The purpose of this study was to follow a research-oriented design process and to develop a design draft for a digital service that supports users to make more environmentally conscious choises in their everyday life. By following an interaction design process from start to final delivery, the study aims at creating a broad understanding of the process. Therefore, many userrelated activities were implemented in the study: eg. personas, scenarios, sketching and user testing. The project resulted in digital wireframes for an iPhone application using embedded GPS to identify and locate environmentally friendly businesses.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some pre-school teacher's and parent's perceptions about communication within the pre-school context and how this can be described in terms of conceptual dichotomy.The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative study, where data have been collected by interviewing two focus groups and one single parent.The main theoretical tools which the study uses as its premiss is Derridas' theory of hospitality and Habermas' theory of deliberative dialogues. The study also considers the conception of the intermediate domain as an arena for communication between parents and pre-school teachers, and further more the conception of stereotyping in social and cultural contexts.In order to explore these processes I have used the qualitative method of interpretation; Hermeneutic, also with a narrative approach to the analysis.The results and the analysis of the data show that the interviewed parent and pre-school teachers have a poor sense of knowing how much influence to give to each other. The parents were not satisfied with the level of open communication and how the pre-school teachers share information of the activities..

The aim of this study is to observe Swedish preschool children in their natural habitat and without any intervention. Four different observations are made and thereafter analyzed. Throughout the whole study the subject of interest is the children's communication in their play. Children can communicate with each other in various ways, for instance with speech and without speech, i.e. with their physical language, aesthetic and multi language.

AbstractBackground: Becoming a parent to a child in need of Neonatal Intensive Care can be a traumatic experience. During a time when the parents may need support, guidance and a sense of control ? the family might need to relocate to a hospital away from home if the child needs highly specialized medical care at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the parents? experience of having to change neonatal care unit.

AbstractBackground: Becoming a parent to a child in need of Neonatal Intensive Care can be a traumatic experience. During a time when the parents may need support, guidance and a sense of control ? the family might need to relocate to a hospital away from home if the child needs highly specialized medical care at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the parents? experience of having to change neonatal care unit.

In inhalation anesthesia life-support systems are used to provide gases to the patient and to monitor important parameters. These systems are used in dynamic and stressful situations where the information-load on the operators often is significant. This thesis presents a design concept of an anesthetic system. The design goal has been to keep the information-load on the operator low with the objective to minimize confusion and error.A number of contextual inquiries were made in the operating room during surgery at four hospitals in Sweden. The goal was to understand the actual use-situations when anesthetic systems are employed.

Dementia may cause impairment of linguistic abilities, affecting both production and comprehension, which in turn affects communication (Mahendra & Hopper, 2012: Perkins, Whithworth & Lesser, 1998). The aim of the present study was to investigate and describe the communication strategies in everyday conversations between people with dementia and their interlocutors, and to describe the identified interaction phenomena based on a participatory perspective.The study was conducted at a home for people with dementia. Three people with known dementia and two health professionals participated in the study. Everyday interactions were filmed, and then transcribed and analyzed according conversation analytic principles. The transcribed data was also analyzed with ideas from positioning theory.The present study highlights the presence of trouble sources in communication between the person with dementia and carers and how these are handled by the participants in terms of strategies, competence and positioning.

Nowadays, packaging design is seen as a competitive tool and its importance for corporations is becoming increasingly apparent. The rivalry within homogeneous markets puts high demands on differentiation and the ability to create something more than the product itself. With this fundamental question, the soft drink industry has been examined and a case study of the brand Coca-Cola has been performed. The aim is to investigate how packaging design is used as a tool for strengthening a brand and to explore which additional values this contributes. In addition, the study observes the most important factors in the development of packaging design.A theoretical work of reference, consisting primarily of theories related to branding, design development and visual identity, has been developed to support the study.

The study aims to examine the communication between older immigrants and nurses at several nursing homes.Emphasis has been placed on clarifying both parties? experience of communication regarding the older immigrant?s idiomatic difficulties. The following questions were used in the creation of the study: How does the older immigrant communicate with the personnel at a nursing home? How does the older immigrant enjoy their residence at the nursing home? How do language difficulties influence the older immigrant?s possibility to express their self?In the study eight qualitative interviews were made with four older immigrants who lives in nursing homes and four nurses working in a nursing home. The survey shows that the overall problem in the communication is the older immigrant?s lack of language.

Face-to-face communication is always complemented with non-verbal signals that give us clues as to how a message shall be interpreted, but as communication is moved online the possibilities to express oneself becomes more limited.This paper focuses on the instant messaging client Windows Live Messenger and three of the non-verbal functions that it provides (nudges, winks and emotes). The purpose of the paper and its underlying study is to compare the senders' intentions with the receivers' conceptions when it comes to these functions.The study was done as a questionnaire with two different versions of the questions, one looking at the senders' intentions and the other at the receivers' conceptions.The results were then compared in order to look for tendencies. The results showed that the most common intention among the senders was also the most common conception among the receivers, but that the rest of the attitudes didn't match at all. The functions that are supposed to help the conversation flow often create ambiguity instead and lead to vagueness, misconceptions and annoyance..

This thesis project is based on a business idea where users can design their own t-shirt online. The project shows the first step in the development process where a prototype for a user interface is created and evaluated.The purpose of this thesis project is to answer the following question:How does one develop a user interface for t-shirt design with consideration to interaction design theories?In order to answer this question the design process began with scheduling the work at hand. The first step was to build a conceptual model based on specifications made prior to this project. This conceptual model became the foundation for the physical design.A high fidelity prototype was created using Macromedia Flash and Actionscript 2.0.

Organizational democracy has been a popular research area in recent decades but the implementation in real organizations is slow (Kokkinidis, 2012; Verdorfer, Weber, Unter Rainer & Seyr, 2013). Several researchers (Schön Jansson, 2012; Falkheimer, Heide & Johansson, 2013) argue that communication practitioners have a key role in democratic processes and that because their job role is under constant change there are only a few modern studies regarding the subject. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how communication practitioners in private and public organizations experience their role in the process of internal communication and to what extent they are aware of, and work with internal organizational democracy.The practitioners we interviewed had a strong feeling that they were a support function for the business and the organizational management. As a result of the study it is clear that communication practitioners are very loyal to their employers and to the organization they work for. They are, therefore, not neutral in their professional role and argue that their task is to represent the management's interests.

Uppsats för avläggande av högskoleexamen i Kulturvård, Trädgårdens hantverk och design 7,5 hp, 2014.

Background: Pervious research indicates that communication between patient and nurse has shortcomings. For the nurse, difficulties in care giving may emerge when the nurse and patient cannot understand each other. Research also shows that patients? participation in their care become more difficult by lack of communication. The care giving of patients who speak a different language is seen as a challenge by the nurse.

The students participating in my development work will work with a process book for handicraft studies. In the beginning of their studies, the students need practical knowledge about the development of the profession itself, but they also need to be challenged and learn how to solve problems on their own which will help them gain a deeper knowledge of the subject.    I focus on open questions to create a process with the students. This process is created when working with Solution-Focused-Education. Through ?assessment for learning? we can help the students to improve their self-assessment and understanding of the learning process.