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According to the government, the Swedish economy is in a strained situation. High inflation and rising interest rates are leading to reduced purchasing power for households, putting many companies in a difficult position with a higher number of layoffs and bankruptcies as a result. Regarding timber prices, they increased heavily in 2021 due to sanctions against Russia after their invasion of Ukraine. The eliminated import of Russian timber, alongside problems with bark beetles in Canada and Central Europe, led to a drastic increase of timber prices. The prices of timber products increased by 61.4 percent during the period January 2021 to January 2022, and by 13.5 percent for concrete products. Due to these circumstances, there is an interest in keeping down construction-related costs, where one approach is to choose building materials with low costs and high strength. This case study examined the differences between an existing school building made of CLT and a corresponding building made of RC, in terms of material prices and the structure of the load-bearing elements.  Based on drawings of an existing school building, a model was created in Strusoft FEM-Design. A corresponding building made of RC was then modeled based on a realistic execution in terms of dimensions and placement of load-bearing elements. Both buildings were then analyzed and designed until the utilization rate, deflection and stability reached acceptable levels. The total material cost was then calculated for each building, and structural properties were compared.  The results of the study showed that the building made of CLT required larger dimensions for the load-bearing elements but weighed approximately 50 percent less than the RC building. However, the overall utilization rate was lower for the loadbearing elements in the building made of CLT. Material costs were approximately eight percent higher for the building made of CLT than the RC building.  The conclusion of the study indicates it would have been more expensive to build the school building from CLT than RC in terms of material prices, but more indepth studies investigating all related construction costs should be conducted. Both the CLT frame and the RC frame had load-bearing elements with a maximum utilization rate of 99 percent. However, the CLT frame generally had a lower utilization rate than the RC frame. In addition to the RC frame being cheaper, acceptable strength could be achieved with smaller dimensions of the load-bearing elements and sparser placement. This creates larger space for the activities the building is intended for. Overall, the study suggests it would have been beneficial if the school building had been built of RC instead of CLT from an economic and structural perspective.

This project aimed to integrate a large language model (LLM) and text-to-image generator into an existing game, "Run and Find," to create an educational tool by creating a Pipeline. The study examined the diversity of the Pipelines generated game stories and evaluated the Pipeline’s textual output’s educational and engagement value. Teacher interviews indicated an interest in using games for education but raised concerns about the learning structure and student engagement. To address these concerns, the game was modified to include educational checkpoints, requiring players to answer questions to progress, reinforcing learning outcomes. The study employed a double-diamond methodology for iterative development and testing. DALL-E 3 and Pipedream as a development environment, were chosen for their compatibility with the existing game’s visual style and implementation efficiency, and ChatGPT 4 was chosen as LLM for the Pipeline. Prompt engineering was utilized to craft system messages that would tailor the output to align with the game structure. The surveys conducted with teachers and teacher students gauged the game’s educational value. The result of the survey was positive. The Pipelinegarnered interest from teachers, who believed it would be engaging and educational for students, especially with its adaptability in content generation and editing options. While the chosen methodology suited the project, further theoretical investigations and testing phases could enhance results. The stories generated with the same prompt had a similar diversity as stories generated with different prompts, indicating good diversity.

The technology and marketing channels to display and broadcast advertisements are ever changing; this has led to the change of many forms of advertisements. Public advertisements have not changed as drastically as many others and can therefore be seen as out-dated. In this paper a prototype of an interactive advertisement with a dynamic user flow is presented where focus has been on attracting attention. Different interaction technologies have been discussed and compared. A Kinect sensor has been used to sense when a pedestrian enters the area in front of the advertisement. When the prototype then presents itself to the sensed pedestrian the user’s reaction determines the prototype’s next state and so forth. The findings from a qualitative user study and a quantitative analysis of interactive and non-interactive advertisements’ noticeability is presented.

Listening to music while driving is very common, and lately music streaming services such as Spotify has moved into the infotainment system in the car as an application made for interaction while driving. In order to stream music through the Spotify smartphone application an Internet connection is needed. However, this connection might be unreliable or unavailable during driving, making only downloaded playlists that are stored locally on the smartphone available for listening. However, the application’s support for the driver when going offline has been limited, making it dangerous and problematic to navigate the application in order to find a new playlist that is downloaded, all while driving. This thesis has focused on designing a good user experience for the Spotify application in the car when it goes offline, determining how it could support the driver and minimize dangerous and unnecessary interaction. Based on literature studies, a quantitative user survey, user testing and a brainstorming workshop a design proposal has been produced as a result of this thesis. The proposal recommends that if downloaded content is available, display it to the driver as soon as the streamed song has finished playing. If no content is available, the application should lock out the driver from interaction. When going back online, it should ask if the driver wants to stay with the currently playing content or switch back to what was streamed before. The menu will not give access to parts that cannot be used when offline, and the library will only display content that is available offline. By applying these guidelines the driver will get a good understanding of the network state change, a one-click experience to play downloaded content, and an application that clearly communicates possible actions during changes in the network state.

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Workplaces way of communicating and sharing information has changed trough out the years, and digitalization has given new opportunities to how workplaces can communicate using technology. A popular tool used for presenting information is large digital screens. A company that uses a screen like this to present information to their employees is Xlent in Umeå. This thesis is about investigating how this screen can come to better use at the workplace, by creating a new system that combines office information, currently presented on the screen, with employees’ schedules that previously have been managed on a whiteboard. The new solution was implemented as a web application, allowing a user to access the application on any preferred platform. An administrator can therefore, during a meeting, directly change the content presented on the TV-screen from a cellphone or laptop. Due to the current global pandemic, Covid-19, could the new system not be tested within the workplace, instead, it was tested from an administrative point of view. Usability testing for the sought usage within the workplace is left as future work.

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