Forskning om spelifiering är ett snabbt växande forskningsområde där många studier visar på positiva resultat. Spelifiering är en teknik som används då det är önskvärt att påverka beteenden hos människor. I denna studie undersöks huruvida spelifierande element kan motivera studenter att vara mer fokuserade på sina studier. Frågeställningen är på vilka sätt påverkas studenters koncentrationsförmåga genom användandet av spelifierande element i sina studier, och vilka är effekterna vid borttagande av elementen i studien? Genom ett experiment undersökte vi om de spelifierande elementen i applikationen Forest: Stay Focused är tillräckligt motiverande för deltagarna att hålla sig fokuserade på sina studier. Studien utfördes under två veckors tid. Tio deltagare deltog i studien, varav hälften fick börja med att studera med en timer utan spelifierande element och resterande fick använda applikationen med spelifierande element. Efter att deltagarna använt sig av den ena studietekniken i en vecka fick de använda den andra studietekniken under andra veckan. Detta för att undersöka effekterna på fokuset om de spelifierande elementen tas bort. Resultatet visar att deltagarna var lika fokuserade oavsett vilken studieteknik de använde sig av. Deltagarna tyckte inte att användandet av applikationen hjälpte dem ha bättre fokus jämfört timern, men de föredrog att använda den framför timern. Deltagarna uppvisade ingen förändring av deras fokus vid studierna när de spelifierande elementen togs bort, vilket kan bero på att de elementen var för få i applikationen eller att de inte fått använda sig av applikationen under en längre tid. Studiens ambivalenta resultat tyder på att vidare forskning inom det området behövs. Trots dessa resultat är vår slutsats att applikationens spelifierande element inte är tillräckligt motiverande för att förhindra studenter från att förlora fokus under sina studier. / Gamification is a rapidly expanding research area where many studies have shown positive results. Gamification is a technique used when it is desirable to influence human behaviors and this study examines if the elements of gamification can motivate students to be more focused on their studies. The question at issue is in which ways does the implementation of gamification affect the concentration levels of students during their studies, and what are the consequences of the removal of said gamification? Using an experiment, we investigated whether the gamification elements of the application Forest: Stay Focused were sufficient to motivate our participants to stay focused during their studies. The study was conducted over two weeks. Ten students participated in the study, half of which began to study with a timer without any gamified elements, and the rest were to use the application with gamified elements. After the students used one of the study techniques for one week, they were to use the other technique during the second week. The reasoning behind this was to investigate if there were to occur negative effects on the students focus if the gamified elements were removed. The results showed that the participants were equally focused no matter what study technique they used. The participants of the study did not think that the use of the application made them more focused compared to the timer, although they preferred to use the application over the timer. The participants showed no change in how focused they were during their studies when the gamified elements were removed, which may be due to too few gamified elements in the application or that the participants had not gotten used to the study technique of using the application. The study's ambivalent results indicate that further research in this area is needed. Despite these results, we conclude that the application's gamified elements are not sufficiently motivating to prevent students from losing focus during their studies.

As the power, utility, and prevalence of generative AI technologies continue to grow, the debate on whether and how designers should incorporate text-image models into the design process is gaining momentum. To ensure productivity, creativity, and human values, this project seeks to address design interaction and task allocation between designers, and generative AI models become essential. Explainability is a growing area of research, although many of the explanations to enhance interpretability and transparency in ML models target ML engineers rather than end users. This project investigates what kind of explanations the designers would need to communicate with the models successfully. Through a participatory design approach, this project resulted in some key findings regarding the creative nature of using natural language to express design, how experience using generative AI models affects how you use them, and how designers can benefit from recognizing the model as creative. The project resulted in two concepts for enhancing the user experience of prompt engineering, one targeting user behavior and the other improving explainability and transparency in image-generative AI models. / Styrkan, användbarheten och utbredningen av generativa AI-teknologier fortsätter att växa och debatten om huruvida designers bör integrera text-bildmodeller i designprocessen blir alltmer i focus. För att säkerställa produktivitet, kreativitet och mänskliga värden blir det väsentligt att fokusera på designaspekterna av interaktionen och uppgiftsfördelningen mellan designers och generativa AI-modeller. ”Explainability” är ett växande område inom AI forskning där många av förbättringarna av tolkningsbarhet och transparens i ML-modeller riktar sig till ML-ingenjörer snarare än slutanvändare. Detta projekt undersöker vilken typ av förklaringar designers skulle behöva för att framgångsrikt kommunicera med modellerna. Genom en användardeltagande designmetodik resulterade projektet i några viktiga slutsatser om den kreativa aspekten av att använda ”natural language” för att uttrycka design, hur erfarenhet av att använda generativa AI- modeller påverkar hur de används och hur designers kan dra nytta av att erkänna modellen som kreativ. Projektet resulterade i två koncept för att förbättra användarupplevelsen av ”prompt engineering,” ett som fokuserar på användarbeteende och ett annat som förbättrar förklarbarhet och transparens i bildgenerativa AI-modeller.

An important strategic question for companies today is how to recruit, motivate and retain employees. It is becoming more important to consider the incentive programs in the valuation process of companies. Recent studies show that employee stock option plans are more commonly used in Swedish companies than earlier. However, there are few studies about how employee stock options influence company performance and affect employees. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the awareness of what the introduction of an employee stock option plan means, both from a management perspective and from the employees’ perspective. There are many different kinds of stock option plans and the plans can vary in terms of type of options, time to expiry, exercise price and tax consequences. This study started with a pre-study of which types of employee stock option plans that are used in Swedish companies. A closer study was then carried out in four companies in different industries with different stock option plans. The motives for introducing employee stock option plans can be divided into five categories: personnel motives, incentive motives, salary motives, accounting motives and tax motives. The case studies show how motives for option plans can be dependent on different circumstances within the companies. Further, the study also shows that the consequences of the stock option plans varies according to factors such as motives, design of the stock option plan, share price performance and other context factors. Context factors that could have an effect are the company’s business, organisational structure, corporate culture and experiences from employee stock options in the industry, employees’ education and tax rules. The consequences for the company are also dependent on how the employees react to the options. To be able to estimate what an employee stock option plan means for the company, all these factors must be taken under consideration. Further one must take into account the costs for the stock options such as dilution effects, hedging costs, personnel costs and costs for designing the program. / <p>Rapportkod: LiU-Tek-Lic-2001:54.</p>

Most people today spend a large part of their days doing sedentary activities, such as working in front of a computer. Long hours of inactivity have a negative effect on the body, even in people who report an active lifestyle outside of their sedentary work environment. This negative effect can be counteracted by taking short pauses of activity with regular intervals during the day. However, despite the fact that the time and level of activity needed to gain these positive effects are small, most people still have a hard time taking these breaks, even when they know it is good for them. To help break this sedentary behavior the project therefore aimed to develop an exergame that increases the motivation to actually engage in active pauses on a regular basis, and to examine how such a game should be designed for an enjoyable experience. The developed game prototype was an explorative game with a set play time of two minutes per round, controlled by the player moving in front of a web camera. Evaluation with playtesters showed that the game did not lead to a particularly enjoyable experience, but possible improvements in terms of challenge, feedback, level design and immersion were identified.

In this paper, through the process of designing and building a collaborative virtual musical instrument I explore users' sense of resonance and agency in relation to technology. With technology’s constant acceleration leaving many feeling alienated, this paper attempts to investigate technology’s potential for creating more meaningful resonant relationships. I explored how co-operation and a sense of agency could be encouraged within a virtual musical instrument, how the interplay between the auditory and visual aspects of the instrument influenced users’ creativity, cooperation, and sense of agency, and used Hartmut Rosa’s theory on resonance as a tool to explore relationships within creativity and cooperation. Through a series of workshops, I tested prototypes of the virtual instrument controlled using midi interfaces, built using Unreal Engine and designed to require multiple users to operate. The instrument aim was to promote collaboration, have strong audio-visual congruence and to be intuitive to use while still allowing for more complex levels of expression. Through this process I gained valuable insight into the role of agency within successful creative collaboration, the complex interplay between the auditory and visual modes, the importance of mindset within collaboration and technology’s potential for encouraging resonance.

Denna rapport beskriver utvecklandet av ett bokningssystem för kursanmälningar utifrån användbarhet. I rapporten studeras, diskuteras och jämförs olika metoder och tekniker för utveckling av användbara system utifrån tidigare forskning. Metoderna implementeras sedan i samband med utvecklandet av bokningssystemet. För att utvärdera användbarheten av implementationen utförs sedan användartester med hjälp av testpersoner som får testa att navigera i systemet och lösa olika uppgifter. Resultatet från utvärderingen presenteras och diskuteras därefter.

Denna studie behandlar en undersökning kring hur olika inspelningsmetoder påverkar lyssnarens inlevelse i musiken. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten var termen Flow, som myntades av Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow kan beskrivas som en total inlevelse i en aktivitet. I bakgrundsmaterial refereras studier om flow i olika kontext, bland annat hur personlighet, omgivning samt läggning påverkar kapacitet för flow. I denna studie genomfördes en kvalitativ undersökning av fyra respondenters reaktion på två inspelningar av samma musikaliska stycke. Datainsamlingen genomfördes genom semistrukturerade intervjuer om respondenternas uppfattning av flow i relation till inspelningarna. Enligt svaren från respondenterna fanns det en tydligare synergi mellan instrumenten i Inspelning 1, vilket gjorde det lättare att leva sig in i stycket. Vidare forskning om hur diverse variabler hos individer och artefakter påverkar flow-stadiet bör bedrivas för att tydliggöra forskningsområdet. Detta genom att genomföra ett flertal kvalitativa studier med respondenter som har andra förutsättningar för flow, samt kvalitativa uppföljningsstudier.

This paper is a case study conducted at Malmo University with the purpose being to conceive ideas and innovative concepts in the future workplace using design fiction as a research strategy. Exploring current technological trends through empirical research and interviewing employees with different occupations, this paper sought out to find what employees wanted at their workplace and to then combine it with the technological findings in a way that makes sense through an HCI standpoint. While conducting this study many reworks of the methods were done in the sense that there were plans to conduct a workshop with employees attending and giving the paper more data, however due to scheduling issues it was scrapped. To mitigate this, more interviews were planned and they were set to be conducted through the use of a digital artifact made from the schematics at MAU. These were also scrapped due to the time constraint of this paper.  The findings this paper made are that the technological trends that are seen more and more in many workplaces are the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in various ways and the use of virtual reality and augmented reality to simulate the digital workplace. Hybrid work is also something this paper found that falls into this category but more so in the sense that a lot of the work is moved digitally instead of analogue. The results from the interviews imply that a lot of their problems stems from the COVID-19 pandemic and that a lot of the workforce returns to the office. Participants mention that the offices are cramped and that it is hard to book a meeting room since it houses more people than it can handle. The lack of social places around and a stable network is also something that a lot of the employees struggle with and want fixed. Based on these results a digital artifact was created and is the focal point of the discussion, talking about problems and how these could be solved by combining the digital and the analogue workplace.  As continued research this paper would delve deeper into employee experiences by conducting the workshop and the continued interviews.  In summary the purpose of this paper was to conduct a literature review and combine it with employee experiences to envisage possible futures using design fiction as a research strategy.

Smartphone games are very popular and have the highest revenue of all smartphone application categories. Some even suggest that the the games can create an addiction. This addiction has however not been classified as a disorder and the components in the games that create an addiction have not been determined. This thesis had two goals. The first was to investigate and identify addictive components in smartphone games. The second goal was to use these components to develop an addictive proof of concept smartphone game prototype. The prototype was also to be evaluated regarding usability and how well it included the addictive components. The components in these games that create an addiction were identified using a literature study. After establishing a theoretical framework, eight different areas of addictive smartphone game components were found. These areas were further condensed into 16 guidelines of how to make a smartphone game addictive. The guidelines were used to create a prototype which later was evaluated with a supervised play test, a short interview, a usability questionnaire and a survey with questions regarding how well the guidelines were implemented. The usability of the game prototype was regarded as good and 13 of 14 implemented guidelines received positive results in the survey. In addition to this, all test users also regarded the game prototype as fun to play and wanted to play it again. Based on these results, the implemented smartphone game prototype was concluded to be addictive.

Digitala röstbaserade system uppkom först på 1970-talet och har sedan dess utvecklats och blivit ett allt mer vardagligt fenomen. Det finns till exempel diverse röstbaserade digitala assistenter i de flesta av dagens moderna smartphones, såsom Apples Siri, Google Assistant och Microsofts Cortana. Utöver konsumentelektronik, finns det flera potentiella användningsområden för denna typ av system. I detta arbete har potentialen och behoven för röstbaserade system inom fabriksmiljöer undersökts. Termen behov syftar i detta sammanhang på vad användare av exempelvis ett system behöver för att uppnå sina mål (till exempel vid utförandet av någon specifik uppgift). Genom att ha användarnas behov i åtanke vid utvecklingen av digitala system går det att utforma system som i större utsträckning kan tillgodose användarnas behov och hjälpa dem nå sina mål, vilket generellt sett bidrar till en positivare användarupplevelse (eng. User Experience). Behov manifesterar sig ofta som problem och frustrationer som användare kan uppleva, eller som begränsningar och möjligheter inom kontexten. Till exempel, inom detta sammanhang, skulle ett behov kunna ses som en möjlighet att förbättra eller underlätta utförandet av arbetsuppgifter med hjälp av ett röstbaserat system inom fabriksmiljöer. I detta arbete har behov undersökts empiriskt genom observationer och intervjuer med arbetare inom en fabriksmiljö. Baserat på resultaten från undersökningen kunde ett antal möjligheter och begränsningar för röstbaserade system inom fabriksmiljöer identifieras: möjligheten för arbetare att programmera/konfigurera bearbetningsenheter via röstkommandon, föra anteckningar relaterade till sitt arbete via diktering samt möjligheten att ta emot återkoppling/information via röst. Den huvudsakliga eventuella begränsningen som identifierades var ljudnivån inom fabriksmiljöer samt tekniska och praktiska utmaningar relaterade till dessa system. Baserat på de identifierade begränsningarna och utmaningarna föreslås det (bland annat) som fortsatt arbete inom ämnesområdet att dessa undersöks närmare och mer djupgående.