ABSTRACT Context: Communication is a primary human need and language is the medium for this. Most people have the ability to listen and speak and they use different languages like Swedish, Urdu and English etc. to communicate. Hearing impaired people use signs to communicate. Pakistan Sign Language (PSL) is the preferred language of the deaf in Pakistan. Currently, human PSL interpreters are required to facilitate communication between the deaf and hearing; they are not always available, which means that communication among the deaf and other people may be impaired or nonexistent. In this situation, a system with voice recognition as an input and PSL as an output will be highly helpful. Objectives: As part of this thesis, we explore challenges faced by deaf people in everyday life while interacting with unimpaired. We investigate state of art work done in this area. This study explores speech recognition and Machine translation techniques to devise a generic and automated system that converts English speech to PSL. A prototype of the proposed solution is developed and validated. Methods: Three step investigation is done as part of thesis work. First, to understand problem itself, interviews were conducted with the domain experts. Secondly, from literature review, it is investigated whether any similar or related work has already been done, state of the art technologies like Machine translation, speech recognition engines and Natural language processing etc. have been analyzed. Thirdly, prototype is developed whose validation data is obtained from domain experts and is validated by ourselves as well as from domain experts. Results: It is found that there is a big communication gap between deaf and unimpaired in Pakistan. This is mainly due to the lack of an automated system that can convert Audio speech to PSL and vice versa. After investigating state of the art work including solutions in other countries specific to their languages, it is found that no system exists that is generic and automated. We found that there is already work started for PSL to English Speech conversion but not the other way around. As part of this thesis, we discovered that a generic and automated system can be devised using speech recognition and Machine translation techniques. Conclusion: Deaf people in Pakistan lack a lot of opportunities mainly due to communication gap between deaf and unimpaired. We establish that there should be a generic and automated system that can convert English speech to PSL and vice versa. As part of this, we worked for such a system that can convert English speech to PSL. Moreover, Speech recognition, Machine translation and Natural language processing techniques can be core ingredients for such a generic and automated system. Using user centric approach, the prototype of the system is validated iteratively from domain experts. / This research has investigated a computer based solution to facilitate communication among deaf people and unimpaired. Investigation was performed using literature review and visits to institutes to gain a deeper knowledge about sign language and specifically how is it used in Pakistan context. Secondly, challenges faced by deaf people to interact with unimpaired are analyzed by interviews with domain experts (instructors of deaf institutes) and by directly observing deaf in everyday life situations. We conclude that deaf people rely on sign language for communication with unimpaired people. Deaf people in Pakistan use PSL for communication, English is taught as secondary language all over Pakistan in all educational institutes, deaf people are taught by instructors that not only need to know the domain expertise of the area that they are teaching like Math, History and Science etc. but they also need to know PSL very well in order to teach the deaf. It becomes very difficult for deaf institutes to get instructors that know both. Whenever deaf people need to communicate with unimpaired people in any situation, they either need to hire a translator or request the unimpaired people to write everything for them. Translators are very difficult to get all the time and they are very expensive as well. Moreover, using writing by unimpaired becomes very slow process and not all unimpaired people want to do this. We observed this phenomena ourselves as instructors of the institutes provided us the opportunity to work with deaf people to understand their feelings and challenges in everyday life. In this way, we used to go with deaf people in shopping malls, banks, post offices etc. and with their permission, we observed their interaction. We have concluded that sometimes their interaction with normal people becomes very slow and embarrassing. Based on above findings, we concluded that there is definitely a need for an automated system that can facilitate communication between deaf and unimpaired people. These factors lead to the subsequent objective of this research. The main objective of this thesis is to identify a generic and an automated system without any human intervention that converts English speech into PSL as a solution to bridge the communication gap between deaf and unimpaired. It is identified that existing work done related to this problem area doesn’t fulfill our objective. Current solutions are either very specific to a domain, e.g. post office or need human intervention i.e. not automatic. It is identified that none of the existing systems can be extended towards our desired solution. We explored state of the art techniques like Machine translation, Speech recognition and NLP. We have utilized these in our proposed solution. Prototype of the proposed solution is developed whose functional and non functional validation is performed. Since none of existing work exactly matches to our problem statement, therefore, we have not compared the validation of our prototype to any existing system. We have validated prototype with respect to our problem domain. Moreover, this is validated iteratively from the domain experts, i.e. experts of PSL and the English to PSL human translators. We found this user centric approach very useful to help better understand the problem at the ground level, keeping our work user focused and then realization of user satisfaction level throughout the process. This work has opened a new world of opportunities where deaf can communicate with others who do not have PSL knowledge. Having this system, if it is further developed from a prototype to a functioning system; deaf institutes will have wider scope of choosing best instructors for a given domain that may not have PSL expertise. Deaf people will have more opportunities to interact with other members of the society at every level as communication is the basic pillar for this. The automatic speech to sign language is an attractive prospect; the impending applications are exhilarating and worthwhile. In the field of Human Computer Interface (HCI) we hope that our thesis will be an important addition to the ongoing research. / Ahmed Abdul Haseeb & Asim ilyas, Contact no. 00923215126749 House No. 310, Street No. 4 Rawal town Islamabad, Pakistan Postal Code 44000

E-hälsa blir allt mer relevant i och med att IT utvecklas i samhället, och kan hjälpa sjukvården att bli effektivare. Det finns stora svårigheter för läkare att få en samlad hälsobild över patientens läkemedelsanvändning, vilket gör att läkaren har svårt att fatta beslut rörande patientens medicinering. Dessa problem grundar sig i den bristfälliga informationsöverföringen mellan vårdinstanser. Ehälsomyndigheten har tagit sig ann denna utmaning genom att skapa en plattform som ska göra det enklare för patienten att hantera all sin hälsoinformation. Till denna plattform kan utvecklare utveckla mobilapplikationer med fokus på hälsa. Vilket kan skapa nya utmaningar då de ska anpassas för att alla ska kunna använda dem. En grupp som vanligen kan känna sig utanför är seniorer och speciellt de över 75 år. Seniorer kan inte alltid använda sig av de applikationer som finns tillgängliga i samma utsträckning, då de oftast är utformade efter en mer generell användare. Studien har undersökt vilka brister det finns i de generella designprinciperna och riktlinjer riktade till seniorer och hur dessa behöver anpassas för att få ett mer användbart gränssnitt. Studien utformade en prototyp utifrån etablerade designprinciper som adresserar problemet med läkemedelsuppföljning och utförde sedan användbarhetstester av denna prototyp. Seniorer fick interagera med prototypen under observationer, där fokuset låg i att finna vilka svårigheter som kan finnas med gränssnittet. Svårigheterna respondenterna upplevde analyserades och genererade rekommendationer på förändringar som till viss del implementerades i prototypen innan studien utförde sitt andra användbarhetstest. Resultatet visar att de etablerade designprinciperna till stor del kan följas vid utformandet av gränssnitt för seniorer men det finns behov av att prioritera vissa principer framför andra samt att dra vissa principer till sin spets vilket redogörs för i slutet av denna studie. / E-health is becoming more and more relevant in society since IT is growing, which can help the health care to be more effective. Doctors have big problems to get a collected health view of the patient’s drug usage, which makes it hard for doctors to prescribe new drugs to the patient. These problems are based on the lack of information transfer between health care agencies. The department of E-health (Ehälsomyndigheten) are creating a platform to take on this problem. This platform will make it easier for patients to handle their health information. System developers can develop mobile applications, focused on health, to this platform. Applications need to be customized so that everyone can use them, but are usually designed for the general user. Seniors, especially those over 75 years of age, can’t always make use of the applications to the same extent which can make them feel left out. This study has investigated what flaws there are to the general design principles and guidelines for the senior citizens. And how the design principles should be customized to make a more useful interface. The study developed a prototype from established design principles that addresses the problem with drug monitoring. The prototype was tested in usability tests where seniors interacted with the application during observations. The focus was to find what difficulties the seniors had interacting with the interface. The findings of the test were analyzed and generated recommendations on changes that were partially implemented in the prototype before the study conducted its second usability test. The results show that the established design principles can be followed for the most part, in the design of interfaces for seniors, but there is a need to prioritize certain principles over others. The results also indicate that some design principles need to be intensified for the senior citizens to find the interface useful. The thesis is written in Swedish.Keywords:

Denna rapport redovisar den process som utvecklingen av OTWs nya webbplats har inneburit. Jag har arbetet med att skapa en ny design av deras nuvarande webbplats där syftet har varit att skapa en webbplats där man presenterar sig själva på ett bra sätt och ställer mindre krav på redaktionellt innehåll samtidigt som man följer konventioner för branschen och målgruppen. I utvecklingen av webbplatsen anpassar jag mig efter rådande designprinciper och riktlinjer för användbarhet så att webbplatsen ska bli så lätt att använda som möjligt. Utvecklingen av prototypen har skett i mjukvaruprogrammet Axure RP. Resultatet av projektet är två interaktiva digitala prototyper i form av en mobil version samt en desktopversion. Projektet har även resulterat i wireframes och designskisser. / This report describes the process that the development of OTWs new website has entailed. I have been working with creating a redesign of their existing website. The goal has been to create a website which present themselves in a good way and requires less editorial content, while complying with the conventions of the industry and the audience. When developing the site I adapt the design to the prevailing design principles and guidelines for usability so that the site will be as easy to use as possible. The development of the prototype has been taking place in the software program Axure RP. The result of the project is two fully interactive digital prototypes, one for mobile use and one for regular desktop use. It has also resulted in wireframes and design sketches.

Den här rapporten förklarar tillvägagångssättet för framtagningen utav en responsiv design till webbplatsen Projects & Staff, en webbplats som tidigare hade en fixed design. Projektet består utav två leveranser, hi-fi prototyper skapade i Adobe Illustrator och Adobe Photoshop samt en färdig mobilversion utav webbplatsen, utvecklad med CSS3. Under projektets gång har jag designat för användarupplevelse och användbarhet, två områden som är viktiga inom responsiv webbdesign. Jag har utfört en förstudie i form av en webbplatsanalys, gjort en PACT-analys samt användarintervjuer. Detta för att definiera behoven som fanns för en responsiv design, samt att få en tydlig bild av användare och deras vanor. Målet med projektet har varit en responsiv webbdesign som representeras väl på olika enheter, speciellt smartphone, ett mål som jag lyckats bra med att uppnå. / This report explains the approach for the making of a responsive design to the website Projects & Staff, a website that previously had a fixed design. The project consists of two parts, hi-fi prototypes created in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop as well as a complete mobile version of the website, created with CSS3. During the project I have designed for user experience and usability, two areas that are important to responsive web design. I have conducted a feasibility study in the form of a website analysis, made a PACT analysis and user interviews. This to define the needs that existed for a responsive design, and to get a clear picture of the users and their habits. The goal has been a responsive web design represented well on different devices, especially smartphones, a goal that I have done well with achieving.

In today's highly competitive industries, engineers are driven to not only design a better product to fulfill users' needs but also demanded to develop a product in a short time to occupy the market. With the development of data collection and visualization technology, the application of data visualization into product development to enhance the ability of better product design is a significant trend.  Data visualization becomes more and more important since it could illustrate the valuable information, such as tacit needs and patterns which hidden from data, in a communicated way to help engineers get more inspiration for the conceptual design.   It is not hard to collect data; however, the challenge is to visualize the valuable information from a large number of data concisely and intuitively. In recent years, there are some visualization techniques available for product design, while, most of them are implemented in the later stage of product development, few methods are applicable for conceptual design. Therefore, this thesis is carried out to explore appropriate visualization techniques to provide support for conceptual design.   The aim of this thesis is, in an engineering environment, to investigate ways to visualize complex data legibly and intuitively to enhance engineers’ ability for conceptual design from better understanding the current machine. In order to achieve the objective, a conceptual design case of the improvement of wheel loader fuel consumption is applied, which consisted of plenty of data sets within various parameters, to explore how to reveal the hidden information of complex data for engineers.   As the result of this thesis, a prototype contains a series of visualization techniques is proposed to demonstrate data information from a wheel loader under several visualization situations. The final prototype has the functions of visualizing different operations separately; visualizing the overall fuel consumption in one operation; cluster's patterns visualization; visualizing the impact of one variable on the whole value.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This research is in the area of lexicography and investigates the relationship between Shona terminology development and the culture of the language community for which the terminology is intended. It is a contextual analysis of compound nouns found in Shona terminological dictionaries. The study specifically explores how lexicographers together with health, music, language and literature specialists make use of their knowledge about Shona cultural contexts in the creation of compound nouns. Thus, this research foregrounds Shona socio-cultural contexts and meaning generation in terminology development. This study employs a quadruple conceptual framework. The four components of the framework that are utilised are the Traditional Descriptive Approach (TDA), Cognitive Approach (CG), Systemic Functional Approach (SFL), and Semiotic Remediation (SRM). TDA is used in the linguistic categorisation of Shona compound nouns. In addition, it provides the metalanguage with which to describe the constituent parts of Shona compound nouns. As TDA is mainly confined to the linguistic dimension, this research employs CG, SFL, and SRM to explore the cultural and socio-cognitive dimensions of terminology development. / South Africa

Mobile technology has allowed the traditional boundaries that exist between formal learning and informal learning to blend. The purpose of this research is to understand and describe the use of established and new “support networks” and the process of knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation in a formal learning environment. Factors affecting the design, testing and ultimate feasibility of using mobile devices such as cell phones to enhance teaching and learning in well-resourced developed, and under-resourced developing schools are identified. Findings in this study point to the general acceptance of using mobile technology as a readily available vehicle, to provide access to contents and allow learners to contribute to the collective body of knowledge from their own perspective. Copyright 2007, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Batchelor, J 2007, Mobile information communication and technology use in secondary schools : a feasibility study, MEd dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-09102007-161045 / > / Dissertation (MEd (Computer Integrated Education))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

Modeling protean objects, i.e. objects adapting their structure and behavior dynamically with respect to a changeable environment, is often challenging in traditional object-oriented languages. According to the author, the root cause of this problem lies in the class-based conceptual framework embedded in the foundation of the object-oriented para-digm. The proposed paradigm Object Morphology (OM) is greatly influenced by prototype theory developed in the field of cognitive psychology. OM abandons the notion of class and suggests, instead, that the abstractions of protean objects should be established through the construction of morph models describing the possible forms of those objects. This the-sis defines the theoretical foundations of OM, which is further used to specify the elements of prototypical object-oriented analysis. An important part of this work is also a proof-of-concept implementation of an OM framework in Scala.

L'optimisation de la forme des pales en fonction des phases de vol constitue un levier puissant dans ladémarche d'amélioration des performances des hélicoptères et de minimisation de leurs impactsenvironnementaux. Cette thèse propose l'étude et la caractérisation d'un concept permettant, grâce àl'utilisation d'un actionneur passif, de contrôler le vrillage d'une pale d'hélicoptère, en vol, en fonctionde la vitesse de rotation. L'actionneur retenu pour tordre une pale rigide est une plaque compositestratifiée munie d'un couplage traction/torsion et intégrée au sein de la pale. Les travaux développés ontpermis de démontrer la faisabilité de ce concept à l'échelle d'un prototype de partie courante de pale. Enpremier lieu, et ce afin de concevoir une architecture de profil adaptée à ce type de plaque, un modèleanalytique a été développé pour relier les caractéristiques des plaques composites à leur vrillage soussollicitations statique et dynamique. Une formulation simple de la réponse en vrillage a permisd'optimiser les séquencements de ces plaques dans l'objectif de maximiser le couplage en minimisant lesdéformations résiduelles liées au procédé de fabrication. Les plaques optimisées et fabriquées ontensuite été caractérisées sous traction quasi-statique uniforme puis sur un banc rotatif. Plusieurstechniques expérimentales ont été développées dans le but de quantifier le vrillage. Ce travail a conduità l'insertion d'une plaque épaisse dans un profil de pale. Sous un chargement statique, les tronçons ontexposé un vrillage de l'ordre de 2 °.m-1. Ces multiples expériences et les différentes simulationsréalisées permettent d'envisager des essais en soufflerie sur ces prototypes de pales. / Blade morphing optimization during a flight provides a powerful lever to improve helicoptersperformance and reduce their fossil based energy consumption. This PhD thesis examines a newconcept of passive blade twist controlled by the rotation speed. One of the most suitable actuator able totwist a stiff blade is an integrated laminate with extension/twist coupling. Developed work proves thefeasibility of this assembly at a laboratory scale. In a first stage, an analytical model was developed toestimate the twist behaviour of a laminate subjected to static and dynamic loads. This effectivecalculation of the twist response was used to optimize the stacking sequence in order to improve thecoupling and minimize residual stresses due to the manufacturing process. Some optimized plates havebeen manufactured and characterized using uniform tensile test and a rotative bench. Severalmeasurement methods have been developed to quantify twist. This study led to the integration of a thicklaminate in a blade airfoil profile. Under quasi-static axial loading, these blade sections have shownapproximately 2 °.m-1 in twist. Results from experiments and models make it possible to expect windtunnel tests on these adaptive twist blades.

Varje år slänger svensken 74 kilo mat per person. För att förstå vad och varför vi slänger mat gick jag igenom vad ett hyreshus slänger i soprummet. Bland den slängda maten kunde jag se att de boende äter mycket ägg och tillsammans med de boende bestämde vi oss för att dem skulle testa att bli hönsägare. I mitt designarbete har jag designat ett modulärt hönshus och ett driftsystem för att de boende i hyreshuset tillsammans ska ta hand om höns och ge sina matrester till hönorna. Jag har undersökt vad de boende behöver för skapa gemenskap kring huset och på bäst sätt sköta driften. Med insikter från denna prototyp designade ytterligare ett modulärt hönshus, denna gång matas hönsen på Konstfack med Konstfacks restaurangs matrester. Jag kallar projektet ”The urban hens” och vill med detta projekt skapa en social mötesplats och verka för en mer cirkulär matekonomi som kan öka förståelse för matens värde.