In the future, as world markets become more diverse, designers will be increasingly asked to create products for people dissimilar to themselves. Human issues, such as product pleasure, will also become more important as advances in manufacturing (enabling companies to produce high quality goods more cheaply) will mean companies will look elsewhere to achieve a competitive edge. These changes will affect designers who presently work with little or no user information. This thesis investigates the attributes designers need in resources that offer them an immediate yet broad understanding of users. The research presented in the thesis has a philosophical strand and a design strand. In the design strand, two mock up resources and a prototype resource are developed. These creations are used in the philosophical strand: the mock ups are used to provide focus while collecting opinions from participants and the prototype is evaluated at the end of the research as if it were a real resource. The thesis starts with a literature review; this review reveals that designers need to understand users' physical, psychological and social needs as well as their environments if they are to design appropriate products for them. It explains that designers find much ergonomics information too technical and not visual enough and reveals that no tools or methods exist that offer a broad and instant understanding of users at the start of the design process. Following this, the results from a set of interviews and a focus group are presented. These studies reveal that designers want both personal and general user information that is reliable, video based, contextual and authentic. The results also show that designers want a fast, online resource that allows information to be easily tagged, compared and shared. Next, the thesis describes the development of the prototype resource and its examination using a heuristic inspection. This resource is then evaluated by designers. The evaluation reveals that designers perceived that the resource would be of value to the design process and thought that the videos showing people going about their everyday lives and the virtual tours around people's homes would be particularly useful. The thesis concludes that designers want contextual user information presented as easily navigable video in an Internet based resource. In doing so, it provides an original contribution to knowledge.

The Semantic Web and Linked Data movements with the aim of creating, publishing and interconnecting machine readable information have gained traction in the last years. However, the majority of information still is contained in and exchanged using unstructured documents, such as Web pages, text documents, images and videos. This can also not be expected to change, since text, images and videos are the natural way in which humans interact with information. Semantic structuring of content on the other hand provides a wide range of advantages compared to unstructured information. Semantically-enriched documents facilitate information search and retrieval, presentation, integration, reusability, interoperability and personalization. Looking at the life-cycle of semantic content on the Web of Data, we see quite some progress on the backend side in storing structured content or for linking data and schemata. Nevertheless, the currently least developed aspect of the semantic content life-cycle is from our point of view the user-friendly manual and semi-automatic creation of rich semantic content. In this thesis, we propose a semantics-based user interface model, which aims to reduce the complexity of underlying technologies for semantic enrichment of content by Web users. By surveying existing tools and approaches for semantic content authoring, we extracted a set of guidelines for designing efficient and effective semantic authoring user interfaces. We applied these guidelines to devise a semantics-based user interface model called WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) which enables integrated authoring, visualization and exploration of unstructured and (semi-)structured content. To assess the applicability of our proposed WYSIWYM model, we incorporated the model into four real-world use cases comprising two general and two domain-specific applications. These use cases address four aspects of the WYSIWYM implementation: 1) Its integration into existing user interfaces, 2) Utilizing it for lightweight text analytics to incentivize users, 3) Dealing with crowdsourcing of semi-structured e-learning content, 4) Incorporating it for authoring of semantic medical prescriptions.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka om användarinvolvering underlättar IT-implementeringar. Teknikens snabba framväxt påverkar organisationer i den grad att de måste implementera IT förr eller senare. Samtidigt finns det stora utmaningar med IT-implementeringar, de uppfyller sällan dess fulla potential eller bidrar med den förväntade nyttan. Ett sätt att underlätta IT-implementeringar är att involvera användare i processen, något som kallas för användarinvolvering. Studien riktar in sig på offentliga och privata organisationer i Sverige som har genomfört en eller flera IT-implementeringar de senaste 2 åren där användarinvolvering använts.  Denna studie är utformad genom en kvalitativ ansats. Empirin till studien har samlats in genom sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med respondenter vars roller i sina respektive organisationer bidrar till ett helhetsperspektiv kring studiens område. Fem organisationer medverkade i studien där två av organisationerna verkar inom offentlig sektor och tre inom privat sektor, varav tre respondenter är från samma företag. Organisationerna är verksamma inom finans, hälsovård, industrivaror & tjänster, försäkringar och transport.  Artikeldatabaser och bibliotekskataloger användes för att gå igenom tidigare forskning som sedan låg till grund för den teoretiska referensramen och analysen. De begrepp och teorier som används i studiens teoriavsnitt är problem och onödiga kostnader med IT-implementeringar, system development life cycle, användarinriktad design och organisationsstorlek & organisationsstruktur.  Studien visar att användarinvolvering har stor betydelse på korta IT-implementeringar som varar i 0–3 år. Vid långa IT-implementeringar som sträcker sig 3 år eller längre har användarinvolvering låg betydelse. Studien visar att användarnas involvering på implementeringar skiljer sig från verksamhet till verksamhet och är beroende av både implementeringen- och organisationens storlek. / The purpose of this study was to investigate if user involvement is a crucial factor for the success of IT implementation. The rapid evolvement of technology affects organizations to the extent that they need to implement Information Technology (IT) sooner or later. At the same time, there are big challenges with IT-implementations, they rarely fulfill their potential or contribute with the expected usage. One way to increase IT-implementation rate of success is to involve the user in the process, this is called user involvement. This study focuses on public and private organizations in Sweden who have implemented one or more IT-implementations in the last 2 years, where user involvement has been used.  This study is designed through a qualitative approach. Empiricism of the study has been gathered through seven semi-structured interviews with respondents whose roles in their respective organizations contribute to a holistic approach to this area of study. Five organizations were involved in this study where two of the organizations work within the public sector and the other three in private sector, whereof three respondents work in the same organization. The organizations in this study are active within the work areas of finance, healthcare, industrial goods & services, insurance and transportation.  Article databases and library catalogs were used to review previous research which then provided the basis for the theoretical reference and analysis. The concepts and theories used in the study’s theory section are problems and unnecessary costs with IT-implementations, system development life cycle, participatory design and organization size & organizational structure.  The study shows that user involvement is a key factor on short IT-implementations that lasts 0-3 years. For long IT-implementations lasting 3 years or more user involvement is of less importance. The study shows that user involvement on implementations differs from business to business and depends on both the size of the organization and implementation.

In today’s society there is a growing awareness of where food is produced and there is a trend to use locally grown produce in restaurants. One way for restaurants to differentiate themselves is to grow the produce inside the restaurant. This thesis has the aim on identifying the problems and user needs for an indoor cultivation solution and developing a new indoor cultivation product that solves the identified problems and meet the user needs. To achieve this aim, a usercentered design approach was utilised and the following three research questions were answered: How can the needs of the user be translated into a product specification for indoor cultivation in restaurants? What are the functionality, usability, and construction requirements for an indoor cultivation product in a restaurant? What product concept can be designed to grow classic herbs in restaurants based on the needs of the user? To identify the needs interviews were performed with the users. The needs were then translated, together with the company’s needs, into a product specification. This was done in two steps, identifying the metrics and setting values. Some of the most important requirements are that a hydroponic system is used, that the product is easy to clean and is moveable. The product development process was iterative and included different ideation, development and evaluation methods. The users were involved in some of the evaluation methods to give input on the final design. Their opinion, together with evaluations based on the product specification, were used when choosing the final concept Lärad. Lärad uses a circulating hydroponic system and have three separate growing containers each containing 16 plants. The growing containers can be pulled out to enable easy access of the plants. Both the water system and the LED grow lights, that replaces natural sunlight, are controlled automatically to minimise the users’ involvement. To test the concept, to see how well the product specification is fulfilled, both a CAD model and a functional prototype were created. The results from the tests were, even at the concept stage, that 97% of all the tested requirements were fulfilled which shows that the concept is suitable for indoor cultivation in a restaurant environment. Some further work that includes refining the design and optimising for production will be needed to launch the product.

"In order to make large applications that manage multi-attribute data usable, they must have an effective user interface. Application data and data relationships must be displayed in a manner that is useful for a particular user while still following principles of user interface design. A User Interface Management System (UIMS) is an application independent data presentation system which isolates the interface portion of the application and can allow a high level of customization. A presentation description language can be used to control the UIMS and allow maximum flexibility. This thesis investigates a UIMS controlled by a language that allows a user to easily describe the application data and data relationships at a high level of abstraction. The UIMS uses this language to structure application data and augment it with properties. A rule-based system then uses the augmented data along with graphical design knowledge to determine the content, layout and details of the interface used to display the data. Finally, a graphical interface is generated to present the data. A system to provide this functionality was designed and implemented. Experiences with the system showed this approach to be valid and provided ideas for future work. "

Researchers in the area of web usability dwell on the importance of simplicity in a website design so that users can achieve a specific task with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. If a banking website misses one of these characteristics of usability users may get lost in the middle of the website or become frustrated and “will seek information elsewhere”. This study assesses what are the main issues behind the current banking websites through a questionnaire with 74 participants the result of this questionnaire shows that there are still unsolved problems in the current banking websites that impacts the quality of use. This study performs a thorough theoretical study to find out more about the subject understudy and by combining together with qualitative interviews; the study comes up with a proposed solution to improve banking websites’ usability – by implementing a user-centered design. / Program: Masterutbildning i Informatik

<p>This report is a part of a diploma work, conducted as a part of a Master of Science degree. The diploma work consists of a preliminary study, two case studies, a user study, a paper and this report. It was created at the Linköping University for the department of Science and Technology, in cooperation with Unilever Research in the UK, and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. </p><p>Hand-held, mobile devices like Personal Digital Assistances (PDAs) are becoming increasingly popular in today’s wireless world. While trying to pack all the possible information into a small window, a nightmarish scenario is created for the interface designer to deal with. The goal for this project was to investigate different Visual User Interfaces (VUIs)on PDAs, and how to apply desktop interaction techniques to PDAs. </p><p>A VUI model based on Zooming User Interface (ZUI) techniques, to adapt two complete different visualisation application areas; on-line brand-based shopping and flood warning system for PDAs, is presented. The on-line brand- based shopping was evaluated in a benchmark usability study comparing it to traditional PC based on-line shopping.</p>

<p>Today there exist several systems that lack usability. The reasons are, among others, the pressure to add more features in the system, but also that focus has been earlier on technology and functionality. It becomes more important to think of the user, so that systems can be more usable. By focusing on the user, the user experience can enhance, which results in more satisfied users.</p><p>User involvement in the system development process is one way to learn and receive information about the user. There are several ways of doing that. One way is to create user portraits from existing user models. We have studied different user models and lack a model that includes both tasks and goals; for example one of the existing models focus on user goals and another on relations with the system.</p><p>The purpose with this final thesis is to create a model to describe users as roles providing a more effective and generalized user-centered system development process.</p><p>To create this model, the role profile model, we studied existing theories. By them we were influenced both by good and less good things. The theoretical study resulted in a tentative model that we tested by interview and observe six buyers within the manufacturing industry. This resulted in two role profiles; the strategic buyer and purchase planner. From the result of the interviews and observations, we improved the tentative role profile model to our final model. There were some factors that did not fit in the tentative model and some that we added.</p><p>The role profile model contains three elements; objectives, requirements and context. These elements consist of a number of attributes that are important when surveying a role profile. The uniqueness with the role profile model is the fact that it includes both role specific attributes and attributes that puts the role profile into a context. The model contains for example work process, system requirements, responsibility and authority.</p><p>The role profile is at part of a greater context. There are design philosophies that concern the whole system development process; from survey the user to design and test. Our role profile model only handles the first parts, the user and tasks, due to the time limitations.</p><p>We have created a practical procedure that we recommend to facilitate the usage of the role profile model. The practical procedure is based on our choices of method when testing the tentative role profile model. The central in our practical procedure are interviews and observations. It is important to plan the company visits so that all necessary information is received.</p><p>The usage of the role profile can for example contribute with: knowledge and understanding of the users, structured work procedure, a generally accepted terminology and a user-centered design process.</p><p>This final thesis has been performed on commission of Lawson Software. We had continuously discussions with them about usability and the role profile model. We have studied fields of applications for the role profile model at Lawson. We think they can use the model in the product requirement process, design and evaluation, work with composite applications, user understanding and user priority and introduction of new employees.</p> / <p>Idag finns det ett flertal system som har bristande användar¬vänlighet. Detta beror bland annat på påtryckningar att lägga till fler funktioner i systemen, men också på att det bakåt i tiden har fokuserats på att utveckla system utifrån teknologi och funktionalitet. Det blir allt viktigare att tänka på användaren så att systemen blir mer användarvänliga. Genom att fokusera på användaren kan man öka användarupplevelsen i systemet och det medför att användarna blir nöjdare.</p><p>Att involvera användaren i utvecklingsprocessen är ett sätt att lära känna och få information om användaren. Det finns många sätt att göra det på. Ett sätt är att skapa användarporträtt med hjälp av olika befintliga användarmodeller. Vi har studerat olika användarmodeller och sett att det saknas en användarmodell som inkluderar både fokus på användarens arbetsprocess och dess mål; till exempel en av de existerande modellerna fokuserar på användarens mål och en annan på relationer med system.</p><p>Syftet med detta examensarbete är därför att skapa en modell som beskriver användare som roller, som bidrar till en effektivare och bredare användar¬centrerad systemutvecklingsprocess.</p><p>För att ta fram denna modell, rollprofilsmodellen, studerade vi som sagt existerande teorier. Från dem påverkades vi både av delar som vi tyckte var bra och mindre bra. Vi kom fram till en hypotesmodell som vi testade genom att intervjua och observera sex inköpare på tillverkande företag. Detta resulterade i två rollprofiler; den strategiska inköparen och inköpsplaneraren. Utifrån resultaten av intervjuerna och observationerna förbättrade vi hypotesen till vår slutliga modell. Det fanns vissa faktorer som vi inte tyckte passade in, men även attribut som borde läggas till.</p><p>Rollprofilsmodellen innehåller tre delar; mål, krav och kontext. Dessa delar består av ett antal attribut som är viktiga att undersöka hos den rollprofil som ska skapas. Det som utmärker rollprofilsmodellen är att den inkluderar både roll¬speci¬fika mål och attribut som sätter rollprofilen i en kontext. Modellen innehåller till exempel relationer, krav, ansvar och befogenheter.</p><p>Rollprofilen är en del av en större kontext. Det finns designfilosofier som berör hela systemutvecklingsprocessen; från att kartlägga användaren till att designa och testa. På grund av tidsbegränsningar har vi enbart berört de första av dessa delar; användaren och arbetsuppgifter.</p><p>För att underlätta användandet av rollprofilen har vi skapat ett rekommenderat praktiskt tillvägagångssätt. Detta är baserat på våra egna metodval när vi testade vår hypotesmodell. Det centrala i det praktiska tillvägagångssättet är intervjuer och observa¬tioner. Det är viktigt att planera noggrant så att all nödvändig informa¬tion erhålls.</p><p>Användandet av rollprofilen kan till exempel bidra till: kunskap och förståelse av användaren, ett strukturerat arbetssätt, en allmänt accepterad terminologi samt en användar¬centrerad utvecklingsprocess.</p><p>Detta examensarbete har utförts på uppdrag av Lawson Software, med vilka vi kontinuer¬ligt har fört diskussioner om användbarhet och rollprofilsmodellen med mera. Vi har även utforskat vilka potentiella användningsområden som rollprofilen har på Lawson. Lawson skulle kunna använda modellen i kravhanteringsprocessen, design och utvärdering, arbete med komposita applikationer, användarförståelse och priori¬teringar samt intro¬ducerande av nyanställda.</p>

The creation of interactive computer-controlled characters in interactive media is a challenging and multi-faceted task requiring the skills and effort of professionals from many fields. This work addresses authoring the interactive aspect of these characters’ behaviors – how characters act automatically in response to a dynamic user-controlled character. We present PaintBoard, a system that enables users to prototype and test discrete, real-time, interactive movements in a 2D grid environment simply by digitally painting a storyboard. We designed and developed a novel authoring technique for creating behaviors (painting storyboards) and a novel algorithm based on machine-learning, that analyzes a storyboard to create a behavior that works beyond situations provided in the input storyboard. We conducted two exploratory studies that grounded the prototype design, and present the results of a proof-of-concept workshop with game developers. Finally, we performed a comparison of machine learning algorithms’ performance on our storyboard data.

This research project has established a new measurement model for User Empowerment as an enabler to Enterprise Systems 1 success. This study was inspired by the reported relationship between Empowerment and improved work outcomes. From this, it was hypothesised that empowering the users of Enterprise Systems during the implementation process would improve the reports of post implementation system success. A new related concept of system oriented User Empowerment was conceived. The outcomes of empowering users (increased worker effectiveness; (increased work satisfaction) conceptually resonates very closely to the outcomes of individual performance, quality of system outputs, goodness of system functionality and, on a broader level, effective use of the system to yield successful business outcomes. These latter outcomes represent the measures of Enterprise Systems success. Thus Empowerment as an independent variable, and Enterprise Systems success as a dependent variable, provided a launching platform for the study. The research model was built upon the existing research into Empowerment as articulated by Spreitzer (Spreitzer, 1996) and Thomas and Velthouse (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990) and its derived systems related construct of User Empowerment, first explored by Doll, Deng and Metts (Doll, Deng, & Metts, 2003). It used a current and validated measure of Enterprise Systems Success as developed by Gable, Sedera and Chan (Gable, Sedera, & Chan, 2003); this measure is a refinement of the Information Systems Success Model of DeLone and McLean (DeLone & McLean, 2002). 2 In order to test the relationships of Empowerment to (Enterprise) System success, the following research sub-problems were explored: * What types of Empowerment are relevant in the Enterprise System context? * Is User Empowerment different from Psychological Empowerment and if so, how? * What is the relationship between Psychological Empowerment and User Empowerment? * How can User Empowerment be measured? * What is the effect of Psychological Empowerment on Enterprise Systems success? * What is the effect of User Empowerment on Enterprise Systems success? This research project was a PhD study funded by the Australian Research Council through an industry linkage program. The industry partner in this project was SAP - the most successful vendor of Enterprise Systems. Although limited in analysis the study spanned across two industry sectors, with two Enterprise Systems (Oracle and SAP). This research was a multimethod study and involved both qualitative and quantitative phases. The multimethod included content analysis, survey, and case study. This research was led by an explorative research strategy and paid considerable attention to analysing each research method in relation to other research methods, and also in relation to the demands of the research problem. A comprehensive literature review established extant definitions and constructs for Psychological Empowerment, User Empowerment and, Enterprise Systems success. The literature review employed a formal qualitative research method, using open coding supported through the use of Nvivo, a Qualitative software package, in order to identify and derive key themes in the referent disciplines. The responses from the email survey of Information Systems researchers, and Enterprise Systems consultants were triangulated with the findings from the categorised literature review on Empowerment. This sub-study utilised WordStat software and the findings were presented at the QualIT conference (Sehgal & Stewart, 2006). Drawing from the existing perspectives on Empowerment a contextbased perspective on Empowerment was proposed by the researcher. From this work, a new working definition of (User) Empowerment was derived. This construct proposed that User Empowerment involved Computer Self-efficacy, Perceived Usefulness, Intrinsic Motivation, User Autonomy, and Problem-solving and Decision support. Psychological Empowerment involves Meaning, Self-determination, Competence, and Impact. The research project then empirically tested the relationship of both Psychological Empowerment and User Empowerment to Enterprise Systems success using a quantitative enquiry. The new User Empowerment construct was statistically tested for validity and reliability. This quantitative study found no statistical evidence for a relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Enterprise Systems success. The study findings suggest significant statistical evidence for a relationship between User Empowerment and Enterprise Systems success. Statistical analysis showed that the construct for User Empowerment was different from the construct of Enterprise Systems success. These relationships held regardless of the level of the user: senior management, operational, end users or technical. This phase of the study was presented at the Americas Conference of Information Systems (Sehgal & Stewart, 2004). This exploratory survey was followed by another industry based case study, which confirmed the results for a different industry sector and different Enterprise System. This latter study was used in an independent confirmatory factor analysis of the Enterprise Systems success measurement which was presented at the Americas Conference on Information Systems (Sehgal & Stewart, 2004) and International Conference on Information Systems (Sedera, Gable, & Chan, 2004) by fellow researchers. This research has demonstrated that User Empowerment, rather than Psychological Empowerment was significantly related to Enterprise Systems Success. The study findings identified potentially significant benefits to the Enterprise System implementing organisations as well as the Enterprise System vendor from empowering Enterprise System users. Of the reported benefits one of the relevant one was improved and positive reports about the implemented Enterprise System. Further, the study highlights the importance of context when measuring a construct such as Empowerment. There are clear practical implications for the research outcomes. These include a recommendation that training programs should ensure that users have a high degree of computer self-efficacy when using the enterprise system. The validated User Empowerment instrument will be utilised as a diagnostic tool for organisational readiness prior to an ES implementation. This would assist in benchmarking the level of empowerment and predicted Enterprise Systems success. Future research will explore the effects of an Enterprise System on the components of User Empowerment as it is conjectured that there is a reciprocal relationship between the system and user attributes of Computer Self-efficacy, Problem-solving Decision Support, and understanding of business logic.