When needing software, using the services of an IT consulting rm is todaya common solution for companies nowadays. To make a system suited forthe intended users it is important to focus on usability.There are many dierent approaches possible to use when developinga usable system. The purpose of this study was to study if any of theapproaches, goal-directed design, could be used when a customer orders asolution from a consulting rm. This was to be studied through a case studywhich was conducted at the IT consulting rm Sigma. One of Sigma's customersis Toyota Material Handling Group which is a supplier of forkliftsand additional services like the online eet management platform ToyotaISite. The platform is about to be further developed by connecting it to amobile application with the purpose of making the platform more accessibleand ecient. The assignment in the case study was to develop a prototypefor this mobile application. This was done using the goal-centered design approach.Further, in order to understand the work at Sigma today, interviewswere conducted with developers at the company.The data collected led to an analysis about how Sigma and other similarIT consulting rms could use the goal-centered design approach when developingsoftware. The conclusion drawn was that parts of the method couldbe motivated to the customer and thereby be used in future projects, whilesome parts would be harder to motivate for the customer. The includedsteps were user research, context scenarios, requirements and high-delityprototyping. These conclusions can be used to integrate usability work inthe development process in the context of an IT consulting rm deliveringa system to a customer.

The term Open Source Software (OSS) has been around for a long time in the world of computer science. Open source software development is a process by which we can manufacture economical and qualitative software and its source could be re-use in the improvement of the software. The success of OSS relies on several factors, e.g. usability, functionality, market focus etc. But in the end how popular the software will be measured by the number of users downloading the software and how much the software is usable to the users. Open Source Software achieve the status for stability, security and functionality. Most of this software has been utilized by expert level users of IT. But from the general users or the non-computer user’s point of view the usability issues of Open source software has been faced the most criticism [25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30]. This factor i.e. the usability issues of general user is also responsible for the limited distribution of the open source software [24]. The development process should apply the “user-centered” methodology [25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30]. In this thesis paper the issues of usability in OSS development and how the usability of open source software can be improved will be discussed. Beside this I investigate the usability quality of free Open Source Linux-based operating system Ubuntu and try to find out the usability standards of this OSS.

Global Software Development is an area that has been recently highlighted. Translation is usually an issue that people associate with adapting software for a specific country but it is much more than that. Through text representation and data formatting you can go deep into cultural aspects that affect the user interface and even the core functionality. In this thesis we will discuss just how these matters can affect development of global software. To carry out the investigation we analyzed current approaches and references and build up an extended methodology with suggestions to develop global software applications. / Utveckling av globala programvara är ett område som den senaste tiden har uppmärksammats. Översättning är vanligtvis en fråga som människor associerar med att anpassa programvaror för ett specifikt land men det är mycket mer än det. Man kan gå djupare in i kulturella aspekter som kan påverka användargränssnitt och även mjukvarans kärna. I den här uppsatsen diskuterar vi hur dessa aspekter kan påverka utveckling av global programvara. För att genomföra vårt arbete analyserades vi först befintliga metodologier och byggde upp en utökad metodologi med förslag på hur man kan utveckla global programvara. / 0737 305407 0708 230374

Problem:I dag finns det ett stort behov av säkra identifierings metoder på Internet. Traditionellt sätt är en handskriven namnteckning en form av identifiering och vad som behövs är en elektronisk motsvarighet. Hypotes: "Elektroniska signaturer leder till ökad integritet och säkerhet vid identifiering på Internet" Syfte: Målet och syftet med denna uppsats är att studera och analysera huruvida elektroniska signaturer kommer att bidra till ökad integritet och säkerhet vid identifiering på Internet. Slutsats:Genom att jämföra praktiska erfarenheter (fallstudie) och teoretiska kriterier kunde vi analysera oss fram till att vår hypotes är sann.

An Application Service Provider (ASP) is a company that offers individuals or enterprises access over the Internet to applications and related services that would otherwise have to be located in their own personal or enterprise computers. The simplest way to understand the ASP concept is to think of it as "application-renting". However, the customer always owns the data. The primary purpose of this thesis is to see what kind of demands there is on an ASP solution from the customers? side. The secondary purpose is to see if the customers could consider an ASP solution if their demands were met. We have also given an explanation of the ASP concept and what factors, within the data security context, makes the solution acceptable among customers. The method we have used to find a result to our hypothesis and research questions, is that we have collected different text materials and conducted interviews. The interviewed companies where four ASP suppliers and four future possible ASP customers. The result of our investigation showed that a majority of the interviewed persons could consider an ASP solution. The result could however not be estimated and applied for the entire company, because of the variety of knowledge between the different departments. The ASP industry is clearly in the stage of maturity within the IT business, but it seems like the psychological barrier may be the strongest factor that can diminish the success of ASP.

Virtual communities are a phenomenon that is becoming more common as the information technology comes with in reach for the general public. This report will bring the theories and construction of a virtual community together. The purpose of this report is to describe the different theories that have emerged from the research within this field and to examine the work procedures that have been used during the development of a site for a MDA-community. The MDA-website is a homepage on the Internet that was developed to bring the students closer together. The report describes the work of the project group, why the website was not completed and at the end the theories are looked at on the basis of the construction of the website.

Context: Modern commercial computer games use a number of different stimuli to assist players in locating key objects in the presented Virtual Environment (VE). These stimuli range from visual to auditory, and are employed in VEs depending on several factors such as gameplay design and aesthetics. Objectives: This study compares three different localization aids in order to evaluate their effectiveness in VEs. Method: An experiment is carried out in which testplayers are tasked with using audio signals, visual input, as well as a combination of both to correctly identify objects in a virtual scene. Results: Results gained from the experiment show how long testplayers spent on tests which made use of different stimuli. Upon analyzing the data, it was found that that audio stimulus was the slowest localization aid, and that visual stimulus and the combination of visual and auditory stimulus were tied for the fastest localization aid. Conclusions: The study concludes that there is a significant difference in efficiency among different localization aids and VEs of varied visual complexity, under the condition that the testplayer is familiar with each stimuli. / 3D-ljud och visuella hjälpmedel är vanliga i moderna datorspel. I denna uppsats detaljeras en studie kring effektivitet vid använding av 3D-ljud och visuella hjälpmedel i tre-dimensionella miljöer. Studien använder sig av en experimentiell design där testspelare får sitta i ett datorspel-liknande upplägg och använda sig av visuella och auditoriska hjälpmedel för att identifiera objekt i dessa miljöer. Studien bekräftar att det finns en signifikant skillnad i effektivitet mellan olika visuella och auditoriska hjälpmedel i tre-dimensionella miljöer.

While the games industry grows, the need for visually appealing graphics increase. This drives the demand for new hardware and the development of new techniques forward. With the latest generation of 3D graphic APIs the new rendering pipeline technique tessellation was announced. With each generation of games getting more advanced, the demand for highly detailed models increase. This leads to a higher workload for the GPU. The purpose of this thesis is to research the fi eld of tessellation and develop a prototype to optimize the tessellation pipeline. The prototype is designed to help reduce the number of generated triangles by dividing the mesh into regions, each region with its own tessellation factor. The prototype implementation supports both manual and automatic generation of these regions. A new fi le format was developed to support the region data. The implementation was split into three parts; one Python based Maya plug-in used for preparing the model for exporting, one exporter for Maya that generated the output fi le, and one viewer application capable of rendering the resulting mesh. The geometry output of the proposed technique was evaluated by comparing it to uniformly tessellated reference mesh geometry. Measurements show that the proposed technique is capable of reducing the face count with minor or maintained correlation to the reference geometry. / Medans spelindustrin växer ökar behovet av visuellt tilltalande grafik. Detta driver utvecklingen av hårdvara och nya tekniker framåt. Med den senaste generationens 3D grafik API kom renderingssteget tesselering. Eftersom varje generation av spel blir mer avancerat ökar efterfrågan på detaljerade modeller. Detta leder till en högre arbetsbörda för GPUn. Syftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka tesselering och utveckla en prototyp för att optimera tesseleringspipelinen. Prototypen är utformad för att hjälpa till att minska antalet genererade trianglar genom att dela upp figuren i regioner, varje region med egen tesseleringsfaktor. Prototypen stödjer både manuell och automatisk generering av dessa regioner, ett nytt filformat utvecklades för att stödja dessa. Prototypen delades upp i tre delar, ett Python baserat Maya plug-in som används för att förbereda modellen för export, en Maya exportör som genererar filerna, och ett visningsprogram som kan rendera den färdiga figuren. Figuren från den föreslagna tekniken utvärderades genom att jämföra den med motsvarande figur med universal tesseleringsfaktor. Mätningar visar att den föreslagna tekniken klarar att reducera antalet trianglar med låg felmarginal.

There has been considerable amount of work done in the past decade by different biometric vendors as well as researchers in order to improve the accuracy of both biometric data collection systems as well as the underlying algorithms to perform different mapping and matching. Biometric Facial recognition systems are continuously improving with advancements in technology as well as decreasing hardware costs. However, in order to develop efficient biometric facial recognition systems, organizations must take into account different technical issues which include reliability, usability, interoperability as well as data collection, dissemination and evaluation of such systems. Adherence to standards is a key for interoperable systems and user acceptance along with trust can lead to easy deployment of such facial biometric systems in a society. These technical as well as social issues were identified by regular discussions with the Chairman and members of Swedish National Biometric Association’s and conducting interview sessions with different biometric companies who are specially dealing with face recognition biometric systems and are supplemented with a thorough literature review of the state of art research practices within face recognition domain. / The demand for user-friendly, reliable, proactive, high performance and highly interoperable biometric devices has grown exponentially. After conducting the case study, collecting data through the questionnaire and reviewing the literature the researchers come to the point that organizations willing to develop or deploy such systems needs to take into account many technical as well as social issues to make the best out of these systems. The extension of face recognition biometric technologies raises new and challenging questions in a society that enshrines privacy and liberty. This system can either enhance or undermine our liberties depending upon its use. A framework is needed by which we may resolve issues pertaining to proper and legitimate deployment and get expected outcome. The framework or centralized structure is needed which will compile and common issues and provide guidelines to face recognition biometric industry.

Context. Procedural Terrain Generation refers to the algorithmical creation of terrains with limited or no user input. Terrains are an important piece of content in many video games and other forms of simulations. Objectives. In this study a tile-based approach to creating endless terrains is investigated. The aim is to find if real-time performance is possible using the proposed method and possible performance increases from utilization of the GPU. Methods. An application that allows the user to walk around on a seemingly endless terrain is created in two versions, one that exclusively utilizes the CPU and one that utilizes both CPU and GPU. An experiment is then conducted that measures performance of both versions of the application. Results. Results showed that real-time performance is indeed possible for smaller tile sizes on the CPU. They also showed that the application benefits significantly from utilizing the GPU. Conclusions. It is concluded that the tile-based approach works well and creates a functional terrain. However performance is too poor for the technique to be utilized in e.g. a video game.