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Denna studie berör områdena participatory design, speldesign samt idégenerering och syftar till att undersöka hur spelföretag interagerar med sina slutanvändare vid speldesign samt om participatory design kan användas i speldesign för att främja känslor av delaktighet och ägandeskap.Studien har genomförts med intervjuer och undersökningar i form av en analys av fyra svenska spelföretags hemsidor och sociala medier för att se på deras interaktion med sina slutanvändare vid speldesign, samt en participatory designworkshop.Resultaten från litteraturstudien och workshopen visar på att participatory design kan användas för att främja känslor av delaktighet och ägandeskap hos deltagarna. Vidare visar undersökningen av de svenska spelföretagen att interaktionen med sina slutanvändare över lag är låg.De slutsatser som studien visar på är att genom att erbjuda sina användare möjligheten att bli delaktiga och att interagera med spelföretaget så får man en aktiv och stimulerande miljö vilken gynnar både spelföretaget och deras slutanvändare. Vad gäller participatory design så visar studien att det är ett förhållningssätt som går att använda inom speldesign. Vidare så visar det också sig att, om behovet för att välja ut mellan flera olika metoder och tekniker inom participatory design uppstår, så är ett ramverk ett mycket användbart och hjälpsamt verktyg. / This study encorporates the areas participatory design, game design and idea generation and serves to investigate how game developers interact with their end-users on game design. It also investigates if participatory design can be used in game design to promote feelings of participation and ownership.The study is based on interviews and research in the form of an analysis of four Swedish game developers' websites and social media profiles. This is done to see how and if they interact with their end-users in game design. Also, a workshop in participatory design and game design was carried out to see if the participants felt participation and ownership.The results of the workshops evaluation show that participatory design can be used to promote feelings participation and ownership with the participants. The results also show that the interaction between the Swedish game developers and their end-users were overall low but not nonexistent.The conclusions that can be shown in this study are firstly that by offering the end-users the option to involve and interact with the game developers one can receive an active and stimulating environment which is beneficial to the game developers themselves as well as their end-users. Secondly, the study shows participatory design is an approach that is applicable to game design. Further, it is also shown that if the need to choose between different methods and tools in participatory design should arise, then the use of aframework is proven to be a useful and helpful tool.

The intensity and frequency of hurricanes and storms increase due to climate change, leaving destruction in their trail. After a hurricane happens, it is fundamental to respond as quickly as possible, and Search and Rescue operations occur to limit human damage further. The operations take place in hostile environments and extreme situations, where speed and efficiency are essential. Indeed, rescuers must be able to have a shared mental model of the situation and act immediately. This study focuses on visualizing situational awareness in such environments to optimize decision-making.  This study has been conducted in collaboration with Frog design and Sony and is part of the broader project FindMe Tag, a system composed of a wearable device that tracks civilians’ location and biometric data. The tag is connected to an app for civilians to handle which data to share. The data is shared to the rescuers’ dashboard for optimizing Search and Rescue operations, which is the focus of this thesis.  Following a Research through Design approach, this thesis project aims to contribute to the interaction design field by proposing a way to visualize situational awareness during extreme and dynamic situations. The process resulted in a dashboard prototype to support Search and Rescue operations by providing a way to visualize data concerning civilians’ status and rescuers, communicate among teams, and encourage connectedness among civilians.

The thesis research question originated form an interest in experiments with web and social media tools, and explores in what ways these kinds of communicative and collaborative media could facilitate opening dialogue among citizens and various actors present in the area of Malmö.The research approach deemed most suitable for the selected area is a combination of a participatory design methodology and ethnographic research. During the fieldwork phase different use situations were investigated through interviews, surveys and case studies. The purpose of the investigation was mapping the different stakeholders who operate to solve these problems engaging the residents. The modalities of communication of Malmö municipality and its non-profit organizations have been analysed. The results were compared with other researches in the fields.To understand the motives behind the users’ behaviour, the reasons for active and non- active participation have been investigated, especially those related to social media. Between a form of passive and active engagement a different form of engagement has been identified, that could include the mixed user group of individuals who are interested in being gradually involved in volunteering; having different level of indirect engagement can facilitate these users in “taking the first step” to participate.The concept was developed as a Facebook App in collaboration with Frivilligcentra. The app will allow the users to define their own engagement path, dividing every local volunteering event in tasks, with different levels of involvement. Overall it may define a new flexibility in the non-profit sector- in the sense of time, place, diversification of the experience, engagement - which could demonstrate that with the support of online tools organizations and users can interact better.

This thesis contributed to the regional Health School project, specifically informing the community- building efforts of a preschool in Örkelljunga, Sweden as they seek ways to improve communication among immigrant families and teachers. Using a co-design process with stakeholders including a preschool teacher, architects redesigning the school, and a health sciences researcher, this research investigated how a welcoming atmosphere could be created to act as a social intervention in the redesigned school. Interactive ambient light installations are proposed as a way to create this welcoming atmosphere. Installation design was explored through the lenses of multicultural makeup; play behaviour; accessibility and lighting design. Concluding the design research process, which used methods of participatory design, experience prototyping (Buchenau and Fulton Suri, 2000), and live prototyping (Horst and Matthews, 2016), a set of design principles were distilled for stakeholders.

The thesis explores the possibilites of involving users – students and teachers – into the design process for an interactive textbook for assisting the teaching and learning of mathematics at a secondary school level. Involvement of students and teachers is executed with participatory design methodology for the purpose of infrastructuring between different actors – developers, designers, students and teachers, in order to suggest and emphasize novel, in terms of the market, ways for ideating, creating and evaluating concepts in the field of digital learning. The design process is executed with the aim of producing a re-design proposal for an existing interactive textbook – namely Exponent 1b by Gleerups Utbildning AB - a renowned Swedish publisher of learning materials. The proposal is part of the ideation phase of Gleerups’ project and the design process is adressed accordingly.The initial sections introduce a theoretical framework for looking at interactive learning environments and present examples of such environments and their functionalities. Significant focus is dedicated to the preliminary analysis of the current state of Exponent 1b and the follow-up participatory analysis and re-design process. The author’s proposals for improvements in the core functionalities and the interactions are based on the initial research of the theoretical framework, presented examples of integrated learning environments examples and services, and predominantly on the outcomes from the participatory analysis and design process. At the end of the thesis the author summarizes the outcomes concerning involvement of students, teachers, designers and developers, and inclusion of digital tools to facilitate learning and variety in teaching.

Smart clothing is far from being adopted by regular consumers and worn on a regular basis. Most developments can be found in specialized markets and all of the few consumer products so far have not been commercially successful. The first part of this thesis illustrates why this is the case and presents a few examples of concepts that show the potential of smart clothing in an everyday context.The second part shows my own practical research into the subject and the resulting design concept. It follows a user-centered design process with participatory design elements and ends in a concept proposing clothing that can change color and style on the go. The concept tries to support a sustainable lifestyle by slowing down fast fashion and democratizing fashion design. It makes it easy for the wearer to create her own styles and to change the style on the go to adjust to different situations or different moods. The end result of this thesis is a prototype that serves as a proof-of-concept.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 488 million people worldwide suffer from a visual impairment and of these about 327 million have severe visual impairments. Some individuals with severe visual impairments can navigate and orient independently in well-known surroundings, but even for these people independent navigation and orientation are likely to be a challenge in unfamiliar places. To overcome these challenges, assistive technologies have been developed to support independent wayfinding tasks; however, those with severe visual impairments often experience frustration when they try to use assistive technologies since these technologies lack address the environmental factors that influence their independent wayfinding. This research developed and evaluated the efficacy of a framework called an environmental user interface (EUI). In particular, this research explored whether or not the proposed EUI framework was effective when used with user-centered design (UCD) to design a wayfinding system to capture environmental requirements, thus aiding those with severe visual impairments. Two studies, the first of which consisted of a requirements elicitation and the second usability testing, were conducted. The studies revealed that the EUI framework was indeed more effective than the conventional UCD design method alone in identifying environmental factors, and participants with severe visual impairments preferred to use the prototype designed using UCD and the EUI framework. The proposed EUI framework was found to be an effective way to enhance the design process as it played an important role in eliciting a greater number of environmental factors, and hence produced a device that was preferred by the users with visual impairments. Both prototypes influenced how well the wayfinding tasks were performed by the five participants with severe visual impairments, but the prototype implemented based on the requirements elicited by UCD and the EUI framework was much preferred by the participants. / Ph. D.

A study was conducted to determine the preferences for the design of distributed meeting rooms used for video enhanced electronic meeting systems (VEMS). Although there is a significant body of literature in the group communication domain, the research in this multidisciplinary area has paid minimal attention to users' environmental preferences in the design of a meeting space. A basic science approach through three studies was used to explore the variables that defined the design of a distributed meeting space from the user's perspective. Twenty-five inexperienced college-enrolled participants and twenty-five experienced Naval professionals used foam-core pieces to create a design of their ideal distributed meeting space. Thirty-seven variables were used to categorize qualitative attributes of the designs. Three types of designs emerged from the sample population: v-shaped, conference (u-shaped or oval), and theater (auditorium) style. A nonexperimental design was used to measure the impact of the heuristics on the users' physical design of their distributed meeting spaces. Post-meeting evaluation results were promising and indicated that the heuristics were usable and that participating in the design could have a positive impact on user's subjective rating of their meeting experience. Overall, inexperienced users did not believe that the heuristics were necessary to determine the best room design for their team's needs. In the third study, six experts conducted an expert evaluation of a distributed meeting room site. Most experts were not able to identify context-specific design issues such as camera angle and lighting with the static information that they were provided. The experts subjective ratings indicated that the heuristics were usable and were useful for room designers. The overall findings indicated that experience level had a significant impact on user's perception of important equipment in a distributed meeting room. Naïve users were more concerned with visual communication and assigned more importance to public displays (p=.035). Experienced users were more concerned with audio communication and assigned more importance to microphone control (p=.024). In addition, general findings from this research include a new methodology for generating participatory ergonomic tools. / Ph. D.