Examensarbetet har genomförts vid Högskolan i Skövde i samverkan med Nobia AB. Målet var att implementera ekodesignmetoder i Nobias befintliga designprocess och att genomföra en fallstudie på en kökslucka. Fallstudien genomfördes för att verifiera ekodesignprocessen och för att föreslå ett lämpligt material till en kökslucka. Under litteraturstudien undersöktes begrepp såsom hållbar utveckling, ekodesign och livscykel. Intervjuer genomfördes för att undersöka Nobias designprocess och för att identifiera aktiviteterna i varje fas i processen. Faserna var Idégenerering, Konceptutveckling, Produktutveckling och Industrialisering. Flera alternativa ekodesignmetoder studerades för att undersöka om de var lämpliga att implementera i Nobias befintliga designprocess, bland annat Statusanalys och olika Checklistor. De förväntade egenskaperna för ekodesignprocessen sammanställdes i en kravspecifikation. Ekodesignmetoderna som implementerades i Nobias befintliga designprocess resulterade i en ekodesignprocess, som bestod av Ekostrategihjul, Philips five fast, Jämförelsematris, Ekodesignportfolio, Miljöriskanalys och Scorecard. Fallstudien inleddes med skapandet av en kravspecifikation beträffande materialets förväntade egenskaper. De mest intressanta materialen var Medium Density Fibreboard, bambu och gran. Genom en analys av olika material ansågs gran vara det bästa materialet, eftersom det medförde minst utsläpp vid transport, tillgången är god samt är lokalt producerat. Det framkom att tillämpningen av ekodesign inom produktutveckling medför många fördelar, som till exempel en trivsam arbetsplats, motiverade medarbetare och en mer hållbar designprocess. En hållbar designprocess bidrar till att utveckla hållbara produkter, vilket bidrar till en bättre miljö. / The bachelor project has been carried out at the University of Skövde in collaboration with Nobia AB. The purpose of the project was to implement eco-design methods into the company’s existing design process and to accomplish a case study of a cabinet door. The purpose of the case study was to verify the proposed eco-design process and suggest a material for a cabinet door. Sustainable development, eco-design and lifecycle were studied during the literature study. Interviews were carried out to study the design process at Nobia and to identify the different activities in every phase of the process. The phases were Idea Generation, Concept Development, Product Development and Industrialization. Several eco-design methods were studied to assess their potential to be implemented into Nobia’s existing design process, for example Status Analysis and various Checklists. The expected characteristics of the eco-design process were compiled into a requirement specification. The methods which were implemented into Nobia’s existing design process resulted in an Eco-design process which consisted of Ekostrategihjul, Philips five fast, Jämförelsematris, Eco-design portfolio, Environmental Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Scorecard. The case study was initiated by compiling a requirement specification. The most promising materials were Medium Density Fibreboard, bamboo and fir. Through analysis of various materials fir was considered as the best material because of low levels of pollution during transportation, good access to the raw material and it is also locally manufactured. The results show that the use of eco-design within product development entails many advantages, such as, a pleasant place of work, motivated staff, and a more sustainable design process. A sustainable design process will contribute to the development of sustainable products, which entails a better environment.

Dans ce travail de recherche, nous nous intéressons à la question de la pérennité de l’usage des systèmes de gestion des connaissances (SGC) dans les entreprises. Les SGC sont ces environnements informatiques qui sont mis en place dans les entreprises pour mutualiser et construire l’expertise commune grâce aux collaborateurs. Le constat montre que, malgré la rigueur employée par les entreprises pour la mise en œuvre de ces SGC, le risque d’échec des initiatives de gestion des connaissances, notamment lié à l’acceptation de ces environnements par les utilisateurs professionnels ainsi qu’à leur usage continu et durable, reste d’actualité. La persistance et l’ampleur de ce constat dans les entreprises a motivé notre intérêt d’apporter une contribution à cette question générale de recherche. Comme propositions de réponse à cette problématique, nous avons donc 1) dégagé à partir de l’état de l’art, quatre facettes qui sont requises pour favoriser l’usage pérenne d’une plateforme gérant la connaissance ; 2) proposé un modèle théorique de régulation mixte qui unifie des outils de stimulation pour l’autorégulation et des outils soutenant l’accompagnement au changement et qui permet la mise en œuvre continue des différents facteurs stimulants l’usage pérenne des SGC ; 3) proposé une méthodologie de conception, adaptée à ce modèle et basée sur les concepts Agile, qui intègre une méthode d’évaluation mixte de la satisfaction et de l’usage effectif ainsi que des outils d’IHM pour l’exécution des différentes itérations de notre méthodologie ; 4) implémenté la méthodologie en contexte réel, à la Société du Canal de Provence, ce qui nous a permis de tester sa faisabilité et de proposer des ajustements/recommandations génériques aux concepteurs pour son application en contexte. L’outil résultant de notre implémentation a reçu un accueil positif par les utilisateurs en termes de satisfaction et d’usages. / In this research, we are interested in the question of sustainability of the use of knowledge management systems (KMS) in companies. KMS are those IT environments that are set up in companies to share and build common expertise through collaborators. Findings show that, despite the rigor employed by companies in the implementation of these KMS, the risk of knowledge management initiatives being unsuccessful, particularly related to the acceptance and continuous use of these environments by users remains prevalent. The persistence of this fact in companies has motivated our interest to contribute to this general research question. As contributions to this problem, we have 1) identified from the state of the art, four facets that are required to promote the perennial use of a platform managing knowledge; 2) proposed a theoretical model of mixed regulation that unifies tools for self-regulation and tools to support change, and allows the continuous implementation of the various factors that stimulate the sustainable use of CMS; 3) proposed a design methodology, adapted to this model and based on the Agile concepts, which incorporates a mixed evaluation methodology of satisfaction and effective use as well as CHI tools for the completion of different iterations of our methodology; 4) implemented the methodology in real context at the Société du Canal de Provence, which allowed us to test its feasibility and propose generic adjustments / recommendations to designers for its application in context. The tool resulting from our implementation was positively received by the users in terms of satisfaction and usages.

Abstract: ***************************************************** There are several challenges to bridge when designing useable software for mobile devices. The information devices of tomorrow are going to be used in constantly changing contexts and they are going to be designed to enable a mass market for mobile communication. In the software industry the "time to market" factor, which sets firm deadlines for developers, is also important. In such a landscape of complexities is it very important to have design methods that afford the work in an effective way without giving up the impact of potential user. This thesis is the outcome of twenty weeks? research in the field of mobile computational artefacts in relation to developing design methods that will help designers focus on real world use situations. I will examine the opportunity to use the Personas concept [Cooper, A. 1999] in relation to ethnography as a method to afford the design process. I point at how long term work with background field studies in various ways can afford the design process in specific projects and how the traditionally usability work mostly built up around scenario based tests can be helped of the same. I will base my analyses on empirical data from my research site, Symbian. The primary method in my research is participation and observations in the daily work within a design team consisting of eight people. I will show how they work with design today and which methodological directions I think should develop their design work in the future. My research question is, put simply, how background fieldwork and Personas can afford design work. I hope readers of this thesis will gain useful insights and ideas concerning developing design methods in a commercial context for wireless information devices. / Hur kan personas kopplas till etnografi för att göra designarbete mer kopplat till riktiga personer och situationer i verkliga livet.

A lot of children’s books in today’s society are meant to create diversity with a more including content but it often leads to a content full of stereotypes. The books become stigmatized rather than representative of the diversity in different people. This is an issue since children learn a lot from books even in the technological world we live in right now. That is why the book Pim & Purpurfolket was made. This is the master thesis by Louise Hannu, at Luleå University of Technology is about analyzing and defying the ongoing trend of stereotypical content in children’s literature, by using a norm creative approach. / I dagens samhälle finns det många böcker som är avsedda att skapa mångfald med ett mer inkluderande innehåll men detta leder ofta till ett innehåll fullt av stereotyper. Böckerna blir stigmatiserade snarare än representativa. Detta är ett stort problem då barn lär sig mycket via böcker, även i den teknologiska värld vi lever i just nu. Det är därför boken Pim & Purpurfolket gjordes. Detta examensarbete, skapat av Louise Hannu vid Luleå Tekniska Universitet, handlar om att analysera och trotsa den pågående, stereotypa trend inom barnens litterära värld genom att använda en normkreativ strategi.

This diploma thesis is focused on the design of a product family of portable veterinary x-ray generators. The thesis deals with the possibilities of using parameterization when designing products which are part of a product series. The main body of the thesis lies in the design of a parametric script which generates variations of portable veterinary x-ray generators depending on the size and position of the inner components. The outer surfaces are defined by algorithms from the input parameters. It is possible to alter the individual attributes (e.g. the progresion of curves, the dimensions of component parts and the proportions between the individual parts). The output from the parametric script is three size-variations of the product.

Engineering designers commonly make sequential information acquisition decisions such as selecting designs for performance evaluation, selecting information sources, deciding whom to communicate with in design teams, and deciding when to stop design exploration. There is significant literature on normative decision making for engineering design, however, there is a lack of descriptive modeling of how designers actually make information acquisition decisions. Such descriptive modeling is important for accurately modeling design decisions, identifying sources of inefficiencies, and improving the design process. To that end, the research objective of the dissertation is to understand how designers make sequential information acquisition decisions and identify models that provide the best description of a designer’s decisions strategies. For gaining this understanding, the research approach consists of a synthesis of descriptive theories from psychological and cognitive sciences, along with empirical evidence from behavioral experiments under different design situations. Statistical Bayesian inference is used to determine how well alternate descriptive decision models describe the experimental data. This approach quantifies a designer's decision strategies through posterior parameter estimation and Bayesian model comparison. <br><br>Two research studies, presented in this dissertation, focus on assessing the effects of monetary incentives, fixed budget, type of design space exploration, and the availability of system-wide information on information acquisition decisions. The first study presented in this dissertation investigates information acquisition by an individual designer when multiple information sources are available and the total budget is limited. The results suggest that the student subjects' decisions are better represented by the heuristic-based models than the expected utility(EU)-based models. <br>While the EU-based models result in better net payoff, the heuristic models used by the subjects generate better design performance. The results also indicate the potential for nudging designers' decisions towards maximizing the net payoff by setting the fixed budget at low values and providing monetary incentives proportional to the saved budget.<br><br>The second study investigates information acquisition through communication. The focus is on designers’ decisions about whom to communicate with, and how much to communicate when there is interdependence between subsystems being designed. This study analyzes team communication of NASA engineers at a mission design laboratory (MDL) as well as of engineering students designing a simplified automotive engine in an undergraduate classroom environment. The results indicate that the rate of interactions increases in response to the reduce in system-level design performance in both settings. Additionally, the following factors seem to positively influence communication decisions: the pairwise design interdependence, node-wise popularity (significant with NASA MDL engineers due to large team size), and pairwise reciprocity.<br><br>The dissertation work increases the knowledge about engineering design decision making in following aspects. First, individuals make information acquisition decisions using simple heuristics based on in-situ information such as available budget amount and present system performance.<br>The proposed multi-discipline approach proves helpful for describing heuristics analytically and inferring context-specific decision strategies using statistical Bayesian inference. This work has potential application in developing decision support tools for engineering design. Second, the comparison of communication patterns between student design teams and NASA MDL teams reveals that the engine experiment preserves some but not all of the communication patterns of interest. We find that the representativeness depends not on matching subjects, tasks, and context separately, but rather on the behavior that results from the interactions of these three dimensions. This work provides lessons for designing representative experiments in the future.

(in English): The diploma thesis deals with the use of design methods among Czech UX designers in the design of web and mobile applications. The aim of this work is to find out and critically describe how Czech UX designers use design methods in practice. The thesis analyse the design process of website, web and mobile applications, its various stages and procedures. The theoretical part of the thesis introduces the basic terminology of the User Experience field and current research in the field, with emphasis on relevant terms and processes that occur in design practice. This part of the thesis is based on data obtained in the practical part, according to which popular approaches, frameworks, processes and methodologies of the UX field will be identified and described on the basis of professional literature. In the research part, qualitative research will be carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with Czech User Experience designers, focused on the identification of methods, procedures and principles and ways of their usage. At the end of the thesis, the obtained data will be evaluated and it will be identified whether Czech designers in their practice adhere to academic approaches, or what existing and theoretically described methodologies and procedures their design process...

<p>Engineering engagement programs use service learning and community engagement pedagogies that require a real-world situated problem in which the community partners who experience those problems are integral to those spaces. Despite community partners being integral to engineering engagement programs, research on community partner perspectives is vastly unrepresented in literature Therefore, the goal of this work is to investigate engineering engagement programs from the perspective of the community partners by answering the research question: what meaning do community partners make of their experience in engineering engagement programs? This study describes a qualitative research inquiry in which interviews with three community partners from three different engineering engagement programs were conducted and analyzed for community partner meaning. Using a framework developed by Zittoun and Brinkmann for meaning making, this study presented several themes associated with pragmatic, semantic, and existential meanings made by community partners within this study (2012).</p><p>Findings from this study suggest implications for expansions of existing frameworks of constituents and components of engineering engagement programs, as well as potential opportunities to more deeply engaging community partners the assessment of student contributions and trajectories as a function of participation in EEPs. Additionally, findings from this study suggest an opportunity to investigate communication and thinking between students and community partners to better support the experience of the community partner (and potentially, the learning of the students). Lastly, findings from this study suggest that participation in EEPs presents the opportunity for community partners to learn by doing which can be more deeply investigated to begin addressing the gap in the literature associated with community partners in research on engineering engagement spaces.</p>

Touch-based interactions have been of interest within interaction design, as they can communicate large quantities of information about materials, systems, and impact affective states. This dissertation outlines the process of developing a design method to aid designers in honing their somatic sensibilities to engage in interactions of caring touch through touch-based interactions and explorations. By utilizing a somatics-based research through design process, I performed first-person explorations of qualities of gentle and caring gestures of touch and correspondence. Correspondence refers to the moments of intimate connection with a system where the feedback is experienced as an extension of one’s body. This first-person exploration process included various estrangement exercises, explorations of touch, material affordances, and correspondence. The findings from the first-person explorations became the basis of the sensitization toolkit and method, which was later evaluated through the use of workshops with participants with knowledge of soma design. The contribution of this dissertation is threefold. Firstly by offering an accessible design method for sensitizing designers to interactions of caring touch and to further explore qualities of touch to inform multisensory design outcomes. Secondly, during the workshop, it was shown to elicit care, it is important to orchestrate small disruptions in the flow of correspondence. Lastly, by suggesting the use of subtle disruptions in correspondence as a way for designers to develop their somatic sensibilities and pique curiosity, and in turn possibly inspire new interactions and designs. / Beröringsbaserade interaktioner har varit av intresse inom interaktionsdesign, eftersom de kan kommunicera stora mängder information om material, system, och påverka känslomässiga tillstånd. Denna uppsats beskriver utvecklingsprocessen av en designmetod för att hjälpa designers att utveckla sin somatiska känslighet för att engagera sig i interaktioner med omsorgsfull beröring genom beröringsbaserade interaktioner och utforskningar. Genom en somatics-baserad research through design-metodik, utförde jag förstapersonsutforskningar av kvaliteter av beröring och korrespondens. Med korrespondens menas ögonblick av intim kontakt med system där återkopplingen upplevs som en förlängning av ens kropp. Denna förstapersonsutforskning inkluderade fjärmande övningar, utforskningar av berörning, materiella kvaliteer, och korrespondens. Resultaten från dessa utforskningarna blev grunden för verktygslådan och metoden, som senare utvärderades genom workshops med deltagare som hade kunskap inom somadesign. Bidraget från denna avhandling är trefaldigt. För det första genom att bidra med en lättillgänglig designmetod för att göra designers medvetna om interaktioner av omsorgsfull beröring och att ytterligare utforska beröringskvaliteter för att informera multisensoriska designlösningar. För det andra visade det sig under workshopen att vid avsiktligt framkallande av omsorg är det viktigt att orkestera små störningar i korrespondens. Slutligen, föreslås användningen av subtila störningar i korrespondensen som ett sätt för designers att utveckla sin somatiska känslighet och väcka nyfikenhet, och genom det möjligen inspirera nya former av interaktioner och designs.

As we move towards a sustainable future, designing technology plays a key role. Over the last few decades, the role of design has been steadily expanding from a purely economic benefit for products to a discipline that contributes to positive change for humanity. While the recognition of this responsibility is growing, there is a knowledge gap for design practice. What is a contemporary design approach and how does it translate into practice? We briefly review three major design movements (human-centred design, participatory design, design for sustainability) and introduce the human-driven design approach, which integrates all three perspectives into the design of technology. To explore the gap between human-centred design theory and design practice, we reflect on three use cases. Finally, this paper provides insights into how human-driven design can be implemented in practice and presents four key issues that require action: Stakeholder management, faster horses, prototyping for disruptive scenarios and methods for sustainability.