Purpose of this study was to determine feasibility of an information system that enables remote assistance between caretakers and elderly people suffering from dementia in a smart kitchen environment. Such system could alleviate stress experienced by caretakers by enabling provisioning of care giving between any combination of informal and formal caretakers, and by increasing mobility of caretakers. Second research problem was to evaluate benefits and drawbacks of using workflow technology to model cooking activities as workflow process models in smart kitchen environment. The research was conducted following the design science research framework. Scenario-based method and literature review were used to determine functional and technical requirements for the designed system. Quality function deployment method was used to choose technical solutions to be implemented. The designed system was evaluated by conducting a pilot test that is comparable to alpha test in software industry. Two external test participants evaluated the design following formative usability study guidelines. The pilot test confirmed that designed information system is feasible to be built from technical perspective. The most significant benefit of using workflow technology is ability to model and customize important daily activities such as preparing own meals to match individual needs of users and changing nature dementia. The most significant drawback of using workflow technology is demandingness of creating the models. The results of this study provide technical confirmation on ability to construct a supporting system for remote guidance of cooking activities. Also the study confirms that workflow technology is an viable candidate for powering such system.

Viimeisen vuosikymmenen aikana tutkijat ovat alkaneet tutkia kansainvälistymisen yhtä uusimmista ilmiöistä, eli Born Global -yrityksiä. Nämä alkuvaiheesta saakka kansainvälistymiseen nopealla aikataululla pyrkivät yritykset ovat murtaneet vanhojen teorioiden kansainvälistymistapoja ja ottaneet lähtökohdikseen välittömät kotimaan ulkopuoliset tavoitteet. Yrityksen ominaisuudet jakautuvat selkeästi sisäisiin ja ulkoisiin ominaisuuksiin, joiden välisestä toiminnasta rakentuu yritys, jolla on mahdollisuudet nousta nopealla aikataululla kansainvälisille markkinoille. Varsinkin sisäisissä ominaisuuksissa korostuvat nopeasti erilaiset henkiset elementit, joiden avulla yrityksen perustamisessa mukana olevat henkilöt lähtevät muodostamaan yrityksen toimintaa. Nopeasti kansainvälistyvän yrityksen rakentumisesta voidaan tutkimuksen perusteella eristää tiettyjä avainasemaan nousevia ominaisuuksia, joiden avulla hahmotellaan eräänlainen korkean tason konsepti siitä, miten ohjelmistoalalla toimiva yritys kasvaa kansainväliseksi toimijaksi. Vaikka yksityiskohtaista mallia ei alalle tyypillisen monimuotoisuuden takia voida luoda, on luotu malli kuitenkin pohja, jolla voidaan tämäntyyppisten yritysten ajatella rakentuvan.

Business process reengineering (BPR) has been discussed over 20 years. Nowadays, social media is widely used by companies in doing business. It plays the role to influence business processes. This thesis aims to answer the question: “How does social media change the major business processes?” The prior research in the disciplines of BPR and social media is reviewed first. Based on the literature, a framework used to illustrate the influence of social media on business processes and degrees is developed. In the framework, four types of communication (firm-to-customer communication, customer-to-firm communication, internal-firm communication, and customer-to-customer communication) are discussed in four main business processes (marketing/sales, services, product, and personnel.) Finnair, because of its activity of using social media, is introduced in detail as an example. The story of Finnair using social media supports the framework. The relationship between BPR and social media is found that is medium.

Tämän tutkimuksen aiheena ovat ohjelmistoteollisuudessa toimivan yrittäjän ominaispiirteet. Tutkimuksen on tarkoitus tutkia, mitkä ovat ohjelmistoteollisuuden alan yrittäjien keskeisimpiä ja tyypillisimpiä ominaispiirteitä. Tutkimuksessa pyritään aluksi tunnistamaan kirjallisuudesta yrittäjien keskeisimpiä ja tyypillisimpiä ominaispiirteitä. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen viitekehys rakennetaan kirjallisuuskatsauksen perusteella. Yrittäjien ominaispiirteisiin syvennytään tutkimuksen empiirisessä osuudessa haastattelemalla ohjelmistoteollisuudessa toimivia yrittäjiä. Tutkimuksen aineisto kerätään kvalitatiivisten teemahaastattelujen avulla. Ohjelmistoteollisuudessa toimivista yrittäjistä on selkeästi tunnistettavissa yhteneviä ominaispiirteitä. Ohjelmistoteollisuus poikkeaa perinteisemmistä teollisuuden aloista huomattavasti, ja vaatii tästä syystä myös yrittäjältä tietynlaisia ominaispiirteitä. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen pohjalta luotu teoreettinen viitekehys yrittäjän ominaispiirteistä soveltui myös ohjelmistoteollisuudessa toimiviin yrittäjiin. Toisaalta painottuivat tietyt ominaispiirteet, kuten esimerkiksi riskinsietokyky ja epävarmuuden hallinta vahvasti ohjelmistoteollisuudessa toimivissa yrittäjissä. Ohjelmistoteollisuudessa toimivista yrittäjistä on tunnistettavissa selkeitä ja yhteneviä ominaispiirteitä. Näiden ominaispiirteiden tutkimus muodostaa tästä syystä perustellun jatkotutkimuskohteen. Jatkotutkimukseen suositellaan havaittujen ominaispiirteiden syvällisempää tutkimusta, esimerkiksi kognitiivisen psykologian näkökulmasta.

Software defects are a common problem, despite of decades of research on how to seek and destroy bugs. Software defects are not a mere nuisance, since they come with a very real cost to the industry and the users of software, leading to loss of millions of dollars, countless hours of work and even human lives. Thus there is a very real need to invent new ways to hunt down software defects. This thesis aims to answer questions concerning integration of modern software development pipeline and fuzzing, an effective fault-based testing technique with strong background in security and robustness testing. More specifically, this thesis seeks to find out how to integrate fuzz testing with continuous integration frameworks to lessen the redundancy in testing: fuzzing usually has its own, separate testing pipeline. Additionally this thesis looks into the possibility of automating generation of fuzzed unit tests using a tool that would use existing unit tests as the raw material for creating the tests to determine, if such approach could be feasible. This study consists of theoretical and empirical parts. The literature part explores software testing research for results relevant to this thesis, empirical part describes a prototype of unit test fuzzer developed for unit tests written in Python, and observations of relevant issues made during the development process while also describing experiences of how well test cases generated by the tool or manually could be introduced to the existing continuous integration workflow. Research method applied is design science. The findings show that creating the tool described is not as easy as it would first seem, listing issues large enough to motivate discontinuing the prototyping after first initial version. On the other hand, integrating fuzzing to a continuous integration based workflow seems to be a feasible idea, and automated test case generation is not the only way to create fault-based unit tests.

The aim of this thesis was to determine the execution times of different cryptographic algorithms in one of the hardware used in Asha families and compare the execution times between HW accelerated, OpenSSL and a company proprietary cryptographic library. Moreover, the motivation was to find out if the HW accelerated cryptographic function should be used when available due to execution time. Furthermore the aim was to find out if the transition to use OpenSSL is to be preferred in terms of the execution times over the company proprietary cryptographic library. In order to give wider perspective of the cryptography the thesis introduces a brief history of the cryptography. The following cryptographic functions are discussed in the thesis: hash functions, message authentication, symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic algorithms. The cryptographic algorithms are also examined from the embedded systems point of view. In addition of that the security of the embedded systems is discussed briefly in order to introduce the context where cryptographic functions are used. The other aim and the author’s personal motivation was to learn and deepen the knowledge of cryptographic algorithms, their usage and the issues to take into consideration when working with embedded devices. The research methods were a literature review and empirical research. The results supports hypothesis that it’s not always beneficial to use HW accelerated algorithms. The results surprised partially because the expectations were that HW accelerated execution would be much faster. Further investigations should be made in order to find the root cause for the results. Most of the algorithms were faster with OpenSSL in comparison to the company proprietary library and some of the HW accelerated algorithms. The performance is better in most of the crypto operations with OpenSSL than with the company proprietary crypto library. The thesis contributes the fact that no one should assume that it is obvious that the HW accelerated crypto operations are always faster. In many cases it is not significant in terms of performance, but in those cases where the performance is the critical issue the execution times should be measured rather than assumed.

Introduction: Digital technologies are increasingly being used to assist older people to live more independently and better lives. The rapid increase in ageing population requires and enforces the development of adaptive technological products and services to improve the quality of life for the elderly. ICT has a huge impact on healthcare from both perspectives of delivering and providing accessibility to healthcare for elderly living independently at homes. The usability issues remain major concern for older adults as a challenge in adopting ICT solutions and services. The purpose of this study was to analyse the importance, role and impacts of ICT on elderly health, identify challenges in slow adoption of solutions and to develop a framework for better interfaces that meets the diverse requirements of older adults due to differences in physical and cognitive abilities. Methodology: This research work presented the results of an interpretative research process that was applied to conduct literature review on relevant literature. The research work analysed the role and importance of using information and communication technology to support integrated healthcare services and independent living for the elderly population in remote, sparsely populated areas. The research work identified the importance of e-health, ambient intelligence, telemedicine, ubiquitous computing and smart homes in today’s digital world. The major constraints and challenges faced by older adults in using ICT effectively in the health sector was studied and a user adaptive interface was proposed as a solution to overcome some challenges faced by developers in developing health applications. To incorporate diverse user requirements, inclusive requirement design (for mobile interface) and universal design were discussed in the research work. Results: The main conclusions are that ICT offers lots of potentials to support independent and healthy living for older adults. Several applications and tools already exist, however they are not user friendly and convenient for older adults. The technology has changed the paradigm of health care from general health care to self-care and prevention. Mobile, interactive TV, interactive games and Internet are utilized to improve cognitive, functional and social skills of older people. Usability problems seem to be the major issue for older people in adopting the latest technology and successfully interacting with them. The age related cognitive abilities have a huge relevance on system design especially for older people. To incorporate the diverse needs of older adults for the purpose of developing universal design is challenging to developers. User adaptive interface and inclusive requirement design model are suitable to develop more user-friendly applications and technology for older adults. Several social and legal issues are encountered when deploying health care systems. The benefits offered by technologies should be balanced with the privacy concerns of the user by utilizing strong policies for medical record storage, access and mining process. Encrypted databases, role based access control and proper authentication mechanism can be implemented to ensure privacy of patients.

This study examines the communication and coordination among different parts of game engine. As games contain multiple co-operating processes, each of which handles a small part of whole game experience, game engines must handle the management of co-operation efficiently. The issue is that while the competitive and demanding game industry has hastened the development of game engines, the academic research has been lagging behind. This study aims to bridge the gap between industrial know-how and academic research by studying how game engines handle managing the processes and data that they require. The study uses coordination paradigm as the research viewpoint and focuses on finding the coordination model used in game engines. The target of the study is to understand how the coordination model is implemented in game engines. The study was conducted by following design science research, whereby both industrial know-how and academic literature are used in finding the coordination model and implementation method of it. The coordination model was first searched by studying existing models, but as those were proven inefficient in describing the overall theory, a new architectural theory was built. This new theory, called “Communication-oriented game engine architecture”, was then analysed against communication mechanisms used in open source game engines for verification. The result of the analysis indicates that the theory proposed in this thesis explains the common features among analysed game engines. Since the proposed architecture is based on existing and well-known event-based communication mechanism, the theory behind proposed architecture can be used to understand the design of game engines in respect to the design of other software.

Many studies have investigated social networks. So far little work has been done to explore the virtual identity construction in social network communities. The virtual identity that an individual constructed in the social network community may not be exactly same as his/her identity in the physical world. Using self-discrepancy theory and social capital theory as theoretical foundations, this paper reports a qualitative study by interviewing members of communities (or large groups) on one of the largest social network platforms in the world: QQ. The results of this study suggest that some people do indeed construct a virtual identity different from their identity in the physical world. Findings from this study reveal the complexity of virtual identity re-construction and people’s motivations to do so in social network communities. Theoretical contributions and implications for practice are described.

Digital watermarking has generally been used for copy-‭ ‬and copyright protection,‭ ‬authentication and,‭ ‬more recently,‭ ‬value-added services.‭ ‬It has been restricted to digital world but by developing methods which are able to read a watermark from a printed image with a camera phone would enable the watermark extraction to be free of time and place. The aim of this work was to compare print-cam robust watermarking methods and illustrate the problems that emerge when the watermarking methods are implemented on a camera phone.‭ ‬This was achieved by selecting three print-cam robust watermarking methods and implementing them on a camera phone.‭ ‬The robustness of the methods was tested and the results reported. The obtained results showed that some changes are required to make the earliest proposed watermarking methods work on a modern camera phone.‭ ‬The robustness of the methods was in line with the intended applications as well as camera phone specifications.