In an era when the importance of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is ever increasing, users still find them difficult to learn. The issue mainly derives from the fact that GIS interfaces’ learnability hurdles are not lowered for beginner users. Onboarding interaction is a way to tackle this issue, providing proper guidance to novice users the first time they use the software and consequently making it easier for them to learn the system. Throughout this paper, the study proposes a set of guidelines for designing onboarding interaction for assisting novice users utilizing GIS applications. Employing the method of Research through Design, a design prototype is developed through user studies, which in turn was used as a leverage to draw the guidelines as the final outcome of this research. The prototype addresses three different learnability problems of a GIS application identified through user studies and aims to provide design solutions for what users find difficult, important, and lacking in the GIS system. More specifically, the guidelines deal with helping users orient themselves in the application, learn easy functions by practicing them, and understand more complex features through watching instructive video materials.

This thesis project opens up an interaction design space in the InfoSec domain concerning raising awareness of common vulnerabilities and facilitating counter practices through seamful design.This combination of raising awareness coupled with boosting possibilities for deliberate action (or non-action) together account for augmenting agency. This augmentation takes the form of bottom up micro-movements and daily gestures contributing to opportunities for greater agency in the increasingly fraught InfoSec domain.

This thesis project presents a research through design process that has aimed to explore how we can design interactive technologies that can support mindfulness practices in beginners. This has been done by designing a meditative lamp, Lumina, which can be controlled by the user’s neural oscillations. The user interacts with the lamp by changing alpha and beta brain waves levels through meditation. The prototype has been evaluated with four participants and the testing sessions had three stages: a preliminary questionnaire to learn about participants' mindfulness level, interaction with my prototype providing the opportunity to explore mindfulness and electroencephalography (EEG), and a post-interview to reflect on their experience with the prototype. The biggest challenge of this project was to support mindfulness without disrupting the practice. Lumina has been developed through an iterative process, guided by relevant literature and works in the field of meditation, neurology, and calm technology.

This study used a research through design method to examine time in roleplaying games, particularly with regards to the emotional impact of time skips as affected by various mechanical and narrative factors. The design in question drew from prior work in games, films, and other narrative works with time skips, based on the assumption that time skips can have a great emotional impact, but that impact may be lesser or greater depending on how it is handled. I based the design on a theoretical framework which suggested that roleplaying games would be more impactful given a deep immersion into the reality of the gameworld, and specifically a sense that time’s passage in the gameworld realistically reflected the way humans experience time in the real world. As such, the game was built to reflect specific theories regarding the human processes of memory and aging. The tabletop roleplaying game ran over the course of three 2.5-hour sessions over several weeks, with three participants roleplaying pre-built characters who aged with the time skip that occurred between sessions. Following the final session, I moderated a focus group interview to collect data about the emotional impact of the experience. Generally, the game did have a profound emotional impact. I found that the most impactful game elements were those which highlighted change on several levels; in particular, mechanics and narrative moments which emphasized character growth – or losses which characters had undergone – were very effective. Though this study used a tabletop roleplaying game as its medium, the design was built to be general enough that certain findings could be tested with other mediums as well, which I explore in the discussion section.

Using a Research through Design approach, this research aims to utilize the criteria of Flow outlined by Csikszentmihályi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (2014) and later adapted to videogames by Sweetser & Wyeth in GameFlow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games (2005) to improve the Tower Defense game Daidala by increasing players’ time spent in a state of Flow. This serves to provide future game designers with an example of how this model and these concepts can be applied when designing and developing a game. The research was conducted by exposing players to the game as it came out of development, collecting data from semi-structured interviews and utilizing said data to construct another iteration of the game with the goal of improving players’ experience by increasing the time spent in a Flow mental state. Lastly, this iteration was tested and the results were compared to the previous iteration to determine if the changes succeeded in extending the time players spent in a state of Flow. Our findings show that the GameFlow model by Sweetser & Wyeth (2005) is a powerful tool for game designers looking to improve the experience of the player base of their game through the informed use of Flow. The model provides a solid framework for collecting and evaluating data to guide the process of iteration towards increasing time spent by players in a state of Flow.

Driving is becoming increasingly automated and the automated driving system is gradually replacing the driver, which will inevitably have a significant impact on the driving experience. This study investigates the design of a dashboard for the highly automated vehicle that would provide the driver with relevant information during the human-machine handover. After reviewing previous studies, analyzing the state-of-the-art and generating user scenarios, we developed design guidelines, prototypes and user experience videos. This video served as a "research instrument" to test with users and explore and learn about consequences and interpretations. The test results suggest that the mental workload paid by the user for the task shows a trend of reduction from level 3 to level 4. The reduced workload can ensure more effective alerts and alarms, which can potentially make driving safer. Regarding the implementation of the design, conclusions are mainly drawn on three aspects: the necessity to combine several modalities at automation level 4, the need to redefine the color of the assisting AR bars we designed due to the indistinguishability of the red and orange ones, and the disagreement on whether and how to display speed information at handover. The practice and application of our prototype in scenarios supports previous studies and provides a reliable, creative solution for other researchers and designers. / Bilkörningen blir alltmer automatiserad och det automatiserade körsystemet ersätter gradvis föraren, vilket oundvikligen kommer att påverka körupplevelsen avsevärt. I den här studien undersöks utformningen av en instrumentpanel för det högt automatiserade fordonet som skulle ge föraren relevant information under överlämnandet mellan människa och maskin. Efter att ha undersökt tidigare studier, analyserat den senaste tekniken och genererat användarscenarier har vi utvecklat designriktlinjer, prototyper och videor för användarupplevelser. Denna video fungerade som ett "forskningsinstrument" för att testa med användare och utforska och lära sig om konsekvenser och tolkningar. Testresultatet tyder på att den mentala arbetsbelastning som användaren betalar för uppgiften visar en tendens till minskning från nivå 3 till nivå 4. Den minskade arbetsbelastningen kan garantera effektivare varningar och larm, vilket kan göra körningen säkrare. När det gäller genomförandet av konstruktionen, dras huvudsakligen slutsatser om tre aspekter: nödvändigheten av att kombinera flera modaliteter på automationsnivå 4, behovet av att omdefiniera färgen på de assisterande AR-stänger som vi utformade på grund av att de röda och orange inte går att skilja från varandra och oenigheten om huruvida och hur hastighetsinformation ska visas vid överlämning. Praktiken och tillämpningen av vår prototyp i scenarier stöder tidigare studier och ger en tillförlitlig, kreativ lösning för andra forskare och designers.

Gamification is used in a wide range of industries to motivate user engagement and increase the utilization of products. Most gamification applications are designed and developed through gamification platforms. However, due to the different industry users, requirements and goals, gamification design and development is usually perceived to be complex and requires a lot of time and money for developing. This research uses a design research methodology to explore how to improve the effectiveness of the use of gamification platforms. Based on interviews with practitioners, this study summarizes the points of difficulty with the gamification platform, optimizes the framework and processes for using the gamification platform on this basis, and then iterates the design of the gamification platform in conjunction with the onboarding model to guide gamification design practitioners to be able to quickly understand the operation of the gamification platform and to perform gamification design and development without relying on professionals. The results show that the simplified operation of the gamification platform and the optimized design and development framework and processes can be applied in the future.

A smart home is a term for everyday appliances connected to each other by a hub or the internet. By research through design, this project aims to understand how children can be included in the design process and seen as users affected by the current smart home products but don’t have their own means to communicate with them. By conducting interviews and then moving on to co-design workshops, it was possible to understand and identify the design opportunities in the project. Based on the insight from interviews, most children don’t have a way to interact with a smart object in their own home. The design was pushed toward understanding how we can involve children in the interactive design process. This thesis project has been focused on research, specifically research through design. The main goal has not been to develop an artefact at the end of the project but rather to create knowledge around how we can involve children when designing smart homes. The findings of this study show that the children participating cared more about the actions they wanted to do in a specific room rather than how to interact with the room itself. However, some ideas came up when asked for particular interactions or devices.

Although shared mobility services provide benefits such as minimizing congestion as well as pollution and costs of transportation, barriers such as trust and convenience are blocking these services from reaching a broader audience. In this paper, considerations for a new service that aims to bring together familiar strangers to share rides to and from the airport is presented using a Research through Design approach. The familiar strangers investigated in this study are frequent travelers of Scandinavian airlines (SAS). Interviews, ideation workshops, prototyping, and feedback sessions are the design activities that were used to understand motivations behind their choice of transportation to and from the airport, and current pain points that motivate the need for such a service, as well as to guide the design directions of the service to tackle the problems of trust and convenience current shared mobility services face. The findings showed that SAS travelers are willing to share rides with others belonging to their community when living far away from transit services to and from the airport, arriving uncomfortable hours at a new destination, when there’s a potential to make new business contacts as well as when traveling with loved ones. The final design presented in this paper serves as a framework on how to design services to enable people who share common physical spaces and similar travel behavior, to share rides together. / Även om “shared mobility” tjänster ger fördelar som att minimera trafikstockningar samt föroreningar och transportkostnader, finns det hinder som tillit och bekvämlighet som blockerar dessa tjänster från att nå en större publik. I den här uppsatsen presenteras omständigheter för en ny tjänst som syftar till att samla “familiar strangers” för att dela transportsätt till och från flygplatsen med hjälp av ett Research Through Design-metod. De “familiar strangers” som undersöktes i denna studie är frekventa resenärer av Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). Intervjuer, ideation workshops, prototyper och feed-back möten är de designaktiviteter som användes för att förstå motivation bakom resenärers val av transport till och från flygplatsen och aktuella smärtpunkter som motiverar behovet av en sådan tjänst samt för att styra designbeslut för tjänsten för att ta itu med problemen med förtroende och bekvämlighet som nuvarande “shared mobility” tjänster stöter på. Resultaten visade att SAS-resenärer är villiga att dela resor med andra som tillhör deras gemenskap när de bor långt ifrån transit tjänster till och från flygplatsen, när de anländer i ett nytt resmål vid obehagliga timmar, när det finns möjlighet att skapa nya affärskontakter såväl som när de reser med sina nära och kära. Den slutliga designen som presenteras i denna uppsats fungerar som en ram för hur man utformar tjänster för att möjliggöra för personer som delar gemensamma fysiska utrymmen och liknande resebeteenden, att dela resor tillsammans.

Like reading a book, stories told orally or acted out auditory invite subjective co-construction of narrative events through imagination. While an interesting characteristic, audio-based, fictive storytelling is not well explored in HCI. Eavesdropper is a prototype system for Mixed Reality Audionarrative, the stage being a miniature house and the actors residing in a spatialized, virtual, audio world. This work accounts for development and evaluation of some contextually unconventional, properties of one current iteration of the system, aimed at facilitating an exploratory mindset: sections of the narrative unfolding in parallel, controlled by parameters the user is only partially aware of. Through qualitative evaluation with users, I report on how these properties affected the way a story world was experienced, explored and interpreted. The findings, coupled with reflections on the design choices made, are then synthesized to a set of design sensitivities meant to inform and spur discussion and further inquiry into similar systems exploring audio as the primary mean for conveying narrative. / En historia som berättas muntligt, eller drama som ageras ut med rösten (t.ex. radioteater), låter lyssnaren subjektivt konstruera händelser som bilder i den egna fantasin. Det här är en intressant egenskap hos ljudbaserat berättande men inte särskilt utforskat inom Människa-datorinteraktion. Speciellt inte vad gäller fiktiva berättelser för ett underhållningssyfte. Eavesdropper är ett experimentellt, Mixed Reality-system där det dramatiska berättandet har sin hemvist i den virtuella sfären men kontrolleras genom positionering i det fysiska rummet. I den aktuella iterationen är den fysiska platsen ett fullt inrett modellhus i liten skala som agerar scen åt skådespelarnas röster. I den här uppsatsen beskriver jag utvecklings- och utvärderingsarbetet med den aktuella iterationen där särskilt fokus lagts på några berättartekniskt och designmässigt icke-konventionella egenskaper: Användaren uppmuntras att subjektivt utforska berättelsevärlden och dramats olika trådar löper parallellt i realtid utan synbar logik. Genom kvalitativa utvärderingsmetoder så undersöker jag hur dessa egenskaper påverkar hur användare upplever, utforskar och tolkar berättelsevärlden. Resultaten tillsammans med reflektion över designprocessen ligger slutligen till grund för en uppsättning mjuka riktlinjer vilka är menade att användas för att orientera framtida diskussioner om, eller experiment med, liknade system där ljudmedia är huvudsaklig bärare av dramatiskt berättande