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Reading old handwritten documents can be a real challenge for genealogists, especially as some documents in Sweden are written in the old German alphabet that is not used today. Much research has been done on how to enable computers to read old handwritten documents, but computers have so far not reached the level of reading that expert humans have. The focus seems to be on the computers reading the document with or without the help of human experts, with the aim of making the documents available in easily read form. I have, however, not found any research on how computers can help non-expert humans trying to read handwritten documents. In this project I have focused especially on beginning genealogists as reading gets easier with practice, and you need the help more in the beginning.By conducting interviews and observations with genealogists I established that reading is an issue and that there are many factors involved that make it difficult to read. Among the factors that make it difficult to read are handwriting, foreign alphabet, unknown words and old-fashioned spelling. I designed hi-fi prototypes that combine elements of online crossword-lexicons, encyclopedias and a visualization of the word in the German alphabet. After testing these on genealogists I could conclude that the prototypes made it possible for test subjects to identify words that they could not otherwise read. Seeing suggestions of words in the same alphabet as the source word makes it easier to identify the correct word. The prototypes and test texts contained a very limited amount of words and further research is needed concerning how to order and choose among word matches in a large lexicon to facilitate finding the correct word.

Smart clothing is far from being adopted by regular consumers and worn on a regular basis. Most developments can be found in specialized markets and all of the few consumer products so far have not been commercially successful. The first part of this thesis illustrates why this is the case and presents a few examples of concepts that show the potential of smart clothing in an everyday context.The second part shows my own practical research into the subject and the resulting design concept. It follows a user-centered design process with participatory design elements and ends in a concept proposing clothing that can change color and style on the go. The concept tries to support a sustainable lifestyle by slowing down fast fashion and democratizing fashion design. It makes it easy for the wearer to create her own styles and to change the style on the go to adjust to different situations or different moods. The end result of this thesis is a prototype that serves as a proof-of-concept.

This paper focuses on how to design a childrens game to help them realize that they can have a positive influence on the environment. We present a detailed description and analysis of our work process from brainstorming to the discussions after playtesting our prototype. Playing while learning has been the motivation of our work which is divided into three specific topics: How to involve the users in the design process, what type of social aspects exist in our game, and the importance of a feedback and reward system in the game. We look upon earlier research and examples within these three areas. We designed our game from a user centered perspective to make the users influence and encourage a discussion and awareness about environmental questions in a way that isnʼt negative. While designing our game we wanted to shed a positive light upon a serious issue and bring the environment into the topics of play and fun. In our research we discoverd that focusing on small subjects and tasks the children started to discuss the complex theme of the environment. We focus on the interaction with the children and using their influence to make decisions in our design process. Involving them helped us to see that there is not only one way of learning. In this game, the users learned from engagement and discussion, which ended up being the most important part of the game play.

This paper investigates how physical prototyping modules can be designed to facilitate for interactiondesigners to visualize their ideas early on in a design process. As technology is getting cheaper andeasier to use, it has opened up the possibility for others than just engineers to build with technology.We see technology being more and more used by designers for building prototypes and testing ideas.A setback with using technology is that it is time consuming and error occurs easily. By testing a set ofthree prototypes I will investigate the problems at hand for interaction designers and come up with adesign solution to facilitate their design process. I will come to conclusion about making the modulesflexible, functional and user friendly to meet the user’s demands.

Vi lever i spännande tider, där vi har tillgång till olika användargränssnitt som hjälper oss att kommunicera med andra människor i realtid, oavsett var i världen de befinner sig. Ricoh är ett globalt IT företag som har utvecklat ett kompakt videokonferenssystem för dessa ändamål som heter ”P3500M”. Utveckling av mjukvara för denna typ av teknologi kan medföra olika tekniska utmaningar. Samtidigt håller organisationer viktiga möten via videokonferens och ställer ofta höga krav på kvalitén. Att skapa ett användbart gränssnitt som beaktar alla dessa aspekter kan bli en utmanande uppgift. Denna studie syftar till att utveckla ett nytt konceptgränssnitt som effekti- viserar utveckling, samt användning av videokonferenssystem och P3500M används som en ut- gångspunkt. Genom att utnyttja framväxande webbaserade teknologier och riktlinjer från tidigare studier inom produktutveckling med användbarhet i fokus, har man i denna studie resulterat i skapandet av en designlösningen som heter ”Cloud Vision”. Studien föreslår ett nytt sätt att ut- veckla användbara gränssnitt för videokonferenssystem, genom utveckling av en central webbap- plikation som tillhandahåller gränssnittet. Med gränssnitt som kan appliceras på olika videokon- ferenssystem som en separat modul, oberoende av plattform, kan det bli lättare att underhålla utvecklingen och hålla fokus på användbarhetsperspektiven. / We live in exciting times, where we have access to different user interfaces that help us commu- nicate with other people in real-time, regardless of where they are in the world. Ricoh is a global IT company that has developed a compact videoconferencing system for these purposes, called ”P3500M”. Development of software for this type of technology can lead to various technical challenges. At the same time, organizations have important meetings through videoconferencing and often make high demands on the quality. To create a useful interface that takes all these aspects into account can be a challenging task. This study aims to develop a new concept interface that streamlines the development and use of videoconferencing systems, where P3500M is used as a starting point. By making use of emerging web technologies and guidelines from previous studies in product development with usability in mind, this study results in the creation of a new design called ”Cloud Vision”. The study proposes a new way to develop usable interfaces for videoconfe- rencing systems, through the development of a central web application that provides the interface. With interfaces that can be applied to various videoconferencing systems as a separate module, regardless of platform, it can be easier to maintain the development and keep focus on usability perspectives.