This thesis is about personal assistants, and how they experience their work. The aim of this study is twofold: First to examine the experiences of personal assistants and their work. Second, to examine the assistant’s experiences of feelings at work and how these feelings are managed from an emotionsociological perspective. The empirical base of the research builds upon interviews with personal assistants with a focus on the individual and subjective experiences of the work. The data shows that the assistants concentrate on the emotional aspects of their job. When asked to describe their work situation, the interviewees were preoccupied with the regulation of their own feelings in the relation to the employer. The analysis has an abductive approach, in which empirical sensitivity, interpretation and theory are combined. In terms of results, this study shows that the majority of assistants experience themselves as a friend to the client and they experience the job as meaningful. However, here lies the duplicity of the situation because being a friend to the client, who is also the supervisor, can lead to problems when setting the boundaries for intimacy. The study also shows relatively stable structures in relation to the dimensions of power and subordination, where the assistants’ experience themselves as subordinates and the client as superior. At the same time that the assistants finds purpose in their job there are also challenges connected to being subordinate in a face-to-face situation. It is important to the assistants to have control over feelings and outward expressions. Feelings of subordination seem to be linked to the status and power the assistants have in society at large. Thus, how vulnerable they are in the subordinate position depends on age, gender and education. Another effect described by the assistants is a kind of emotional dissonance, where their own feelings are in conflict with how they wish to act in the social interaction with the clients. In the final chapter the concepts of asymmetric and symmetric interaction are used to understand different types of feelings the assistants’ experience. The asymmetric interaction can trigger feelings of irritation, frustration and anger which are energy draining. Symmetric interaction often seems to lead to feelings of contentment, joy and purpose, which are uplifting and energy renewing. As a concluding remark emotional labour seems to be a significant part of the assistants work. By using an emotionsociological perspective it has been possible to gain knowledge about different aspects of the personal assistants’ emotional labour.

The purpose of this research thesis is to investigate technologies effects on learning. Specifically the researchers studied the usability of intelligent personal assistant-enabled devices for learning assistance. It is assumed that using technology in educational context helps both students and educators because there is a positive effect on engagement which increases learning curves. Although, this is not always the case. The present study yielded results that were not consistent with the assumption that using any type of technology as an aid for learning has a positive effect. Further research will seek to investigate other intelligent personal assistant devices for classroom use.

Loneliness among older adults is a problem with severe consequences to individual health, quality of life, cognitive capacity, and life-expectancy. Although approaches towards improving the quality and quantity of social relationships are the prevailing model of therapy, older adults may not always be able to form these relationships due to either personality factors, decreased mobility, or isolation. Intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), virtual agents, and social robotics offer an opportunity for the development of technology that could potentially serve as social companions to older adults. The present study explored whether an IPA could potentially be used as a social companion to older adults feeling lonely. Additionally, the research explored whether the device has the potential to generate social presence among both young and older adults. Results indicate that while the devices do show some social presence, participants rate the device low on some components of social presence, such as emotional contagion. This adversely affects the possibility of a social relationship between an older adult and the device. Analysis reveals ways to improve social presence in these devices.

The purpose of this quantitative survey study was to examine if there were any associations between subjective self-rated health, workload and scheduling in relation to habits involving diet and physical activity among personal assistants. This study was carried out as an online based survey where all the participants was selected nonrandomly through one single private company in the middle regions of Sweden. Associations were tested through cross table analysis, also known as Chi2-tests. No associations was established in regards to the thesis main purpose. However, some associations could be drawn between the participants’ willingness to change their current dietary- and exercise habits and their current habits. The main conclusion from this study was that further research is needed amongst personal assistants to determine how their professional life relates to their dietary and exercise habits. / Många människor arbetar i dag som personliga assistenter och den yrkeskategori som detta arbete ingår i är idag den tredje största i Sverige och är idag den yrkeskategori som sysselsätter flest kvinnor i landet. Trots detta så är mängden forskning som bedrivits inom detta yrkes arbetsförutsättningar ytterst begränsad. Syftet med denna undersökning var att kartlägga vilka vardagliga rutiner kring kost och fysisk aktivitet som fanns bland de anställda som arbetar som personliga assistenter på ett privat företag. Studien ämnade undersöka huruvida några associationer kunde dras mellan de anställdas allmänna hälsotillstånd, nivån av sysselsättning, arbetsschema och deras vanor kring kost och fysisk aktivitet. Studien var av kvantitativ design där informationen hämtades från studiepopulationen via en online-baserad enkät. Urvalet var icke-randomiserat där hela den möjliga studiepopulationen erbjöds att delta. Deltagarna kontaktades via SMS och av 420 möjliga deltagare så låg svarsresponsen på 22 %. Utifrån insamlad data så kunde inga associationer dras mellan allmänt hälsotillstånd, nivå av sysselsättning, arbetsschema och deltagarnas kost- och motionsvanor. Däremot så kunde associationer göras mellan deltagarnas önskan om att ändra sina kost- och motionsvanor och hur deras vanor för tillfället såg ut. Övergripande så kunde deltagarnas kostvanor beskrivas som regelbundna och de ägnade sig huvudsakligen åt måttliga mängder fysisk aktivitet. Det låga deltagarantalet innebar dock att resultatets generaliserbarhet inte kunde bedömas som särskilt hög. Den huvudsakliga slutsatsen från denna undersökning var att ytterligare forskning behövs för att tydliggöra hur personliga assistenters arbetsförhållanden påverkar deras vanor kring kost och motion och vise versa.

Ces dernières années, les progrès en sciences de la gestion et de l’information ont transformé la Gestion de Processus d’Affaires (Business Process Management, BPM) en un sujet important, tant du côté de l’industrie que de celui de la recherche. Le BPM utilise des processus métiers pour améliorer la performance opérationnelle des organisations. Les processus métiers établissent un lien entre les personnes, les systèmes, et les différentes organisations, dans le but de créer de la valeur pour les parties prenantes. La cible de notre travail est la famille des systèmes BPM. Un système BPM est un système logiciel générique guidé par des modèles explicites de processus métier avec pour objectif d’exécuter et de gérer des processus opérationnels. Malgré le vaste éventail de sujets traités par ce domaine de recherche, il reste encore quelques questions qui méritent une étude plus approfondie. Un problème particulier concerne la médiation entre les systèmes BPM et les humains. L’interaction homme-machine dans ces systèmes repose sur des interfaces standard basées sur des listes de taches et des formulaires, ce qui est très contraignant pour les utilisateurs.Ceux-ci ont non seulement des difficultés à exécuter leurs processus métier, mais aussi a trouver le processus métier le mieux adapté à leurs besoins. Il serait beaucoup plus efficace d’utiliser des dialogues en langage naturel. Malheureusement les langages de modélisation de processus ne permettent pas de capturer ni de modéliser un domaine de discours. Le travail présent propose une approche originale de gestion du dialogue basée sur des systèmes multi-agents pour l’exécution des processus métier. La motivation globale pour ce travail fut de concevoir un modèle de dialogue extensible à différents domaines. Ce modèle s’appuie sur les ontologies de domaine, nécessitant un minimum d’effort d’adaptation pour améliorer l’interaction. Les résultats montrent tout le potentiel de notre approche multi-agent pour réaliser une médiation automatiquement, sans qu’il soit nécessaire de reconstruire les modèles de processus métier. / Over the last few years, the advances in management science and information technology have transformed the business process management (BPM) discipline into an important topic for both industry and academy. BPM uses business processes as the means for improving the operational performance of organizations, and setting processes are at the heart of BPM allows linking together people, systems, and different organizations to deliver value to stakeholders. The target of our work is the family of BPM systems. A BPM system is a generic software system that is driven by explicit process designs to enact and manage operational business processes. Despite the wide range of topics addressed by the academy on business processes, there are still aspects not addressed by prior research. A particular problem in this regard is the mediation between BPM systems and humans. Human interaction in those systems follows a standard user interface based predominantly on work item lists and forms. Thus, there is little room for creativity for users. They have not only difficulties in enacting their processes but also for searching the most suitable one for their needs. It would be more efficient to let humans interact in natural language. However, process modeling languages are an insufficient means of capturing and representing the domain of discourse. The present thesis develops an original approach to agent dialog management for the problem of business process enactment. The overarching motivation for this work was to design a dialog model scalable to different domains. The model relies on domain and business process ontologies, and necessitates a minimum effort of adaptation on ontologies to improve the interaction. Results indicate the potential of our agent-based approach to generate natural language.

La creciente popularidad y las capacidades mejoradas de los asistentes personales inteligentes, como Google Assistant, Siri y Alexa, han permitido su aplicación en numerosos campos, algunos de los cuales son: servicio al cliente, banca y turismo. No obstante, la aplicación de estos asistentes para la capacitación y el aprendizaje de trabajadores profesionales ha sido limitada y no ha sido bien investigada.   El presente documento validará la propuesta de una solución para la capacitación continua y el aprendizaje de los visitadores médicos sobre la información de los medicamentos mediante el uso de un agente de conversación basado en la voz. Esto permitirá que los representantes de ventas farmacéuticas puedan preguntar al agente acerca de las propiedades de los medicamentos y realizar exámenes frecuentes sobre la información disponible para verificar su conocimiento. Esta validación se realizará a través del seguimiento y aplicación de una metodología de investigación centrada en las soluciones y arquitecturas existentes que brinden una base para iniciar el desarrollo del proyecto. / The increasing popularity and enhanced capabilities of intelligent personal assistants, such as Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa, have allowed them to disrupt in many fields, some of which are: customer service, banking, and tourism. Notwithstanding, the application of intelligent personal assistants for training and learning of professional workers has been limited and not well researched. This document will validate the proposal of a solution for the continuous training and learning of the medical visitors on the information of the medications using a voice-based conversation agent. This will allow pharmaceutical sales representatives to ask the agent about the properties of the drugs and conduct frequent reviews of the information available to verify their knowledge. This validation will be carried out through the monitoring and application of a research methodology focused on the existing solutions and architectures that provide a basis to start the development of the project. / Trabajo de investigación

Personal assistants ' descriptions of their own professional role are usually removed for the benefit of users ' description of the profession. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the assistants perceive their profession by providing assistants a possibility to talk about their experiences of the profession. Data has been collected by twelve interviews with active working personal assistants aged 22-57 years. Assistants interviewed have different experiences and working with people with various disabilities. The method used is a qualitative method with a narrative analysis method, where the twelve interviews have been merged into four fictional stories. The theoretical basis used is the role of theory in which personal assistant may act according to different roles. The result shows that the assistants in our study enjoy their profession more than previous studies have shown. However, experience also assistants in this study to the status of the profession and salary is low. / Personliga assistenters beskrivningar av sin egen yrkesroll glöms oftast bort till fördel för brukarnas beskrivning av yrket. Syftet med denna studie är därför att vi vill undersöka hur assistenterna uppfattar sitt yrke, genom att ge assistenter möjligheten att berätta om sina erfarenheter om yrket. Data har samlats in genom tolv intervjuer med aktivt arbetande personliga assistenter i åldrarna 22-57 år. Assistenterna som har intervjuats har olika erfarenheter och arbetar med människor med olika funktionshinder. Metoden som använts är en kvalitativ metod med en narrativ analysmetod, där de tolv intervjuerna har satts samman till fyra fiktiva berättelser. Den teoretiska utgångspunkt som använts är rollteori, då man som personlig assistent får agera utifrån olika roller. Resultatet visar att assistenterna i denna studie trivs bättre med sitt yrke än vad tidigare studier visat. Dock upplever även assistenterna i denna studie att statusen på yrket samt lönen är låg.

The largest software companies in the world are racing to develop their Intelligent Personal Assistants. Each with more and more capabilities and ways for users to access them. The different assistants have different capabilities and one of the ways the companies are differentiating is in the interaction techniques their assistants that are controlled with, most uses voice, and some uses text. This thesis walks through these interaction techniques, give a brief overview of intelligent personal assistants today and explores how learnability differentiate when using these interaction techniques. The thesis also investigates when users have access to multiple interaction techniques to use in combination when interacting with such an assistant. To evaluate the field, a literature study was conducted covering Intelligent Personal Assistants, interaction techniques, conversational user interfaces, modalities, multimodal interaction, voice and chat interfaces. Interviews with early adopters of Intelligent Personal Assistants was performed to better understand the current state of the technology and how users were using it. To evaluate the learnability differences in different interaction techniques, a series of user tests in a wizard-of-oz setup was conducted. In the user tests the different groups was using different interaction techniques to interact with their assistants. The main findings of the user tests was that there are indications to that the type of language used differs depending on the interaction techniques. Users who interact through voice is more prone to use a more natural language, while users using a chat interface quickly started to treat the interactions with the Intelligent Personal Assistant as commands. The result observed was that users who interacted with the assistant using chat and then switched to interacting through voice used a shorter, more command-like language when they interacted through voice as well.