Decision Support Tools (DSTs) are commonly utilised within the Asset Management (AM) operations of infrastructure organisations. These manual or computerised tools are used to support decisions about what assets to acquire and how to operate them. Their performance can therefore have significant financial and non-financial implications for a business. Despite their importance, managing the performance of DSTs after implementation has received only limited attention within the literature. The output of this research is a conceptual approach for managing the performance of decision support tools used within an Asset Management context. It encompasses a risk-based DST Performance Management Process and DST Performance Assessment Techniques (the methods for applying the process in an industry setting).The novelty of the approach: (1) Alignment with the fundamental principles of the International Standard for Asset Management, ISO 5500x:2014. Thus, consistency of the management of DSTs with other assets types. (2) A generic process that is tailored to the context of the specific organisation. (3) Consistency with the risk management process (ISO 31000:2009) and meeting the requirements for a quality process defined within the Quality Management Standard (ISO 9000: 2015). (4) A cyclical process design ensuring that the approach, and how the approach is applied within an industry setting, will evolve to reflect the changing environment. A case study and the input of subject matter experts from within National Grid Electricity Transmission was used to both inform and evaluate the conceptual approach design. A semi-structured interview, with a water sector subject matter expert, assesses the transferability of the approach to a wider Asset Management population. The results of the evaluation demonstrate the conceptual approach to be both logical and useable in each context. The future research pathway looks to progress the conceptual approach through to industry adoption.

High value added products is the only segment of the electronics sector in which the UK is likely to remain competitive and where manufacturing will be retained within this country. Even though UK companies have a competitive advantage in this market, they also face a range of new challenges including demanding customer requirements, constantly changes conditions and highly complex products and technologies. Consequently, effective product and process (re-) design that encourages continuous improvement and innovation to satisfy highly demanding customers has become vital. Additionally, support to undertake design in an agile manner while managing complexity at the same time is required. The research described in this thesis addresses this problem by developing a software tool (i.e. INMOST - INtegrated MOdelling and Simulation Tool) that support agile design. This support is provided through modelling, simulation and root cause analysis (i.e. the functional modules within the tool). The functionality of the software is enabled through two novel concepts proposed. The first one is an integrated modelling framework that combines different modelling techniques in a single structure to enable more complete and realistic models. The second is a Hierarchical Object Oriented Simulation Structure (HOOSS) that unifies generalisation and customisation ideas to facilitate the utilisation of INMOST in an industrial context. The functionality of INMOST was tested wit three case studies. The case studies proves the capability of the software to be easily adopted in an industrial context, to provide predictive feedback to identify potential problems, and to complete the design cycle by providing decision support to solve identified problems. In this way, the compliance of the software with the domain requirements and needs is demonstrated. The research is completed by providing recommendations for the adoption of INMOST in industry and clear establishing clear directions for future work.

Das Thema Kreativitätsförderung gewinnt in der hochschuldidaktischen Diskussion zunehmend an Aufmerksamkeit. Zentrale Frage ist, wie Lehr-/Lernszenarien gestaltet werden können, um das Kreativitätspotenzial von Studierenden zu entwickeln und zu fördern. Dabei wird insbesondere im Hinblick auf kreative Problemlöseprozesse in Gruppen dem Einsatz sogenannter creative support tools große Bedeutung beigemessen. So sind in den letzten Jahren viele Applikationen entstanden, die auf verschiedenen Ebenen solche kreativen Prozesse unterstützen (Carell und Schaller 2010). Über die Entwicklung einzelner Werkzeuge hinausgehend hat Herrmann (2009) generelle Design-Heuristiken für kreativitätsunterstützende Anwendungen (creativity-support tools) identifiziert. Shneidermann (2002) fokussiert dagegen auf den kreativen Prozess selbst und fordert in seinem Collect-Relate-Create-Donate-Framework, dass kreativitätsunterstützende Anwendungen in der Lage sein müssen, Nutzer bei der Realisierung der vier Hauptaktivitäten seines Rahmenmodells (s.o.) zu unterstützen.

Les addictions constituent un problème majeur de santé publique et soulèvent de nombreuses questions sur le plan clinique et psycho-pathologique ainsi que sur leur prise en charge. Toutefois, si elles sont d’un intérêt certain dans le domaine de la recherche scientifique, ce n’est que récemment que la souffrance des proches, et plus encore celle des parents de jeunes adolescents, sont l’objet de travaux pour les chercheurs comme pour les professionnels.L’objectif de cette recherche qualitative et exploratoire est d’étudier les vécus des parents d’adolescents ayant des pratiques addictives. Elle est réalisée au sein d’un dispositif de prévention en addictologie.Ce sont en majorité des mères qui consultent pour leurs fils. Généralement, ces adolescents ou jeunes adultes sont âgés entre 15 et 23 ans, aux prises avec un problème de consommation de cannabis, d’alcool, de jeux vidéo et vivent chez leurs parents.Six formes de vécus parentaux et certaines configurations familiales en lien avec les conduites addictives des adolescents ont pu être identifiées à l’aide de quinze vignettes cliniques.Les addictions des jeunes interpellent la fonction maternelle, en tant que médiatrice de la fonction paternelle. De même, le sujet adolescent convoquerait chez la mère, un objet répondant à la question du réel d’une autre jouissance, en tant qu’une suppléance à l’absence de signifiant.Ces résultats permettent d’interroger les possibilités d’interventions en clinique auprès de ces familles d’une part, et de réfléchir à un nouveau dispositif d’accompagnement médico-psycho-social d’autre part. / Addiction constitutes a major public health problem and raises numerous questions from a clinical and psychopathological perspective as well as on young users’ care. Even though certain interest has been shown in the field of scientific research on the subject, only recently has the suffering of the parents of young teenagers been the object of researchers’ and professionals’ studies.The objective of this qualitative and exploratory study is to examine the personal experiences of the parents of teenagers suffering from addiction. It was carried out at a prevention and treatment center for addiction.Mothers who consult for their sons make up the majority of those who consult. Generally, these teenagers or grown-up young adults are between the ages of 15 and 23, live at home with their parents, and battle against excessive use of cannabis, alcohol, and video games.Six forms of parental personal experiences and certain family configurations in connection with the addictive behaviors of the teenagers were identified by means of fifteen clinical cases.The addictions of the young people in question call out to the maternal function as a mediator of the paternal function.Additionally, the adolescent subject summons within his/her mother an object in response to the question of the real of the Other jouissance, as a substitution in the absence of the signifier.These results allow us to question the possibilities of clinical interventions with these families, and to think about new tools of medical-psychosocial support.

In order to deal with the mounting issue of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in a way that is in line with sustainable development and Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) a systems approach is necessary.This approach can practically be integrated into the MSW decision-making process through Life Cycle Thinking(LCT) and environmental systems analysis tools such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper is written within the context of the RECO Baltic 21 Tech (RB21T) project which aims to improve waste management practices in 12 countries in the Baltic Sea Region. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which LCA is used as decision-support in MSW management in Sweden, Estonia and Lithuania. The use of LCA is examined on a national level as well as on a local or regional level based on relevant literature and a set of interviews conducted in each country. According to the results the use of LCA as decision-support in MSW management is very limited in Estonia and Lithuania whilst it is already a well-established tool in Sweden. Most of the LCA efforts in the Baltic States have been conducted in connection with foreign projects and investments,such as RB21T. Although an actual LCA might not always be applied in Sweden, LCT is prevalent in MSW management both on a national and local level. In order for LCA to be better integrated into MSW management this paper argues that there is a need for increased knowledge, data, more user-friendly LCA-tools andstrengthening regional partnerships for further transfer of knowledge between countries.

This thesis proposes a framework to support the inexperienced student user to undertake the elicitation, analysis and specification of web user requirements. It is designed to support the student during web projects and to encourage more rigorous analysis by documenting web user requirements before the student commences design and implementation. The framework comprises a process meta-model, object model, rules model, support and guidance model, consistency, completeness and correctness model, learning model, student data model and a requirements specification model. The framework was transformed into an automated Computer Aided Web Environment (CAWE) tool and tested on a number of web modules within a Higher Education Institute (HEI). The research programme adopts the Canonical Action Research (CAR) methodology, which involves one or more iterations of diagnosing, action planning, action taking, evaluating and specifying what has been learned through reflection and allows interventions to take place within the next research cycle. Students were active participants in the research programme and contributed to the development of the intervention with continuous feedback. Analysis of usage data generated by the CAWE tool provided a valuable insight into how the framework and support mechanism was used by the students. Main contributions include the extension of knowledge and understanding of Web User Requirements in Web Engineering. Contribution is made to the curriculum of Web Engineering by identifying gaps in knowledge and understanding regarding the lack of analysis techniques used by the student. ii Contribution is also made to Web and User Requirements Engineering by proposing, implementing and evaluating a range of novel methods and frameworks through student collaboration.

This dissertation explores reifying the management science concept of organizations as a collection of decisions. Organizational management entails resource allocation activities that can be formulated in terms of elementary relational functions. All elasticity-type formulations, most generic "production" functions, and various projection models that organizations might require (such as sales forecasts) can all be represented by elementary relational functions. Therefore, information systems in organizations can be representative of relationships between decision requirements, as theorized in relational model bases. A relational model-base structure acts as an integrative device by relating an organization's elementary relational functions to each other, with all that is kept for any model being the current values for coefficients and the now prevailing parametric values for the state variables of the model.Anchoring management information systems around relational model bases is particularly appropriate for organizations that have some reliance on real-time management decision making by providing the answer to two requirements for such organizations: one being the requirement for more accurate and current real-time, operational decision making within the organization; the other being the integration of functions for decision-making purposes within an organization. Relational model bases thus enable more dynamic management and become a central information system type for organizations that have dynamic resource allocation requirements that can employ technical tactics around such relational model bases. The relational model base would reflect revealed needs in an organization as opposed to projected needs, easing an organization's reliance on forecasting and moving it toward real-time decision making. The case for the introduction of these information systems is further strengthened by the fact that relational model base-type structures are already operating in production environments within organizations. The methodology used in this dissertation involved modeling organizational decision requirements in particular organizational cases to determine the behavior of relational model bases within those prototypical organizations and the application of relational model bases to real-time decision making. The first organizational scenario is a recursive agribusiness e-commerce case, with the target application being precision agriculture. The second scenario is a non-recursive ecological economics case, with the target application being preservation of biodiversity through land (habitat) protection.

Les outils de design graphique traditionnels n’ont que peu évolué depuis leur création, il y a plus de 25 ans. Dans cette thèse, je m’intéresse à deux questions principales: Comment les designers travaillent-ils avec leurs outils de design numériques? Comment peut-on créer de nouveaux outils numériques pour le design qui supportent les pratiques existantes? J’étudie en premier lieu quatre pratiques de design. Celles-ci s'échelonnent depuis des opérations spécifiques telles que la sélection de couleurs, l’alignement et la distribution d’objets graphiques vers des pratiques plus complexes telles que la structuration de la mise en page et la collaboration avec des développeurs pour créer de nouvelles interactions. Dans ces quatre études empiriques, je caractérise le décalage existant entre les outils numériques actuels et les pratiques des designers. Je montre comment les outils du design numérique actuels détachent la créativité de l’utilisation des outils en donnant la priorité à des valeurs telles que l’efficacité et la facilité d’utilisation. Je propose un nouveau type d’outil de design nommé “Substrats Graphiques”, fondé sur les résultats empiriques de mes quatre études et qui combine la souplesse et l'expressivité de la programmation avec la manipulation directe permise par les interfaces graphiques traditionnelles. Je conçois neuf outils différents qui répondent aux attentes identifiées dans mes études empiriques en réifiant (transformant en objets concrets) les processus spécifiques des designers en tant que Substrats Graphiques. À travers quatre observations structurées, je montre comment les designers s’approprient ces substrats dans leurs propres termes. Dans cette thèse, je soutiens que les Substrats Graphiques ouvrent l’espace des possibles des outils pour les designers en permettant de combler l’écart entre la programmation et les interfaces graphiques. / Mainstream digital graphic design tools seldom evolved since their creation, more than 25 years ago. In this dissertation, I address the following questions: How do designers work with design software? And how can we design novel design tools that better support designer practices? Using StoryPortraits, a method designed to capture rich qualitative insight, I first study four designer practices, ranging from specific design operations such as color selection, alignment and distribution, to more complex endeavors such as layout structuring and collaboration with developers. In these empirical studies, I characterize the existing mismatch between current digital design tools and designers practices. I show how design tools, because they decouple creativity from tool use, prioritize values such as efficiency and user-friendliness. Based on my empirical findings, I propose a new type of design tools, Graphical Substrates that combine the strengths of both programming and traditional Graphical User Interfaces. I design nine different tools that address the needs identified in the four empirical studies by reifying specific user process into Graphical Substrates probes. In four structured observation studies, I show how designers can appropriate these probes in their own terms. In this thesis, I argue that Graphical Substrates open the design space of designers' tools by bridging the gap between programming and graphical user interface to better support the wealth of designers' practices.

Das Thema Kreativitätsförderung gewinnt in der hochschuldidaktischen Diskussion zunehmend an Aufmerksamkeit. Zentrale Frage ist, wie Lehr-/Lernszenarien gestaltet werden können, um das Kreativitätspotenzial von Studierenden zu entwickeln und zu fördern. Dabei wird insbesondere im Hinblick auf kreative Problemlöseprozesse in Gruppen dem Einsatz sogenannter creative support tools große Bedeutung beigemessen. So sind in den letzten Jahren viele Applikationen entstanden, die auf verschiedenen Ebenen solche kreativen Prozesse unterstützen (Carell und Schaller 2010). Über die Entwicklung einzelner Werkzeuge hinausgehend hat Herrmann (2009) generelle Design-Heuristiken für kreativitätsunterstützende Anwendungen (creativity-support tools) identifiziert. Shneidermann (2002) fokussiert dagegen auf den kreativen Prozess selbst und fordert in seinem Collect-Relate-Create-Donate-Framework, dass kreativitätsunterstützende Anwendungen in der Lage sein müssen, Nutzer bei der Realisierung der vier Hauptaktivitäten seines Rahmenmodells (s.o.) zu unterstützen.

A challenge for healthcare organizations is that operational efficiency suffers from variation in production. This is because variation in healthcare is hard to predict and the methods and IT-support tools for handling variation are suboptimal. The concept of production control can be used to describe the coordination of activities so that healthcare can be delivered on time, of adequate quality and at a reasonable cost, and thus includes the use of IT-support tools to handle variation. The objective of this report is to suggest improvements for production control in hospital departments through the development of a prototype for a new IT-support tool. In order to achieve this, a case study was conducted at the pediatric oncology department at Karolinska University Hospital (KS). The case study includes observations and interviews to investigate production control at department Q84, as well as associated roles and IT-support tools. Four IT-support tools were identified at the department, two of which were used interchangeably. Due to lack of integration between these systems and the fact that one system contained data manually synchronized from the other, handling changes required double labor. An improvement suggestion is therefore presented, consisting of a prototype which demonstrates that production control can be improved by automating the maintenance of a system at the department while fulfilling the organization’s information security policy. The development of the prototype was aligned with the lean philosophy which KS strives to adopt. Through an investigation of the production system, a role for production control and associated IT-support tools at a hospital department can be identified and analyzed and through the prototyping of an IT-support tool for production control, improvements and optimizations can be made.