The voice technology today is limited to explicit interaction and does not take advantage of the connotation of voice modalities. Research has shown that it is possible to sense emotions and feelings as well as the context of information based on the tone of voice. Building on existing theory and Research through Design, this thesis aims to speculate the use of whispering in human-computer interaction. It also discusses how this might lead to a more preferred future or cause tensions within addictive technology and the politics of voice assistants. The results argue that whispering has an impact on the relationship and trust between a human and a machine and that it could be used as an active interaction mode with voice assistants. Further research is needed to identify the effect of whispering on different users and the influence of different voice modalities. / Röstteknologin idag är begränsad till explicit interaktion och utnyttjar inte konnotationen av röstmodaliteter. Forskning har visat att det är möjligt att identifiera känslor och sammanhang med information baserad på tonfallet. Med utgångspunkt i befintlig teori och Research through Design, syftar denna avhandling till att spekulera kring användningen av viskning i interaktion mellan människor och datorer. Det diskuteras hur detta kan leda till en mer gynnsam framtid alternativt orsaka konflikt inom beroendeframkallande teknik och röstassistenternas politik. Resultaten menar att viskning påverkar förhållandet och förtroendet mellan människa och maskin och att den kan användas som ett aktivt interaktionsläge hos röstassistenter. Ytterligare forskning behövs för att identifiera effekten av viskning på olika användare och påverkan av olika röstmodaliteter.

The current communicative planning paradigm appears to lack the ability to include the voices of the voiceless and is stuck in practices that continue to confirm the status-quo through technocratic quick fixes, which do not solve underlying problems causing climate change. This thesis is an exploration of how two unconventional methods, storytelling and co-created speculative design, can contribute to a change in paradigm, specifically improve the inclusiveness of coproduction, where nonhumans are involved in the decision-making processes. This thesis takes the reader on a journey through the embodiment of water in Slussen, by an analysis of semi-structured interviews and a critical discourse, a story from the perspective of water with the title Suorssá, and two alternative designs of Slussen if water were in charge. The applied lense in this thesis is a combination of Latour’s perspective on actants, Bell’s studies of the future, storytelling, critical utopianism, and ecocentrism. The methods and lense are embedded in a case study of water in Slussen, which is a major urban development in Sweden where water plays a considerable role. Through this journey an alternative perspective is attempted to be shared with the participants and an increasing openness towards ecocentrism, where all organisms on the planet have an intrinsic value irrespective of humans, is created. The results suggest that a truly inclusive planning paradigm, especially for megaprojects like Slussen, seems to be a utopian thought. Nonetheless, storytelling and co-created speculative designs turn out to be an effective step towards realizing this vision.

Many online fighting games use rollback netcode in order to compensate for network delay. Rollback netcode allows players to experience the game as having reduced delay. A drawback of this is that players will sometimes see the game quickly ”jump” to a different state to adjust for the the remote player’s actions. Rollback netcode implementations require a method for predicting the remote player’s next button inputs. Current implementations use a naive repeatlastframe policy for such prediction. There is a possibility that alternative methods may lead to improved user experience. This project examines the problem of improving input prediction in fighting games. It details the development of a new prediction model based on recurrent neural networks. The model was trained and evaluated using a dataset of several thousand recorded player input sequences. The results show that the new model slightly outperforms the naive method in prediction accuracy, with the difference being greater for longer predictions. However, it has far higher requirements both in terms of memory and computation cost. It seems unlikely that the model would significantly improve on current rollback netcode implementations. However, there may be ways to improve predictions further, and the effects on user experience remains unknown. / Många online fightingspel använder rollback netcode för att kompensera för nätverksfördröjning. Rollback netcode låter spelare uppleva spelet med mindre fördröjning. En nackdel av detta är att spelare ibland ser spelet snabbt ”hoppa” till ett annat tillstånd för att justera för motspelarens handlingar. Rollback netcode implementationer behöver en policy för att förutsäga motspelarens nästa knapptryckningar. Nuvarande implementationer använder en naiv repetera-senaste-frame policy för förutsägelser. Det finns en möjlighet att alternativa metoder kan leda till förbättrad användarupplevelse. Det här projektet undersöker problemet att förbättra förutsägelser av knapptryckningar i fightingspel. Det beskriver utvecklingen av en ny förutsägelsemodell baserad på rekursiva neuronnät. Modellen tränades och evaluerades med ett dataset av flera tusen inspelade knappsekvenser. Resultaten visar att den nya modellen överträffar den naiva metoden i noggrannhet, med större skillnad för längre förutsägelser. Dock har den mycket högre krav i både minne och beräkningskostad. Det verkar osannolikt att modellen skulle avsevärt förbättra nuvarande rollback netcode implementationer. Men det kan finnas sätt att förbättra förutsägelser ytterligare, och påverkan på användarupplevelsen förblir okänd.

The involvement of end users in the design process is gaining popularity, particularly through human-centred design (HCD). This case study addresses two practical issues: the lack of engagement of Swedish public sector office workers in designing their workspaces and the need to prioritize user needs in new meeting places. The research examines engagement at the leadership/ownership level using participatory speculative design (PSD), which goes beyond HCD. Through participatory action research (PAR), users are empowered to question their needs and lead the design process. The study employs PSD in two workshops to explore its contribution to the process and outcome. It focuses on identifying ownership-level engagement indicators and assessing how PSD influences reflecting user needs in the initial prototype of future meeting spaces. The central research question revolves around identifying indicators of ownership-level engagement in PSD and assessing how the PSD methodology influences the reflection of user needs in the initial prototype of future meeting spaces. Data collection involves secondary data, literature review, and design workshops, analysing workshop design and participant behaviour’s impact on engagement levels and organizations. The study aims to provide practical solutions and bridge knowledge gaps in participant engagement. Findings demonstrate the practical implications of involving end users at the highest level, including fresh insights, broader perspectives, and the democratization of the design process. PSD at the ownership level proves feasible, offering novel insights within the realm of PSD.

This thesis aims to study how much of price appreciations on the Swedish real-estate market in recent times have been fundamentally warranted, as well as if the unconventional monetary policies implemented by the Swedish central bank have had any interaction with these price escalations. The methodology employed to research this is divided into two parts. Firstly, a bubble component time series has been computed using a Kalman filtering technique in a state-space model in which the bubble is inferred from a fundamental equation. The next step involves studying the dynamics between the bubble element vis-a-vis the quantitative easing policies implemented by Riksbanken. This procedure involves estimating vector autoregressive models in which several policy variables are included in the nexus and analyzed simultaneously to better grasp how QE transmits and impacts the component for the bubble. The empirical results from the first segment designate that price inflation on the Swedish housing market has become more and more principally unjustifiable throughout the sample. However, no significant inference may be made in this stage as to whether or not the market is influenced by a speculative bubble. In the dynamic system, some, yet thin evidence is found of quantitative easing policies preceding the evolvement of exuberance in house prices. Conclusively, this thesis affirms most of the growth in the non-fundamental part of prices to an expansion of credit, which in turn cannot be accredited to the policies of the Swedish Riksbank. Only a slight expectational effect is found and therefore we conclude that quantitative easing only has a trivial impact on the development of a speculative bubble in the market for real-estate.

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In this project, the intersection between animism and smart things is being explored, with a special focus on gaming chairs. Integrated sensors and actuators become an opportunity to create interactivity and autonomous behaviour which creates illusions of life. Gaming chairs are interesting to explore because it’s a piece of furniture that is often and well used, for longer periods at a time, allowing a space to create a personal relationship between the human user and the chair. With the goal to develop design beyond the current norms of interactions and relationships between the user and belongings in their home this project uses Research Through Design, Speculative Design, Animism and Posthumanism. By transferring insights of visual expressions, capabilities of beloved belongings, familiar interactions and behaviours to a non-living entity combined with technology and smart things as a contributor for animistic expression - this project proposes that it is possible to create an illusion of life and for humans to develop a relationship to a non-human entity. The actuators applied on the conceptual gaming chair affected the participants testing it - the participants seemed to care for the chair and perceived it to be an extension of themselves.

Physical inactivity has increased significantly over the past years, andthe advancement of technology has contributed to it. Paradoxically,domestic IoT shapes human behavior through human interaction. Aseveryday objects become a part of the Internet of Things (IoT), thisthesis aims to investigate how the IoT devices and everyday objects cancollaborate with humans to address growing physical inactivity.Using a speculative and critical design approach, design proposals in theform of physical and video prototypes are constructed and discussed in aseries of workshops. Participation in the workshops moves theparticipants from being passive consumers of technology to citizens thatactively debate and design their own future.The outcomes of the workshops are themes that critically address theimplications of domesticating technology and its future roles andfunctions. Also, a set of characteristics is outlined to illustrate desirable,undesirable, and preferred characteristics of networked technologies thatmay encourage physical activity.

No description available.

In his speech during the 2016 Speculative Design Symposium, held at the University of California, San Diego, Benjamin Bratton1 rightly argued that the job of 21st century design is to undo (much of) the design of the 20th.A number of recent controversial designs and practices in the business and public sphere have suddenly made ethical design (design ethics2) a hot topic in the design community.This master thesis is a highly critical and fairly philosophical examination of the design profession in the context of the current socio-technical landscape. It analyses the convergence between the fields of design, ethics and disruptive technology. Autonomous transportation is taken as an example to illustrate what circumstances (should) drive designers’ social engagement. Hopefully, it also accommodates for a productive reflection on the place of ethics in a broader social context. By utilising speculative and critical design approaches, the thesis aims to stimulate, provoke and ideally maintain a public discourse on the direction of development of technology and modern societies, and inspire designers to be more critical to the vocational portrayal of their profession. / <p><strong>The degree project is carried out at the Department of Science and Technology (ITN) at Faculty of Science and Engineering, Linköping University</strong></p>