Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.

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.

Neoplasm 2.5D, is a project centered around exploring possibilities of combining various digital tools with the use of a lasercutter, to create intricate patterns withillusions of depth and texture, and to combine these studies into a working fullscale model that could be the basis for a future design product..

Together with Hälsoteknikalliansen the project team recognized the need to improve availability in the staircase environments. This is a difficult environment, especially for our elderly. The staircase leading to and from apartments is such a major obstacle that many people do not dare to go into the staircase leading to their front door. The market study that the project team conducted showed that many were in need of a living support, often a relative, who helped and supported them when they went into these stairs. It also appeared that these people manage everyday life just fine, but they suffer the problems that stairs to and from their apartment causes.

Uppsatsen handlar om cineliteracy; att öka sin kompetens att tillgodogöra sig rörliga bilder. Jag undersöker huruvida brittiska filminstitutets femstegsmetod är en fungerande modell för att stimulera elevernas lärandeprocess av komplex film. Som exempel använder jag mig av Jacques Tatis film Play Time..

This report is a bachelor thesis work within the field of Product Development and is also an assignment for Thule Sweden. The work has been performed by Niclas Tjäderborn and Christian Holm, students at the Mechanical Engineering Program with major in Product Development and Industrial Design at Jönköping School of Engineering during spring the semester of 2009.The thesis work concerned the development of a new wheel holder for bike carrier for Thule Sweden. The background to the project was that the initiator wanted a more user friendly wheel holder with better design than those available on the market. The wheel holder is able to be implemented on one or several of Thule?s current wheel holders.

This thesis describes redesign and adaption of a products housing. In order to make it more economical to produce at a lower production volume. The thesis is based upon a prototype that a previous student developed for injection moulding. The goal is to find alternative manufacturing methods, but also to identify parameters that affect the cost of the injection moulding tool.The housing must be tough in order to protect the circuit board inside. But at the same time it must allow sound, light an electrical communication to pass through.

This thesis has created an image of the exchange of information among teachers in the Swedish upper secondary school. The study indicates that the exchange of information seems to be limited at all levels and the exchange that takes place outside the own teaching team occurs mainly through teachers personal networks. The study also shows barriers that may exist and the opportunities that an increased exchange may generate. From the picture that the empirical material provides and the theory that is presented a discussion is made around how IT can best support the organizational learning in schools. A concrete proposal is that at national level an IT platform should be created, which primarily focuses on materials that are created by its users and has an open architecture with a single login..

Polaris Eyewear is one of the world's leading companies in innovative eyeweardesign. My assignment has been to, in collaboration with them, expand their range with a pair of children's glasses, while maintaining the innovative character they are so known for.The problem with childrens eyewear today is that most of the time the glasses tries to mimic the adult eyewear and the ?childish? type of designing is spared. From an ergonomic point of view, a child's nose is smaller than an adults and therefore needs a different type of shape and nosebridge. In addition, children have softer ears, which means that they need a different type of shaftend as well.

This essay examines the visual art of Helena Blomqvist with theory of performativity from Judith Butler among others, with a focus on the potential of visual art to question and dislocate norms. It consists of an analysis of three works of art from three aspects: the work of art, the viewer and the situation, and eventuates in an analysis of how the works relate to representation and norms. The construction of the works is related to Butler's theory of identity construction..

Projects is the most common work model within the cultural area, but what is a cultural project? The definition of cultural projects is ambiguous. There are also no compiled information about what it means for culture to be pursued in project form. Scientific research about traditional project management and success criterias are wide-ranging. So is the scientific research about cultural studies and cultural policy.

The aim of this study is to analyze how problems are represented within SOU 2008:27. Further more, the aim is to analyze how the new subject plan for history can bee seen as a product of this document. The method used, and the theoretical frame of the study, is based on Carol Lee Bacchi?s ?what´s the problem represented to be?? approach, which basic principle is that policies are filled with representations of problems and that these representations need to be examined. These problem representations are then themselves subject for scrutiny, the second step being an analysis of the texts presumptions and assumptions concerning view of man and perception of knowledge. The results show, among other things, that a problem representations can be found in the SOU; the school system is too vague and unclear.

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.

Companies in the western world can no longer compete by using traditional means such as product and price since the commerce of services continually grows. To avoid similarity and increase competitive advantages modern companies have to be more specified. The competition between companies has increased and customers are harder to reach. Customers of today can afford luxury but trend indicates that originality, identity, and status are more important than factual needs. Products created and consumed at the same time within the service market are often very homogenous (similar).

A LED spectrometer has been constructed for qualitative spectrometry using certain wavelenghts. The LEDs and the photodiode are being controlled with a microcontroller that is connected to a computer to power the components and save data. The spectroanalysis made with the LED spectrometer were significantly different to a standard spectrometer, concluding that more analysis should be made until a final product is ready. Some areas of improvements are suggested. .