Due to the decrease in obtaining driver?s licenses among young people, the main purpose of this study was to acquire a deeper understanding of young people?s attitudes towards driver?s license and towards driver?s education. This is a qualitative study with a theoretical approach, which combines Bourdieu with post modern theories. By using focus groups a wide rage of attitudes among young people have been gathered. Having a driver?s license is still considered a standard among young people even though their attitude mostly depends on their need for one.

The game industry is growing by every year but for some reason the research surrounding it hasn't caught up with its rapid expansion. This study aims at expanding the knowledge surrounding one of those areas, player motivations. An empirical model has been used to identify which interaction has the highest impact on player motivation in story-driven roleplaying-games. By conducting semi-structured interviews with eight different game developers using the GameFlow model to explore the use of interactions to sustain the motivation of the player a new criteria has been identified. This additional criteria was: Alive, and it was shown to have a high impact on motivation in story-driven roleplaying-games.

Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Brodsky is a key figure in Soviet Russian literature. Expelled from the USSR in 1972, he became a US citizen in 1977 and Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991. In this essay, I have sought to examine the state of exile perceived in Brodsky?s poems. Using Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky?s concept of defamiliarization, I have strived to illuminate the formal composition of this state ? its technique.

Our aim in this work has been to redesign ModernFamilies and make a user-friendly interface for people with aphasia. The focus has been to identify general issues they might face while using different technology and applications, in order to find better alternative design for ModernFamilies, with a focus on usability. To approach this issue, we used a qualitative method. Our study includes several interviews and observations preformed in conjunction with the AGNES project (AGeing in a NEtworked Society) and speech therapists. Aphasia requires simple design that in the same time gives them support to understand and use technology and different applications.

The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning of the librarycafé for its visitors as a place. By this study we want to see howimportant the library café is as a place. Our theoretical departurepoint is an adaption of the space and place-theory, by Fisher,Saxton, Edwards & Mai. By adapting the theory to a libraryperspective it helps us to understand how library users look uponthe library café as place.Using a qualitative approach the empirical material has beencollected through observations and interviews. We observed andcarried out interviews with six library café visitors at threedifferent library cafés.Our findings are that the library café is used in many differentways and by many different peoples.

The company Sound Precision has developed a new Line Array loudspeaker system (VHA-40). When using this system, their customers need computer aid to get the best possible sound-quality and control of sound levels for the whole audience. The aim of this thesis is to develop a truly useful sound quality simulator for the VHA-40. The system will help the sound engineers to position the loudspeakers for optimal sound by simulating loudspeaker configurations and visualizing the resulting sound quality and quantity. To solve this a human-centered design (HCD) approach is taken to implement a system that is truly useful for the users, meaning that they will use it more and hence deliver better sound for the audience.

The company Sound Precision has developed a new Line Array loudspeaker system (VHA-40). When using this system, their customers need computer aid to get the best possible sound-quality and control of sound levels for the whole audience. The aim of this thesis is to develop a truly useful sound quality simulator for the VHA-40. The system will help the sound engineers to position the loudspeakers for optimal sound by simulating loudspeaker configurations and visualizing the resulting sound quality and quantity. To solve this a human-centered design (HCD) approach is taken to implement a system that is truly useful for the users, meaning that they will use it more and hence deliver better sound for the audience.

The aim of this study was to examine the occurence of norms in court cases regarding the Swedish law of support and service for disabled (Lag 1993:387 om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade) with the help of a discourse analysis method. More specifically its aim was to examine and identify norms in the different dictums/statements that were to be found in the court cases regarding the supportive institution "contact person" according to the Swedish law "LSS" with the help of a norm science approach. The aim was also to examine when the applicant was found to be entitled to a contact person according to the LSS-law. To be able to do this, the author studied thirty-four different court cases. In these cases six themes were found, that indicated the occurence of norms.

The aim of this thesis is to interpret and discuss the weapon-graves of Viking Age Birka. The weapon-grave phenomenon is deemed differential in relation to the rest of the grave-material of the site, and thus the questions that motivate the thesis is: who was buried with weapons and why? Further questions arise regarding the social aspects of individuals who were buriedalong with weapons. The theoretical approach will be to evaluate any differences in 'social class', 'social age' and 'gender' between the weapon-grave contexts. By conducting qualitativeand quantified analysis of the grave-goods, this thesis adresses both overall and detailed patterns in correlation and constellations between weapons, other grave-goods and terms of burial..

Part 1 of 2  ? Lean philosophy ? five steps to get the workplace in order?Part one deals with the theory of what Lean and 5S are.Lean is a long-term approach that involves a quest to become the best on the market by increasing employee engagement, eliminate waste and focus on the right things.5S is a method of order in a system. Businesses around the world are using these 5S which stands for sort, straighten, shine, standardize and sustain. Part 2 of 2 ? Lean philosophy ? five steps to get the workplace in order?Part 2 deals with the practical about 5S and a short summery about the company Wibax AB where the degree thesis took place.Wibax has a a project which involves using 5S in practice and create order in the in preparation lab and in the control room.By finding a solution to this mess reduces the time that was previously spent on searching equipment. Instead of search, the workers can do the real work..

This master thesis covers the development of an automatic tuning process for the existing speed controller for drive systems. The drive systems are resonant two-mass systems where a motor is used to drive a load connected by a shaft. The developed method relies heavily on system identification and the construction of a complete mechanical model of the process. With this approach, the common problem with poor load speed control that derives from measuring only the motor speed can be addressed and solved for a majority of such processes.The automatic tuning method has along with general test functions been implemented in a complete tool for automatic tuning, testing and performance evaluation and reporting for drive systems..

This study is an attempt to develop the discussion about self-injury with the aid of philosophical discussions about understanding. I will present a reading of the discussion between Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida about reason and madness, and also an interpretation of the Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer encounter. These readings focus on the concept of understanding, on the possibility to understand the other and on the possibility to reach out from reason toward the irrational. The project to formulate an ethical approach to self-injury by Nancy Nyquist Potter is then used to bring the question about understanding to life. I conclude that the project of Potter, formulated as ?uptake?, is weakened by the fact that she fails to recognize the underlying philosophical problems in stating the possibility to understand the meaning of something that until today has been considered meaningless..

The purpose of this study is to create knowledge about the view on play and work with play in Nepal?s preschools. To do that I travelled to Nepal and interviewed people who had an insight in either work regarding play in preschools or the view on play. I used a kind of interview were the person I interviewed got the phenomenon ?play? to discuss and to reason about, without my values.

The purpose of the study is to examine the multilingual student?s use of IT in school.The study also highlights the teacher?s view of development and how they use IT in their own teaching.A qualitative approach study was conducted to acquire a deeper understanding of students' language learning by using IT. In the study, it was assumed socio-cultural perspective in which learning takes place through interaction with others.The result shows that multilingual students have difficulty understanding information available on the internet and they are either waiting to meet a teacher to get a clearer picture of what to do or doing tasks even though in some cases misunderstand the task. Language teachers also confirm student?s impression and at the same time express the concern that students are reading less.This study shows that there may be correlation between students' learning motivation and an understanding of instructions online.

My big interest in sports was what shaped my choice of subject for the essay. The purpose of this study has been to explore the social meaning of team sports for functionally impaired persons. In order to fulfil the purpose of the essay I formed following questions: How do the actives experience their participation in team sports? And how important is the social intercourse in team sports to the individual welfare? The methods I?ve used have been qualitative with an ethnographic approach. I have used participant observations and field interviews to gather my empirical material.