Context: Software supporting an enterprise’s business, also known as a business support system, needs to support the correlation of activities between actors as well as influence the activities based on knowledge about the value networks in which the enterprise acts. This can be supported with the help of intent-driven systems. The aim of intent-driven systems is to capture stakeholders’ intents and transform these into a form that enables computer processing of them. Only then are different machine actors able to negotiate with each other on behalf of their respective stakeholders and their intents, and suggest a mutually beneficial agreement. Objective: When building a business support system it is critical to separate the business model of the business support system itself from the business models used by the enterprise which is using the business support system. The core idea of intent-driven systems is the possibility to change behavior of the system itself, based on stakeholder intents. This requires a separation of concerns between the parts of the system used to execute the stakeholder business, and the parts which are used to design the business based on stakeholder intents. The business studio is a software that supports the realization of business models used by the enterprise by configuring the capabilities provided by the business support system. The aim is to find out how we can support the design of a business studio which is based on intent-driven systems. Method: We are using the design science framework as our research frame- work. During our design science study we have used the following research methods: systematic literature review, case study, quasi experiment, and action research. Results: We have produced two design artifacts as a start to be able to support the design of a business studio. These artifacts are the models and quasi-experiment in Chapter 3, and the action research in Chapter 4. The models found during the case study have proved to be a valuable artifact for the stakeholder. The results from the quasi-experiment and the action research are seen as new problem solving knowledge by the stakeholder. Conclusion: The synthesis shows a need for further research regarding semantic interchange of information, actor interaction in intent-driven systems, and the governance of intent-driven systems. / Professional Licentiate of Engineering Research School

Den teknik som används i vart moderna samhalle utvecklas konstant och likaså kraven for att användargranssnitten är effektiva och användarupplevelsen god. Ett användargränssnitt bestämmer på vilket sätt en användare interagerar med ett system eller en mjukvara, och användarupplevelsen definierar hur användaren upplever denna interaktion. Dessa benämns även som User Interface (UI) och User Experience (UX). Studiens syfte var att analysera den existerande implementationen av ett systems anvandargränssnitt, för att sedan föreslå förbättringar inom dess UI och UX. Förbättringsförslagen baserades på existerande forskning kring interaktion mellan användare och datorbaserade verktyg. I studien har kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder tillämpats för att besvara studiens två forskningsfrågor. Den första forskningsfrågan ”Vilka brister finns i den grafiska designen ur användarens perspektiv för den befintliga plattformen?” besvarades genom observationer och personliga intervjuer. Den andra forskningsfrågan ”Hur kan en förbättrad grafisk design se ut för den befintliga plattformen?” besvarades genom att ta fram en förbättrad utformning av den grafiska designen. Detta gjordes i form av en mockup som baserades på Normans design principer, Ware gestaltlagar och ISO-standard. Avgränsningen som gjordes var att analysera ett specifikt business support system och ett antal arbetsuppgifter som är vanliga inom kundtjanst. Resultatet från observationen visade att majoriteten av testanvändarna hade svårigheter med att utföra uppgiften som berörde framfor allt komponenten ”adress” inom den utsatta tidsramen. Detta var även nagot som påtalades av respondenterna under intervjuerna. En av orsakerna till svårigheterna kunde kopplas till utformningen av den grafiska designen för den specifika funktionen. Detta var en av de förbattringar som sedan gjordes i förslagen av en ny design som presenterades i analysen. Med grund i observationerna och intervjuerna har studien visat vikten av ett användarvanligt anvädargranssnitt och god användarupplevelse. Men även att det ar möjligt att tillämpa den existerande teorin på ett modernt systems grafiska design. / The technology used in our modern society is constantly evolving and so are the requirements for an efficient and user-friendly user interface and user experience. A user interface decides the way a user interacts with a system or software, and the user experience defines how the user experiences this interaction. These are also called User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). The purpose of the study was to analyze the existing implementation of a system's user interface and suggest improvements within its UI and UX based on existing research on interaction between users and computer-based tools. In the study, quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied to answer the study's two research questions. The first research question "What are the shortcomings of the graphic design from the user's perspective for the existing platform?" was answered through observations and personal interviews. The second research question "How can an improved graphic design look like for the existing platform?" was answered by developing an improved implementation of the graphic design. This was done in the form of mockup’s based on Norman’s design principles, Ware gestalt laws and ISO-standard. The delimitation that was made was to analyze a specific business support system and several tasks that are common within customer services. The results from the observation demonstrated that most of the test users had especially difficult to perform the task which concerned the component “address” within the set time frame, and this was also something that was raised by the respondents during the interviews. One of the reasons for the difficulties could be linked to the graphic design for the specific function. This was one of the improvements that was later made in the new design proposal that was presented in the analysis. Based on the observations and interviews, the study has shown the importance of a user-friendly user interface and user experience, and that it is possible to apply the existing theory to a modern system's graphic design.