This report describes the development of an application in collaboration with Designingenjörerna AB. The company has worked for a long time with a community platform and they required an application where users can create their own unique profile representations, called Avatar Creator. An Avatar Creator is computer based application, which makes it possible to create a virtual character. The problem area behind this is that, large websites require a lot of administrative work when people upload profile pictures on different community pages. They can contain abusive material or pictures of other people rather than those who created the profile.The questions in this report are, how can an Avatar Creator help user to get a unique profile of himself? What are the advantages and disadvantages of an Avatar Creator? How to create a user-friendly application?To understand how an Avatar Creator works and get ideas to create an application, exiting Avatar Creators were reviewed on the Web.Collaborative work with Designingenjörerna AB was done to pin down the requirements for the Avatar creator application.

This thesis revolves around NATO?s role in the Ukraine crisis with the startpoint in 2014. Specifically, through conducting a qualitative content analysis of various NATO related material, a study regarding NATO?s security strategy and defense strategy, and the strategies' implications and roles in the Ukraine crisis, was able to be conducted. The purpose was to obtain an understanding of how NATO?s strategy has been interpreted and implemented in relation to the crisis.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to find out how leisure educator´s reason about children?s learning and development, and their view of their own role in the process. Four leisure educators were interviewed to answer these questions. The study is based on qualitative interviews, wich means that the interviewer must interpret and understand what the respondents want to say. This is to get a deeper knowledge of the subject. The results show that the leisure educators believe they have a large and important role in children's development and learning.

This essay will examine in which way festival tourism can affect the physical location of a festival and to operationalize this we implemented a case study of the music festival Storsjöyran. Storsjöyran is a Swedish music festival held annually in the city of Östersund and since the festival, with the accompanying festival week, attract up to 300 000 visitors annually, we wanted to see what impact the festival contributed to from a development perspective of the destination. The method for gathering data has consisted of both qualitative and quantitative approaches and the data was collected via interviews and questionnaires. We also presented various theories about festival tourism and destination development, as well as previous research on urban festivals. The conclusion is that Storsjöyran contributes to a variety of factors which can help Östersund to a destination development and increased tourism.

The object for this study is a company developing and manufacturing vehicles for heavy transportation. The company distributes their products on a global market. Therefore the company is required to have efficient internal production development processes in order to successfully beat the competition. The purpose of this master thesis is to study how this particular company intends to implement their standardized theoretical product development process within their organization and how well it is done. We intend to identify and specify if the process has any unexploited capacity.

The starting point of this essay was the frustration I felt after having read the novel Nadja (1928) written by the French surrealist André Breton. The title promises the story of someone called Nadja but the promise stays unfulfilled. Recognition of this phenomenon, where a man writes a book about a woman, but the woman hardly is seen, made me want to examine it further.Using the theories of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan I analyze the relation between the male narrator and his female object. I also compare Nadja to a precursor: the novel Bruges-la-morte (1892) of the Belgian symbolist writer Georges Rodenbach. Their stories are, to a large degree, similar.

The aim of this study is to examine educationalists experiences of play as an educational toolin the work to promote the social development in children with autism.The relevant issue, for this study, is: In what way does an educationalist work with play withchildren with autism? What are the results of using play in the educational work? What arethe possibilities and what are the obstacles in using play in educational work?This study has been carried out as a study of literature in the field and qualitative interviewswith five educationalists that are working in a mid Swedish county.The result of the study shows that educationalists have a positive view of using play in theirwork and are using play in varying ways in their everyday work. Using play as a method intheir work always happens according to the ability and condition of the child. They (theeducationalists) think that play has great opportunity and advance as a method and gives thechildren joy, increase their sense of ability, the base for the social participation in play, andthe development of social skills.There is a certain hesitation among educationalists when it comes to using play as a methodfor children with autism , but the most of the educationalists consider play as promoting thesocial development although the development always will happen at the pace(rate)of thechild..

Each year approximately 2,000 new detailed development plans are accepted in Sweden. When an area is covered by a new detailed development plan, it is often necessary that land has to be acquired to adjust the property units to the new plan. The owner conditions of the property units can usually be adjusted through negotiations between the seller and the buyer. But in some situations, when no agreements can be reached, it is possible to use coercive measures to purchase the land. Compulsory purchases are only permitted when certain legal criteria?s are met.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to find out how leisure educator´s reason about children?s learning and development, and their view of their own role in the process. Four leisure educators were interviewed to answer these questions. The study is based on qualitative interviews, wich means that the interviewer must interpret and understand what the respondents want to say. This is to get a deeper knowledge of the subject. The results show that the leisure educators believe they have a large and important role in children's development and learning.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain understanding of how companies proactively can manage their reputation. The thesis analyzes three multinational companies in Sweden and uses two theoretical approaches - the reputation risk view and the reputation strengthening view - to gain an overall perspective of how companies work with their reputation. It focuses on investigating which key areas of reputation risk the focal companies identify and how they manage the reputation risks within these areas. Moreover, it examines which stakeholders the companies believe are most critical from a reputation point of view and in what ways the companies work with strengthening their reputation among those stakeholders. In order to find a general approach, the thesis investigates the similarities and differences that exist between the respective companies in the study.

The postindustrial market increasingly demands service infused products to add more value to the customer in order to be competitive. Much research regarding digitalized services indicates that companies have to be innovative in order to compete on the market. However, companies within different industries face different challenges with digital service development. This study has been conducted because there are little known about the opportunities and the challenges different industries faces with a globalized market. Our research question is what the challenges are and what opportunities does strategic digital service development entails for companies.

The purpose of my study is to investigate teacher?s perceptions of their mission in the preschool class, and how they work to promote children?s written language development. What methods and working methods they use to awaken curiosity and motivate children to read and write. I am using the qualitative research method to get answers to my questions. I have made four qualitative interviews with four teachers in preschool classes from different schools.My questions are:What conceptions does teachers have about their mission in a preschool class?What different methods and approaches does teachers use to stimulate and wake children?s curiosity for reading and writing development?The theoretical basis for my study is the socio-cultural perspective, where learning occurs in interaction.

Our premiss in this study is the escalating competition in the swedish newspaper market, which have become an issue regarding smaller editions for the newspapers, and some scientist have claimed that this has brought an sensational touch to their news. With this in mind, we have studied if a sensational touch is brought to the two biggest Swedish newspapersAftonbladet?s and Expressen?s first pages. Our purpose with the study is to look into the newspapers development regarding a more sensational newsworthiness on the front page over time. The use of quotes, images and news themes is indicators to measure the development.Trough a content analysis from three different years, 1972, 1992 and 2012 we have measured the data with the computer program SPSS.

In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

For the last decades, Sweden has transformed from a state with strong elements of corporatism, to a governance of pluralistic character. This development has opened up to a new form of participation ? lobbyism ? which since has spread and commercialized. Because of this, a report on the state of Swedish democracy ? Demokratiutredningen ? was issued to examine the phenomenon of lobbyism as it was feared to challenge the functioning of a representative democracy.