This degree project concludes the Innovation and Design Engineering programme at Karlstad University. The project was carried out by David Brocker, Erik Hallberg and Andreas Hertzman during the spring of 2006 and corresponded to 15 weeks of work per student. Assigner was Martin Larsson at Arexor and instructor at Karlstad University was Monica Jakobsson.Arexor has a patent to a construction of an electrical skirting board with moveable wall sockets, called Electrical Track System. The lowest parts of the interior walls along the floor are today almost always covered by a conventional skirting board. Arexors patented product replaces that with the possibility to move and increase the number of wall sockets by choice along an electrical skirting board.

The design of packages is something that product manufacturers put great effort on. The package is often the consumers' first interaction with a product and consumers judge the product based on the package. A common way to evaluate a package design is to let respondents look at a package and answer which attributes they think the product has. This paper wants to take this evaluation a step further, i.e. it examines if consumers experience differences in taste between two identical products that have different package designs.

The purpose of the study is to explain whether the introduction of a new and different brand by means of a brand extension affects consumers? perceptions of the product category that the brand is launched in. An experiment was carried out to study the following aspects: associations and constellations of associations to the product category, interest, perceived variation, and the perceived similarity with the category from which the brands were extended. In the study, brand breadth in the original product category was used as moderating variable. Aspects found to be affected by the brand extensions were associations to the product category, the constellations of these associations and the perceived similarity with the category from which the brands were extended.

This degree project has been carried out in cooperation with Enertech AB in Ljungby and is pilot study to automating all current manual soldering. The soldering process accounts for a large part of the processing cost in the production of a heat pump. The process is also a quality risk and has a major impact on the lifetime of the final product.The Main task of this project has been to evaluate automation of the soldering process, to develop automation solutions and a principle layout, to draw the design changes required for the automation and to calculate the supposed solution.This pilot study has resulted in a suggested automation solution using laser as a heat source for soldering. Calculations of the solution show that a automating a laser soldering cell is very profitable..

In a society where adults set the conditions for children?s play and generate modern and at times technically advanced products, fundamental characteristics like simplicity, opportunities for motor skills training and learning tend to be neglected. Owing to this, the Linköping-based company Time In wants to introduce a new multifunctional product, which differs from other products in shape and function and lives up to the often overlooked, basic characteristics in a toy.With Time In as the assigner, the purpose of this master thesis has been to use simple means to produce a "learning by playing" concept. Since Time In sells toys and products suitable for children in nurseries and preschools, the development of the products has therefore included a study of nursery and preschool environments.The thesis has been carried out within the Product Design subject area at the Department of Management and Engineering at Linköping University. Concept development has been done in three phases: the Preparation phase, the Design phase and the Presentation phase.

This report aims to describing the work behind the development of a masonry heater.The masonry heater is developed in collaboration with the company Transient Design KB that is a product development company located in Alingsås. The company sees a possibility to cover a market segment where modern technology and design are missing.The report presents those methods and approaches that have been used and gives an overview to how the project has been carried out. It describes how the ideas behind the final results have produced and how they have been developed during the project's time. In the report you can also read about the final concept with its choices of construction and materials.The report is completed with a presentation of a final concept and a ground for possible future production..

This report is the concluding part of the course national minorities, main focus on design, at Luleå University of Technology spring 2007. The purpose of this written examination is to produce a prototype to a product, which can be used both when marketing Kiruna as a student municipality and when recruiting students to the study programmes Kiruna offers. The product has been produced through systematic problem solving, where methods to fix the problem, gather facts, examine and come to a solution have been used. The product should in one way or another get the student to think of Kiruna as a student municipality and it should also appeal to the target group ? the students.

The structural rationalization of rural firms in Sweden has led to many new creative ways of developing companies. The agriculture sector is characterized by the need of capital in form of buildings, labor and inventory. The rationalization process has led to free capacity in rural firms when new technology make buildings and inventory not longer necessary for the production process. To get a better cost coverage this free capacity can be used to start-up new business areas that help the rural firm to growth.The study aims to identify factors that motives entrepreneurs in rural firms to develop new business areas. The purpose is also to analyze driving forces that lies behind development of rural firms and the forces that support or not support development in rural firms.The study is built upon five cases that all can be categorized as firms with different size and orientation.

The aim of this essay is to find some of the main developing tendencies in the advertisement genre during the period of 1930-2000. The analysis is based on three examples of Gevalia cinema and TV-advertisement. Research findings are the result of using theories from different but relevant sciences, which are media, linguistics and rhetoric. Media studies help to explain the influence of the society and technology development on the advertising business. Linguistics and rhetoric give the main methods and terminology for the basic as well as comparing analyses of the three advertisements in question.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the influencing factors on the businesspotential of products with health claims, using PrimaLiv as an example. And togive recommendations on how a dairy producer, which is present in the Swedishmarket, could improve the sales rates of products with health claims. We have chosento put a main focus on the consumer, as he or she determines the business potential.This is an unusual approach since most studies cover the producer?s perspective. Wethereby wish to contribute with new knowledge on the area in question.

As a company it is required to work with strategies to minimize costs such as packaging and logistic costs. The increased market of industrial produced wooden buildings results that the time and the cost which the packaging of prefabricated building elements consume, is experienced to be in greater need of development than before and demands a better solution. The aim with this dissertation was to discover how the development of the handling of the packaging can improve the packaging process. The goal was to present improvement proposals for a simplified and thereby a more efficient production in time and cost perspective.The packaging process which includes packaging, handling, storage and transport were studied. Interviews were made with participants from the market for manufacturers of wooden houses and a case study was made at the company A-hus.

The environmental debate is more intensive than ever before and the demands on companies increase. There are a number of methods to make it easier for the companies to fulfil the demands. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) end ecodesign are some of the methods that can be used. Syntronic AB has the possibility to reduce the products´ environmental impact in the design phase. Therefore it is important for the company to make it possible to visualize the negative environmental impacts a product can cause in an easy way. It is also important to visualize for there clients if any improvement is possible. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a simplified model.

Deposits can be formed in the paper machine due to sticky materials from wood and recycled paper. These deposits get stuck on process equipment and cause the product quality to deteriorate and the efficiency of the paper machine is reduced. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding about deposits among machine operators, and to suggest methods that can be used to reduce the amount of deposits formed in Bravikens paper machines.To fulfill the purpose of the thesis a pre-study, a literature review and interviews with machine operators and production staff, were carried out. These methods led to the planning and creation of an education about deposits for machine operators.The education about deposits for machine operators consisted of an interactive lecture to introduce the subject of deposits and a subsequent discussion. This approach was chosen to give the machine operators the opportunity to discuss their work situation on the paper machines related to their new knowledge about deposits.

The thesis concerns itself with studying the effects private brands has on the consumer?s impulse buying in the grocery industry, as in degree of unplanned spending and the selection process between manufacturer brands and private brands when such a purchase is performed. The study?s methodology is characterised by a qualitative approach, whereby the study acknowledges the inductive approach towards the empirical setting even though the Mehrabian-Russell model along with motivational theories serve as highlighters of relevant aspects in the empirical field. The study concludes that both the utilitarian and the hedonic consumer decide what to buy before entering the store, whereby a low degree of needs arise in the store.

Babies born prematurely are deprived of normal sensorimotor stimulation when placed in an artificial environment, the incubator. The aim of this project was to design a series of products that could promote the baby?s emotional and neurological development, and to facilitate parental bonding. The products designed in this project has a theoretical basis on the research available today on cognitive and emotional development in children born prematurely. They were developed in close cooperation with a group of parents and nurses in a neonatal intensive care unit.Presence is a product collection for developmental care, consisting of a mattress, a figure and a necklace. The mattress has vibration sensors that transfer the mother?s heart beat and speakers with recorded heartbeat and her voice.