L’objectif général de ces travaux de recherche vise à faciliter les activités collaboratives médiées par un progiciel de gestion de connaissances. Plus précisément, nous souhaitons améliorer les activités collaboratives par la mise en place d’indicateurs. Nous entendons par là faciliter le déroulement ou des processus collaboratifs mis en œuvre et soutenir les réseaux sociaux au sein des activités. Pour cela, nous proposons d’observer l’activité des utilisateurs en proposant des indicateurs de collaboration calculés à partir des traces numériques d’activités. Le premier objectif de cette thèse est d’identifier ce que sont les indicateurs de collaboration en déterminant les informations qui les définissent. Pour pouvoir exploiter au mieux les indicateurs, nous proposons une classification composée de six grandes caractéristiques indépendantes qui correspondent aux éléments fondamentaux pour l’élaboration d’indicateurs de collaboration. Cette classification nous fournit des indications pour construire, modéliser et mettre en place un indicateur dans un environnement collaboratif tel que ceux que nous étudions dans le cadre du projet. De plus, cette thèse présente un framework de gestion d’indicateurs basé sur une approche centrée utilisateur. En effet, en observant l’utilisation actuelle des indicateurs dans des plateformes de gestion de contenus, nous nous sommes rendus-compte que le processus d’élaboration et d'acceptation était long et complexe. Par conséquent, lorsqu’un indicateur est en place dans un environnement et qu’il fonctionne correctement, il est intéressant de le réutiliser dans d’autres contextes. Cette réutilisation peut se faire intégralement ou partiellement. Nous proposons donc une modélisation qui prend en compte les problématiques de réutilisation ainsi que de personnalisation et d’adaptation des indicateurs en fonction des utilisateurs et/ou du contexte de l’activité. Dans notre approche, les indicateurs sont calculés à partir des traces d’activités laissées par les utilisateurs de la plate-forme. Pour faciliter la mise en place de ces indicateurs, nous avons développé un outil informatique qui va permettre d’assister les utilisateurs dans l’élaboration d’indicateurs : GINDIC (Générateur d’INDICateurs). Avec cet outil, les concepteurs vont pouvoir construire des indicateurs : leur définition, les calculs effectués sur les traces pour obtenir la valeur de l’indicateur et leur visualisation. Nous avons choisi de gérer les indicateurs à l’aide d’un système à base de règles, où les traces sont des faits, tandis que les processus de calcul des indicateurs sont des règles. Cette thèse s’est effectuée dans le cadre d’un projet ANR intitulé ProCoGeC (Progiciel Collaboratif de Gestion de Connaissances). Un langage à base de règles a été confronté aux besoins de ce projet. Il nous permet de décrire les processus de construction de l’ensemble des indicateurs issus d’un recueil des besoins. De plus, une expérimentation de l’outil a été réalisée auprès d’un des partenaires industriels du projet, client d’une plate-forme collaborative de gestion de contenus. / The objective of the research carried is to facilitate collaborative activities in knowledge management software. More particularly, we aim to improve collaborative activities by the implementation of indicators. We intend thus to facilitate the progression of one or several implemented collaborative processes and to support the social networks within the activities. For that purpose, we propose to observe the users’ activity by providing collaboration indicators calculated from the digital traces of activities. The first objective of this thesis is to identify the characteristics of the collaboration indicators. In order to make the best possible use of indicators, we propose a classification composed of six main independent characteristics which correspond to the fundamental elements for the elaboration of collaboration indicators. This classification supplies us with indications to build, model and set up an indicator in a collaborative environment such as those studied in the context of the project. Moreover, this thesis presents a framework for the management of indicators based on a user-centred approach. Indeed, by observing the current use of indicators in platforms of knowledge management, we realized that the process of elaboration and acceptance was long and complex. Consequently, when an indicator is established in an environment and when it works properly, it is interesting to reuse it in other contexts. This reusing can be done entirely or partially. We thus propose a type of modeling which takes into account the reuse issues as well as those of the personalization and adaptation of indicators according to the user and\or to the context of the activity. In our approach, the indicators are calculated from the activity traces left by the users. To facilitate the implementation of these indicators, we have developed a tool which assists the users during the elaboration of indicators: GINDIC (Generator of INDICATORS). With this tool, the designers are able to build indicators: their definition, the calculations made on traces to obtain the indicator value, and their displaying. We have chosen to manage indicators by using a rules-based system, where traces are facts, whereas the calculation processes for indicators are rules. This thesis has been written within the framework of a project financed by the French National Research Agency entitled ProCoGeC (Collaborative Software package of Management of Knowledge). A rules-based language was compared with the needs of the ProCoGeC project. It helps us to describe the calculation processes for all indicators stemming from the users’ requirements. An experiment with the tool has been carried out with one of the industrial partners of the project, who is the client of a collaborative platform of knowledge management.

The goal of this research was to create an educational, outdoor Augmented Reality tour for preschool children using Minnesmark editor and mobile application. It started with an ethnographic pre-study which aimed understand the children’s abilities, characteristics and interests. It was followed by a bodystorming session which allowed the children to contribute to the design process together with the designer. Based on all the findings, a context scenario was created which showed the concept of a practicable tour. All the functional and data requirements were specified before creating the tour. The design was intended to be user-centred and to have positive effect on the children’s learning of sustainability and biodiversity. The tour was refined and created as a final product. 10 children participated in the tour which was executed in a forest behind the preschool and the preschool garden. The tour was evaluated which identified the design problems and their possible solutions.

When developing a new system, it is a good idea to involve the end users from the start to prevent usability issues. This thesis has evaluated how one can develop a data visualisation system for the sawmill industry with a focus on user experience.  Semi-structured interviews with a snowball sample approach were used to acquire the demands of the end users. From these demands, paper prototypes were developed and then evaluated. Data on these prototypes were collected iteratively with the help of usability tests. This was done to understand how pleased users were when using the product but also to evaluate how efficiently they used it. Metrics have been used to measure the user experience of the product with both the paper prototypes and a hi-fi prototype, also described as the alpha prototype.  The conclusion answers the two research questions asked in this thesis. It concludes that the interview technique used in this thesis gave a good understanding of what information the users were interested in. Regarding measuring user experience, usability issues have been detected and reduced for each iteration, which indirectly results in a higher efficiency since the number of confusions are reduced. Something that can be seen from the system usability scale tests is that the high scores (about 89) they generated indicate that the users are pleased. With the different metrics used in this thesis, the conclusions are that the fewer the obstacles are for the user, the less annoyed they are when using the product and in turn perform their goals faster.

Abstract The popularity of social networking services emphasises the importance of user communities. As the next evolutionary step, social networking will evolve towards user communities that are dynamically established according to contextual aspects such as the shared location and/or activities of people. In this vision, distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies provide a respectable alternative to the centralised client-server technologies for implementing the upcoming community-centric mobile services. This thesis focuses on the development of enabling techniques and methods for a community-centric mobile service environment and on the evaluation of users’ perceptions and user acceptance of novel community-centric mobile services. The research was carried out by first examining the applicability of different P2P system architectures for implementing the management of user communities. Next, an experimental prototype of a community-centric mobile service environment was implemented. The experimental prototype was used for evaluating the performance of the community-centric mobile service environment and for conducting the user studies of novel community-centric mobile services. The evaluation was conducted in a real deployment environment with test users. The main results are the following: (1) a conceptual analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of P2P group management systems that are implemented using architecturally distinct P2P system architectures; (2) a performance evaluation of a P2P community management system, in which each community is implemented as an independent structured P2P overlay network; (3) a novel community-centric mobile service environment and its core component, a mobile middleware, which enables the use of P2P technologies and context information as part of Web-based applications running on a Web browser; (4) an evaluation of users’ perceptions and user acceptance of novel community-centric mobile services that are related to making a selection of an entertainment premise based on its music style and voting for music in a user community. / Tiivistelmä Käyttäjäyhteisöiden tärkeys on korostunut sosiaalista verkottumista edistävien palveluiden suosion kautta. Seuraavaksi sosiaalinen verkottuminen tulee laajentumaan yhteisöihin, jotka perustetaan dynaamisesti muun muassa ihmisten yhteisen sijainnin ja/tai toiminnan perusteella. Tulevaisuuden yhteisöllisten mobiilipalveluiden toteutuksessa hajautetut vertaisverkkoteknologiat tarjoavat varteenotettavan vaihtoehdon keskitetyille asiakas-palvelin -teknologioille. Tämä väitöskirjatyö keskittyy kehittämään tarvittavia tekniikoita ja menetelmiä yhteisöllisen mobiilipalveluympäristön toteuttamiseen sekä arvioimaan käyttäjien kokemuksia uusista yhteisöllisistä mobiilipalveluista. Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin aluksi arkkitehtuurillisesti erilaisten vertaisverkkojärjestelmien sopivuutta käyttäjäyhteisöjen hallinnan toteutettamiseksi. Seuraavaksi tutkimuksessa toteutettiin kokeellinen prototyyppi yhteisöllisestä mobiilipalveluympäristöstä. Kokeellista prototyyppiä hyödynnettiin sekä yhteisöllisen mobiilipalveluympäristön suorituskyvyn että uusien yhteisöllisten mobiilipalveluiden käyttäjäkokemuksen arvioinnissa. Arviointi suoritettiin aidossa käyttöympäristössä testikäyttäjien avulla. Väitöskirjatyön keskisimmät tulokset ovat seuraavat: (1) käsitteellinen analyysi arkkitehtuurillisesti erilaisten vertaisverkkojärjestelmien vahvuuksista ja heikkouksista ryhmänhallintajärjestelmän toteuttamisessa; (2) sellaisen yhteisönhallintajärjestelmän arviointi, jossa jokainen yhteisö on toteutettu erillisen ja itsenäisen rakenteellisen vertaisverkon avulla; (3) uusi yhteisöllinen mobiilipalveluympäristö, jonka keskeisin osa mobiili välikerrosohjelmisto mahdollistaa vertaisverkkoteknologioiden ja kontekstitiedon käyttämisen selaimessa toimivissa Web-sovelluksissa; (4) sellaisten uusien yhteisöllisten mobiilipalveluiden käyttäjäkokemuksen arviointi, jotka liittyvät vapaa-ajan viettopaikan valitaan musiikin perusteella ja soitettavan musiikin äänestämiseen käyttäjäyhteisöissä.

The introduction of new information technology (IT) in an organisation is one way of changing the conditions for how tasks and work processes can be designed and performed, as well as how people in the organisation interact with each other. Today, many Swedish workers rely completely on IT to be able to perform their jobs, while experiencing a combination of continuous and intermittent IT-related changes that affect this ability. The introduction of new or updated IT systems in an organisation is an example of what is referred to as an IT-related change process in this thesis. Because IT has become such an integral part of modern organisations, many change processes in organisations are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the IT systems involved in a change process. In this thesis, I introduce the concept of inertia in sociotechnical systems to analyse IT-related change processes in organisations, and how achieving the goals of these processes is complicated by organisational, social, and physical aspects in addition to technology. The context of this thesis is the Swedish public sector domains of health-care and higher education, and the result of research studies and experiences from four action research projects in these settings. The contribution of this thesis adds to the contributions of the included papers through the definition of inertia in sociotechnical systems and its subsequent application. The thesis shows that the concept of inertia in sociotechnical systems can be used to understand IT-related change processes as changes to the characteristics of a sociotechnical system, and, in the context of organisations, how these processes affect and are affected by an organisation’s characteristics. This is illustrated in the thesis through the application of the concept on examples of IT-related change processes from the included papers and research projects. In addition, the thesis shows that the use of vision seminar methods can benefit Swedish organisations, since new IT is often introduced without clearly defined, expressed, understood, and accepted goals.

Dans le milieu aéronautique professionnel (un des secteurs professionnels les plus sûr au monde), la gestion des conséquences des erreurs humaines doit être améliorée pour garantir une sécurité maximum. Pour ce faire, il est nécessaire de mettre en place des techniques de conception centrées sur l’utilisateur. Cependant, la mise en place de ces techniques est rendue difficile par les particularités des systèmes sociotechniques complexes (la certification, la complexité des systèmes conçus, le nombre de personnes impliquées…). Notre étude a pour but de développer et de valider des outils d’aide à la conception centrée sur l’utilisateur, notamment pour le traitement automatique de grande quantité de données. Pour ce faire, nous avons, dans un premier temps, réalisé une étude basée sur le jugement d’expert visant à identifier, dans une base de données, des scenarii susceptibles de contenir une erreur de l’équipage. Les résultats de cette méthode par jugement d’expert ont été comparés à ceux obtenus à l’aide d’outils de traitement automatique. Cette comparaison a permis :1/ D’identifier des algorithmes pertinents pour l’extraction d’information dans des bases de données (algorithme des plus proches voisins et de filtrage bayesien) ;2/ De proposer une méthodologie permettant l’extraction automatique de situations à risque pouvant donner lieu à des études plus approfondies, sur simulateur par exemple. Cette étape est primordiale dans cadre de la conception centrée utilisateur.Les liens établis avec les études des incidents/accidents laissent envisager des impacts positifs sur la sécurité aérienne. / In the professional aeronautical field (one of the safest in the world), human error management must be improved to reach a better safety level. To do this, a user centred design process has to be implemented. However, due to the complexity of socio technical systems, the implementation of an efficient user centred design process could be challenging. To ease this process, our study aims to develop and validate specific tools, particularly for processing large amounts of textual data. In our study, we will firstly undertake an extraction of scenarios that can contain human errors in a specific database. This extraction will be based on expert judgment (control condition). Secondly, we will confront the control condition with results obtained automatically. The results of this comparison allow:1/ The identification of relevant algorithms for automatic information extraction within large textual databases (Nearest Neighbour, Bayesian filtering);2/ The identification of a methodology to extract risk situations that could be included in specific studies. This step is very important for the user centred design process.Links that we have established between our results and incident/accident studies allow us to consider positive impacts on aviation safety.

Medical researchers are exploring the potential of patients’ mobile phones and wearables for medical studies. The contribution of volunteers in a form of citizen science, where citizens donate their data for research purposes, can enable studies on a large scale. This research area, known as mobile health, often relies on shared data such as tracked steps or self- reporting forms. Privacy, transparency and trust play a fundamental role in the interaction of users with related platforms that agglomerate medical studies.This project explores privacy concerns of potential users of mobile health citizen science apps, summarises similar user patterns and analyses the impact of transparency enhancing tools on the users’ trust. In this context, a prototype with different features that aim to increase the transparency is designed, tested and evaluated. The results indicate how users perceive the importance and the generated trust of the proposed features and provide recommendations for data donation platforms.

With rapid growth in technical and social sector, the amount of data produced and retrieved has grown exponentially. Hence, there is a dire need for a management information system (MIS) to manage and structure such data. This study was initiated to learn about the problems and needs of the employees of a truck manufacturer organisation while working for long duration projects. The information about processes and tasks is available but in an unstructured manner through excel spreadsheets which makes it difficult for users to retrieve required information during crucial times. An information system in the form of a dashboard was designed and proposed to overcome the problems faced by users. This study focuses on evaluating the user experience of employees while retrieving desired information about the procedures using both dashboard and excel spreadsheets. To investigate the work structure and problems of employees, interviews were conducted. The results were analysed and a dashboard solution was proposed and developed with real time data. With employees coordination, few usability tests were conducted and the feedback was recorded for future work. According to the study results, the efficiency of employees can be increased and the decision making can be improved using MIS. With better retrieval techniques user experience was also enhanced. The interactive visualisations of dashboard attracted users and was used efficiently for providing tons of information about procedures to be followed. / Med den snabba tillväxten inom teknisk och social sektor har mängden data som både produceras och hämtas ökat exponentiellt. Därför finns det ett brådskande behov av informationssystem för att hanterar och strukturera sådan data. Denna studie startade med att utforska de problem och behov som fanns hos anställda på ett företag som tillverkar lastbilar när de jobbar i långvariga projekt. Informationen om rutiner, processer och uppgifter är idag tillgänglig för de anställda i ostrukturerade Excel-kalkylblad, detta gör det svårt att hämta nödvändig information. Ett informationssystem i form av en instrumentpanel utformades och föreslogs för att lösa de problem som användarna möter. Denna studie fokuserade på att utvärdera användarupplevelsen hos de anställda medan de hämtade önskad information om rutinerna när de använde både instrumentpanelen och Excel-kalkylblad. För att undersöka arbetetsstrukturen och de problem som de anställda upplever så genomfördes intervjuer. Resultatet analyserades och ett resultat i forma av ett informationssystem (instrumentpanelen) föreslogs och utvecklades med realtidsdata. Med samordning av de anställda genomfördes användbarhetstester och deras återkoppling registrerades för framtida arbete. Enligt studieresultaten kan effektiviteten hos de anställda ökas och beslutsfattande kan förbättras med hjälp av ett informationssystem. Användarupplevelsen kan också förbättras genom bättre tekniker för hämtning av data. Den interaktiva visualiseringen av instrumentpanelen lockade användarna och användes effektivt för att ge information om rutiner som ska följas.

Precision cancer medicine is an area of research that involves complex bioinformatics software for the clinical analysis pipelines that sequencing data is passed through. A research team at Karolinska Institutet (KI) is running clinical trials to test new methods of precision cancer medicine and is working on creating a new web application that will be integrated with their two existing applications to aid bioinformaticians in their work of running pipelines and producing clinical reports for the hospitals. Recent publications show that web tools are used for improving usability of bioinformatics software, but have not discussed the inclusion of pipeline management into these systems. This study aims at exploring how the new web system can impact the complexity of the daily work within the trials for users with limited computational experience. This was done by developing a high-fidelity prototype of the new application using a user-centred design approach that included agile design work, usability tests and a focus group with the bioinformaticians at KI. The test sessions and focus group discussion indicate that the new application can speed up the weekly batch-wise sample processing by decreasing the need for users to interact with the command-line. It is also suggested that an integration of different applications can lead to a more efficient workflow within the team. The implication for the development of bioinformatics tools is that there are potentially important benefits to be found in making more usable interfaces for users with different experiences and areas of expertise. / Precisionsmedicin som cancerbehandling är ett forskningsområde som involverar komplex bioinformatisk mjukvara för de kliniska analyspipelines som sekvenseringsdata skickas igenom. En forskargrupp vid Karolinska Institutet (KI) driver kliniska studier för att testa nya metoder för precisionsmedicin mot cancer och arbetar med att skapa en ny webbapplikation som ska integreras med deras två befintliga applikationer för att hjälpa bioinformatiker i deras arbete med att köra pipelines och producera kliniska rapporter för sjukhusen. Nyligen publicerad forskning visar att webbverktyg används för att förbättra användbarheten av bioinformatisk programvara, men har inte berört hantering av pipelines som en del i dessa system. Denna studie syftar till att utforska hur det nya webbsystemet kan påverka tids- och komplexitetsaspekter i det dagliga arbetet inom de kliniska studierna. Detta gjordes genom att utveckla en high-fidelity prototyp av den nya applikationen, baserat på en användarcentrerad approach innefattande agilt designarbete, användbarhetstester och en fokusgrupp med bioinformatikerna på KI. Testsessionerna och fokusgruppsdiskussionen indikerar att den nya applikationen kan påskynda arbetet med de veckovisa omgångarna med prover genom att minska behovet för användare att interagera med kommandoraden. Det föreslås också att en integration av olika applikationer kan leda till ett effektivare arbetsflöde inom forskningsgruppen. Innebörden för utvecklingen av bioinformatiska verktyg är att det potentiellt kan finnas viktiga fördelar med att göra mer användbara gränssnitt för användare med olika erfarenheter och kompetensområden.

This thesis describes a research study to understand the current state of human trafficking data collection practices and reporting in the province of Alberta, Canada, and gather end-user design considerations for cyberinfrastructure that will enable data sharing between multiple and diverse stakeholders. The research also examines the barriers to change and the needs of stakeholders to improve the collective understanding of human trafficking in the province. Virtual semi-structured interviews were conducted with nineteen organizations including law enforcement and community serving non-profit agencies. While the research resulted in design considerations for a cyberinfrastructure prototype, findings revealed the complexity of the human trafficking ecosystem in Alberta and suggestions for how the community of stakeholders can shift towards a sustained collaborative data sharing culture. This study responds to the need to collect actionable data from multiple sources to reflect the prevalence and context of human trafficking more accurately.