The CASA-paradigm, Computers Are Social Actors, was introduced in the book "TheMedia Equation" by Reeves and Nass. One of their experiments concluded that we tend to be polite to computers in the same way as we are to people. In this study I have replicated Reeves and Nass experiment but instead of a text-based interface I have used a virtual agentin order to find out if we are polite to the agents, or still to the computer. Two experimental setups was conducted. The two setups had a common first part that was carried out on onecomputer with one agent.

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant. By also documenting how much time we spent involving users we will show to which degree user involvement is effective. We found out that a couple of fast techniques could get very much result in the form of usability enhancing suggestions to the developers.

This study presents an alternate viewpoint to the strive to overcome the gap between research and practitioners within paper prototyping in interaction design. Earlier research identifies three aspects of this gap, which is:Practitioners being unaware of interaction design methods and theoriesPractitioners being aware, but choosing not to apply these methods and theories, due to time, budget and constraints of labourPractitioners and research having different perspective on similar design issuesOur study was done by carrying out qualitative interviews with interaction designers based on two digital design bureaus. One of the bureaus has an expressed link to research: the other has not. Our hypothesis is that the gap would manifest as a difference in work practice between the two bureaus.Our study shows that the two bureaus have similarities in work practice and that this work practice is based on scientific methods and theories, but is adapted to fit the client and/or the project. We conclude that the overcoming of the gap might not be necessary.

This paper deals with the difficulties of applying user-centered design practices as an independent developer, based on the visualization of a game concept in the form of a prototype. The aim is to evaluate the usability of user-centered design practices, specifically in the field of games development. Throughout this paper, I will give an account of the methods used for testing, as well as a review of previous research done in this field of study. Finally, I will end with a discussion regarding the pros and cons of user-centered design, as well as some thoughts about its importance in similar projects..

This field study examined how elderly and cognitively disabled people used and experienced a social companion robot. The following pages explores the questions: Which are the physical, social and affective qualities during the interaction? The aim was to through observations see how qualities of interaction could activate different forms of behavior. The results show that motion, sound and the eyes together created communicative and emotional changes for users who felt joy and were willing to share the activity with others. The robot stimulated to some extent users to create their own imaginative experiences but often failed to involve user or group for a long time and was also considered too large and heavy to handle..

In several cases, systems that have been developed have been very time consuming and cost a lot of money, but they still do not fulfil the users requirements and requests. To make new systems better, you have to find a way to communicate that allows the developers to understand the needs of the user. The aim for our thesis is to highlight the importance of communication in system development. To investigate this we have choosen to do a study of the real-estate system. The work methods that have been used include mock-ups and informal conversations with the user, who is employed by the Church of Sweden in Ronneby.

Computer use at work has risen considerably over the past fifteen years and is currently a relatively common phenomenon when 76 percent of women and 72 percent of men using the computer in their daily work (SCB Arbetsmiljörapport 2009).According to Gulliksen and Göransson (2009), Sweden is one of the countries which are more advanced in the procurement of computer systems at work. He means that Sweden has unique opportunities and conditions for user participation in the development of computer systems, when the user has the right to influence their working environment through a law in the Work Environment Act. The paper examines the importance of user involvement in system development and the Swedish company's approach and experience of user involvement. To highlight and explore the importance of user involvement, there has been a case study in which users have been representative of the development process. The case study has been conducted on a case company where the system IST analys was in need of a new interface.

The purpouse of this study is to find out how and if a Content Managment System (CMS) can benefit from applied User Experience Design (UX). A work project has been executed where a client wanted the students to create a user friendly CMS for adding content to a global hotel review site. A prototype of a CMS was created based on literature studies about UX and CMS. The prototype of the user friendly CMS was then tested through user tests and interviews with key users. After input from the key users the prototype was changed until the users were satisfied with it..

En förutsättning för att kunna etablera god publikkontakt i en domteater är att personalen kan interagera med sin publik. För att det ska vara möjligt behöver de vara flexibla och rörliga medan de manövrerar domteaterns styrsystem. Genom att skapa en applikation till en smarttelefon kan en förlängning av det stationära styrsystemet och kontrollbåset skapas, vilket möjliggör en önskvärd flexibilitet. Designstudien som uppsatsen presenterar är utförd i syfte att undersöka de metoder som är lämpliga att använda i ett tidigt skede av en sådan systemutveckling. Metoder inom Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) och interaktionsdesign syftar bland annat till att utveckla interaktiva applikationer.

The purpose with my degree project is to investigate the use of computers within the daily activity in three preschools and one preschool class. I have designed a survey that I distributed to the staff. The purpose of my work is to investigate how a number of preschool teachers and children in a few preschools and one preschool class in a medium-sized Swedish town are using the computer in their activities.My study shows that the computer is frequently used, both of the children and teachers, but also together. The children in my study are using the computer to play games, listen to music, and go into the websitewww.youtube.com, but also in order to write and count.  The teachers primarily use the computer to document, check their e-mail and listen to music.

In this Bachelor thesis I explore sound and room as elements in design of user interfaces, both theoretical and practical in a specific application domain, to identify some of the advantages and disadvantage associated with these elements. As application domain I studied email clients and their usage at home amongst students at Blekinge Institute of Technology. In the study I found an activity, which seems to be highly distributed in the physical room where the user is located. The activity was notification of email and could take place in an arbitrary location of the home. I then augmented this activity with ideas from my theoretical assumption about room and sound. The result was a rule-based agent for notification of email, which primarily uses sound as interaction style..

Sudoku solvers are a widely researched topic among mathematicians and computer scientists. This report investigates the differences in execution time and time complexity between backtracking and human strategies for classes with 17-21 clues. Backtracking is compared to our implementation of human strategies with test data that contains 99 Sudoku puzzles for each class. The study shows that the execution time and time complexity is improved for human strategies compared to backtracking for each class. The conclusion shows that it is always favorable to implement the human strategies investigated in the report. .

Humans have always been fascinated by the thought of bringing non living objects to life. We wanted to explore the possibilities of trying to create an artefact that the audience would consider possess emotional states and have a life of its own. TaS is a interactive chair that functions as a social entity. The idea is to try and enhance the bond between human and artefact, based upon the emotional connection. We try and produce, enhance and maintain this bond through curiosity based interaction. Bachelor thesis in Interaction Design by Andreas Eriksson, Johanna Lund and Fredrik Lundh, spring term 2008, Malmö University, K3 School of Arts & Communication..

Denna kandidatuppsats undersöker hur user experience kan främjas i ett adaptivt talbaserat system i en fordonskontext. Att undersöka och involvera user experiencei adaptiva talbaserade system är i synnerhet viktigt i denna kontext då den primära sysslan, att köra, bör störas så lite som möjligt. Ett adaptivt system ger möjlighet att effektivisera interaktion och ett talbaserat system låter föraren fokusera på trafiken.Genom att undersöka existerande teori och utföra empiriska undersökningar i form av användartester genom Wizard of Oz-tekniken och intervjuer har vi skapat designoch dialogexempel. Dessa förslag kan främja user experience och på så vis bidra till att den interaktion som sker är effektiv och behaglig. .

In order to get a better understanding of the interaction between employees and their technical work tools one needs to know what factors influence the interaction. The purpose of this study was to examine if there is a correlation between the personality traits Extraversion (E) and Neuroticism (N), tested with Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI), and experience of the new Intranet among employees at The Swedish National Transport Administration (SNTA), and also to gather information of employees? opinions about the new Intranet. A survey, containing questions about the Intranet and a personality test (EPI), was posted on SNTA?s Intranet for eight workdays (N = 88, females = 53, males = 35).