The complexity of advanced antenna techniques used in the new generation of wireless networks (5G) makes communication between experts and non-technical staff more difficult than ever. As cooperation between network vendors and network operators affects the adoption of the new standard, a need for a new tool has emerged to make technical presentations more engaging and compelling. This thesis presents an exploratory study that aims to examine various design options for an interactive visualization of radiowave propagation to be used by advanced antenna systems experts. Through a Research-oriented Design, functional and non-functional requirements were identified with the help of domain expert. Later, an interactive prototype was designed and developed using a participatory design approach. Qualitative and quantitative data was gathered through usability testing, System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaires and semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 researchers and engineers at Ericsson AB a multinational telecommunication company. User evaluation proved that such a tool could facilitate communication between technical experts and non-technical staff. The developed prototype was considered intuitive and useful by the majority of study participants as measured by interviews and the SUS survey. Future research is encouraged to include the target audience representatives in order to measure their engagement while using the tool. / Komplexiteten hos avancerade antenntekniker som anvnds i den nya generationen av mobilntverk (5G), gr kommunikationen mellan experter och icke-teknisk personal svrare n ngonsin. Eftersom samarbetet mellan telekommunikationsfretag och ntoperatrer pverkar anpassningen av den nya standarden, har behovet av ett nytt verktyg uppsttt fr att gra tekniska presentationer mer engagerande och vertygande. Avhandlingen presenterar en underskande studie som syftar till att underska olika designalternativ fr en interaktiv visualisering av radiovgsfrkning som anvnds av avancerade antennsystems experter. Genom en forskningsinriktad design identifierades funktionella och icke-funktionella krav med hjlp av en domnexpert. Senare konstruerades och utvecklades en interaktiv prototyp med hjlp av en co-operativ designmetod. Kvalitativa och kvantitativa data samlades in genom anvndbarhetstester, System Usability Scale (SUS) frgeformulr och halvstrukturerade intervjuer med 12 forskare och ingenjrer p Ericsson AB ett multinationellt telekommunikationsfretag. Anvndarutvrdering visade att ett sdant verktyg skulle underltta kommunikationen mellan tekniska experter och icke-teknisk personal. Den utvecklade prototypen ansgs intuitiv och anvndbar av majoriteten av studiedeltagarna, mtt genom intervjuer och SUS-underskningen. Framtida forskning uppmuntrar till att inkludera mlgruppsrepresentanterna fr att mta deras engagemang medan de anvnder verktyget.

There are areas in Oaxaca, Mexico, where larger telephone operators have refused to install a cellular network, leaving mainly indigenous communities without connectivity. A minor field study was carried out in the affected areas with the aim to build an application tackling some of the existing connectivity problems.I present an application enabling low-cost phone calls through open source mobile networks. The app contains calling and messaging features compatible with residents mobile devices. Dialogues with the users were completed to understand their priorities and practices. A participatory design approach was used throughout the design process to encourage user appropriation. Ideas suggested by the end- users included using symbols for users who could not read and copying features from Mexico’s most popular communication app, WhatsApp. Usability testing showed that the design was usable and additionally allowed for natural dialogue and user appropriation. Furthermore, I discuss opportunities and limitations with the application.. / I Oaxaca, Mexiko, finns det områden där telefonoperatörer vägrat installera mobilnät vilket resulterat i att samhällen, framförallt ursprungsbefolkade, lever utan mobiltelefoni. En studie utfördes i de drabbade områdena för att utveckla en applikation som angriper några av de existerande anslutningsproblemen. Jag presenterar en app som möjliggör billiga telefonsamtal via öppna mobilnät. Appen innehåller samtal- och meddelandefunktioner som är förenliga med lokala telefonmodeller. Dialoger med användarna genomfördes för att förstå deras prioriteringar och vanor. En Participatory Design metod användes för att främja användarnas känsla av delaktighet och ägandeskap av appen. Användarna föreslog idéer som att inkludera symboler för användare som inte kan läsa och kopiera familjära element från Mexiko mest använda kommunikationsapp, WhatsApp. Användarvänlighetstesten visade att designen var användbar. Testen gav även rum för en naturlig dialog och appropriering av appen. Vidare, diskuterar jag möjligheter samt begränsningar med applikationen.

The thesis purpose is to gather recommendations to adapt participatory design to elderly users, through the involvement of an association of elderly museum volunteers. The outcome is the result of a participatory process that included forms, interviews, cultural probes, and workshops where the volunteers and designer collaborated tightly to explore volunteers’ needs and find solutions to address them. This process led to the design of a platform that empowers volunteers' work and recognizes its value. The platform includes sections managed by the volunteers to archive information about the museum pieces, share organized activities, and receive feedback from visitors to improve their work.

This report explores an alternative housing policy to Sweden’s overpriced and problematic housing situation. Research has revolved around how flexible frameworks of Swedish regulations and standardizations in the housing policy can improve sustainability through planning participation and self-building processes. Analysis has been conducted primarily through literature reviews and fieldwork where case studies have been compared relative to how participatory methods and self-built housing construction have been pertinent for their local development in the housing policy. The results provide urban housing solutions that contribute to diverse residential areas and reduce segregated neighborhoods. Furthermore, it demonstrates comprehensive social sustainabilities when residents have actively participated in the planning and construction of their neighborhood. An increased knowledge accumulated from participating and self-building also results in economic and environmental sustainability. This report strives for solutions to complex building regulations and standardizations, which must be adjusted for non-professionals. However, the results showed the difficulties in achieving a system change since political oscillations obstruct an alternative housing policy by concentrating on economic growth. Although there are difficulties within the economic-political systems, the analysis of the case studies reveals the potentialities of collaboration between municipalities and autonomous neighborhoods, which have been formulated through exceptional regulation plans. By reconsidering development where the economy is not at the center, the research demonstrates how municipalities can achieve social, ecological, and cultural growth by implementing an alternative housing policy to the existing one. These values are outcompeted by economic growth and must be re-established in society to achieve democratic sustainability. The current housing affordability crisis stresses the importance of alternatives for an equity housing policy, where self-building and participatory design methods must be accentuated in urban development in Sweden. The result of this report can operate as a platform for innovative housing development within urban contexts for self-builders and municipalities.

Urban Living Labs (ULL) have become a common way to address wicked design challenges within the future mobility, and smart city context. The move toward ULL is part of a paradigm shift away from focusing purely on the IT-artifact, innovation, and user-centeredness toward focusing on the urban context and the construction of a place as a social context rather than implementation of a product or service in isolation. This shift requires diverse sets of stakeholders with different backgrounds to come together to address wicked design challenges collaboratively tied to specific urban contexts. However, the change toward ULLs also brings unique qualities to collaborations. For example, it is often hard to generalize or transfer findings from one ULL to another. In addition, it requires new modes of thinking and acting concerning the value of bottomup approaches anchored in context. Therefore, a core challenge for impactful work in an ULL, is to find ways to retain stakeholders’ local engagements and ways of doing collaborative design beyond the ULL project to create ripple effects. This thesis tweaks this challenge into a question that aims at investigating what a locally contextualized ULL set-up means for the involved stakeholders from a participatory perspective by asking: How can we understand engagement in ULL co-design, and how can this engagement be retained beyond the Living Lab? The question was explored through a design ethnographic approach in a ULL, where citizens, city representatives, car manufacturers, and representatives from public transport worked together to explore future mobility services. The research question is addressed through a description of how stakeholder engagement played out in the ULL along with an analysis of the dynamics of co-design as a co-appropriation process within the ULL, which enabled stakeholders to engage in a social context across sectors and disciplines to co-learn ways of appropriating findings from the ULL as an explorative way of working. Co-appropriation is described as a process moving from acclimatization towards cogitation in co-design, with patching as an activity that supports the process. The thesis also elaborates on how findings from a ULL can be retained and scaled beyond the Living Lab through transformation games, as an example of a patching activity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and discuss the practice of involving children in design processes, focusing on what the benefits are and which practical problems that can occur. By discussing previous research and conducting three interviews with people experienced in the field of designing together with children this paper aims to answer the question: When children participate in design processes what are the benefits, risks, and challenges? The paper concludes that many of the problems that can appear when designing with children are related to power dynamics between children and adults or to the age of the children. These two themes are the focus of the essays result and in addition to presenting the challenges connected to the themes, the paper will also discuss how these problems can be prevented and solved. The conclusion of the paper is that it is important to involve children when designing with children as a target audience because they are experts in being children today which an adult designer is not. The paper also concludes that it is important for designers and researchers to consider and respectfully work with the ethical challenges of involving children in design processes.

This paper introduces the topic of Cohousing as a solution to the chronic housing crisis and examines how it can be supported by digital platforms, and what form they should take. The theoretical concept of platforms and infrastructure is examined in general and specifically for communities along with other co-operative practices. The methodology of Research through Design (RtD) paired with recognised design methods of interviews, surveys and participatory design including workshops and co-design, employing a design process blending ideation and prototyping with each of these methods. The resulting design is a platform serving the dual functionality of marketing the Cohousing practice to wider society coupled with aggregating the infrastructural and communication needs of a cohousing group. The design works to support a highly interpersonal community-based activity through the face-to-face interaction of groups and demonstrates how the studies of platforms and infrastructure combined with research through design can support such practices.

Unintentional encounters between robots and humans will increase in the future and require concepts for communicating the robots’ internal states. Auditory displays can be used to convey the relevant information to people who share public spaces with social robots. Based on data gathered in a participatory design workshop with robot experts, a layer based approach for real-time generated audio feedback is introduced, where the information to be displayed is mapped to certain audio parameters. First exploratory sound designs were created and evaluated in an online study. The results show which audio parameter mappings should be examined further to display certain internal states, like e.g. mapping amplitude modulation to the robot’s speed or enhancing alarm frequencies for indicating urgent tasks. Features such as speed, urgency and large size were correctly identified in more than 50% of evaluations, while information about the robot’s interactivity or its small size were not comprehensible to the participants. / Oavsiktliga möten mellan robotar och människor kommer öka i framtiden vilket kräver koncept för att kommunicera robotarnas inre tillstånd. Ljuddisplayer kan användas för att förmedla relevant information till människor som delar offentliga utrymmen med sociala robotar. Baserat på data som samlats in i en deltagande designworkshop med robottexperter introduceras ett lagerbaserat tillvägagångssätt för realtidsgenererad ljudåterkoppling, där den information som ska visas mappas till vissa ljudparametrar. Explorativa ljuddesigns skapades och utvärderades i en online-studie. Resultaten visar vilka ljudparametrar som bör undersökas ytterligare för att visa vissa interna tillstånd, som t.ex. att mappa amplitudmodulering till robotens hastighet eller att förbättra larmfrekvenser för att indikera brådskande ärenden. Egenskaper som hastighet, brådska och stor storlek identifierades korrekt i mer än 50 % av utvärderingarna, men information om robotens interaktivitet och lilla storlek var svårbegriplig för deltagarna.

Northvolt has an internal mobile application called the Factory App. The digitalization team at Northvolt initiated the idea that widgets could be used for the Factory App as a tool to give the users information at a glance. The Factory App is mainly used by people working with the manufacturing process. To provide information at a glance, an investigation of what type of information is relevant for different users needed to be conducted. Further, a design concept of widgets for the Factory App would also need to be created. This research aimed to approach this with the method participatory design. Part of the participatory design is the following steps: semi-structured interviews with a virtual smartphone as a prop, a design workshop where the participants among other things sketched designs of widgets, high-fidelity prototyping, and a user evaluation survey. The interview result showed that machine metrics were relevant data for six out of ten participants and that metrics were important for most participants. The outcome of the study was ten design prototypes of widgets that were created based on the interview results, the workshop results, and the design of other internal digital tools at Northvolt. This research concludes that widgets based on the provided design concept can help give relevant and instant information to people with specific positions at Northvolt. / Northvolt har en intern mobilapplikation som heter Factory App. Digitaliseringsteamet på Northvolt initierade idén att så kallade widgets skulle kunna användas som ett verktyg för att ge användarna av applikationen information i ett ögonkast. Factory-appen används främst av personer som arbetar med tillverkningsprocessen på Northvolt. För att ge information i ett ögonkast behövde en utredning göras av vilken typ av information som är relevant för olika användare. Vidare skulle ett designkoncept av widgets för Factory-appen också behövas. Denna forskning syftade till att anta sig detta med den så kallade metoden Participatory Design. De olika stegen av Participatory Design som utfördes är som följer: semistrukturerade intervjuer med en virtuell smartphone som rekvisita, en designworkshop där deltagarna bland annat skissade på design av widgets, prototypande av hög fidelity och en utvärderande användarundersökning. Intervjuresultatet visade att maskinmätningar var relevanta data för sex av tio deltagare och att mätvärden var viktiga för de flesta deltagare. Resultatet av studien var tio designprototyper av widgets som skapades utifrån intervjuresultaten, workshopresultaten och designen av andra interna digitala verktyg på Northvolt. Denna forskning drar slutsatsen att widgets baserade på det tillhandahållna designkonceptet kan hjälpa till att ge relevant och omedelbar information till personer med specifika positioner på Northvolt.

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) productions are complex environments driven by production data to make informed decisions affecting the events and items on the production line. This complexity can have a negative effect on the factory workers’ adoption rate of the new technology. More specifically, it can lead to the factory workers feeling passive and lacking influence over the tools used. Therefore, new UX methods and increased UX maturity are called for, to better suit the ever changing environments of I4.0 organizations. To ensure adoption, positive attitudes and intentions regarding user ownership, expertise and knowledge sharing are required. In this thesis project, participatory design (PD) methods are used to evaluate, whether PD has a positive effect on such attitudes and intentions toward new tools introduced on the production line. Five participants, employees from the I4.0 company Northvolt, were recruited to take part in a PD workshop to design a human-machine interface (HMI). The participants attitudes and intentions towards the tool were measured and explored through the PD workshop, surveys and user interviews. The outcome was also compared to the survey results on the tools already in use on the production line. The study resulted in increased positive attitudes and intentions towards user ownership, knowledge sharing and expertise concerning the HMI. Thus, the application of PD in I4.0 environments had an overall positive impact. Researchers are called to assess these effects in the long term, by allowing the participants to use the tool in a practical context overtime. / Industry 4.0 (4.0) produktioner är komplexa miljöer drivna av produktionsdata för att kunna göra informerade beslut som påverkar händelserna och produkterna på produktionslinjen. Denna komplexitet kan ha en negativ effekt på fabriksarbetarnas adoptionsfrekvens av den nya teknologin. Mer specifikt, kan det leda till att fabriksarbetarna känner passivitet och att de saknar inflytande över de digitala verktygen som används. För att bättre passa de föränderliga miljöerna i I4.0 organisationer, behövs nya User Experience (UX) metoder och ökad UX mognad. För att säkerställa adoption, positiva attityder och avsikter angående ”user ownership”, behövs expertis och kunskapsdelning. I detta examensprojekt, används ”participatory design” (PD) metoder för att evaluera om PD har en positiv effekt på sådana attityder och avsikter gentemot nya digitala verktyg introducerade på produktionslinjen. Fem deltagare, anställda från I4.0 företaget Northvolt, rekryterades för att ta del av en PD workshop för att designa ett ”human-machine interface” (HMI). Deltagarnas attityder och avsikter gentemot verktyget mättes och utforskades genom PD workshopen, enkäter och användarintervjuer. Utfallet blev jämfört med enkätresultat gällande digitala verktyg som redan används på produktionslinjen. Projektet resulterade i ökade positiva attityder och avsikter rörande user ownership, kunskapsdelning och expertis gentemot HMIt. Således, appliceringen av PD i I4.0 miljöer hade en övergripande positiv påverkan. Forskare uppmanas att bedöma dessa effekter långsiktigt, genom att tillåta deltagarna att använda det digitala verktyget i en praktiken över tid.