Prosthetic leg can give a negative psychological effect to the user, which ends up in decreased self-esteem and that the user hides his handicap. xCover gives a more natural volume and a cool look. xCover changes the look of the prosthetic leg C-leg. The product is constructed by us, Patrik Svensson and Magnus Zetterqvist, for Christoffer Lindhe at Lindhextend AB. Christoffer has hired Martin Bergman at Smedjan 17 to make the design.

The main purpose in this degree thesis is to investigate changes in performance when introducing a newly produced Real-Time database in one of CC Systems products, the Diagnostic Runtime Engine, DRE. The thesis is a collaboration between CC Systems, creator of DRE, and Mimer AB, developer of the Real-Time database.The result reveals that the time spent on database access is considerably lesscompared to the originally used database. The research has lead to several additional requirements on the real-time database and these are presented as part of the result in this thesis. The additional features will help making the product more suitable for DRE and similar applications.Additional research is required to be able to recommend the use of this product or not. Primarily the performance in another operating system, Windows CE, but also the introduction of additional features should be investigated.

This composition is an qualitative study about unemployment and working life. The point of the study has been to make a larger understanding how unemployment can perceive by the individual and how this person can see and plan for future working life. This has been study with help from 8 intervirws. The paticipants has been umeployed between  6 months and 5 years, and they have workt arleast 5 year before the unemployment.The study has show that it is many different components who contribute to how the individual perceive the time in unemployment and how the planning for the future looks like. The persons who has been intervirws perceive their psycal health as god,, even but unemployment.  The study has even show that all the persons in the study want to come out from the unemployment.

By comparing the experience off interaction in a life world with a drug habit and a life world without a drug habit you might find how they differ. We asked four former drug abusers in four semi structured interviews to describe their experiences off interaction under these two circumstances. The difference between the two life worlds when it comes to interaction is that in the drug abusing life world our informants describe that communicative action has to stand back for a more goal oriented action. In the drug free life world, communicative action on the other hand is experienced as the most important action. The difference is about wether interaction is goal oriented or oriented at understanding.

The Smart Grids development is driven by forces concerning safe electrictransmission done in an energy efficient way. Vattenfall Eldistribution AB has a visionto transform their electricity network into Smart Grids. To invest in Smart Grids theyhave a need to show their customers what advantages they will get from thedevelopment. This led to the formulation of this dissertation project where the aim isto identify products and services related to Smart Grids that will increase thecustomer satisfaction for Vattenfall Eldistributions private customers.The project started with a mapping of existing products and services on the Swedishelectricity market. From the mapping several development possibilities for VattenfallEldistribution were identified.

The study aimed to capture the institutionalized adolescent´s life stories and identified their thoughts and experiences of being institutionalized. This to understand and analyze the process that they go through to become adults with respect to three selected aspects: family relationships, school attendance and self-esteem. The adolescent´s in this study are or have been institutionalized by and according to Swedish law. It was based on 14 life stories and the purpose were to identify the adolescents thoughts and experience and which was later on used to understand and analyze the results with respect to the three selected aspects. Our analysis was based on two theories; symbolic interactionism and labeling theory.

In an ever more competitive environment Sandvik Materials Technology,SMT, runs a large-scale program to improve their processes for product development.The purpose with the program is to increase the company?s profitability by increasingthe number of new products in their product portfolio. The strategies SMT is usingfor reaching their goals are to change the way they work with product development byreducing lead time and learning how to prioritize products with the highestprofitability. In the R & D Department the work of improvement pursue by adaptingLean R & D to their way of working. Lean R & D encourages working withcontinuous improvements and eliminating waste.The main purpose for this Master?s Thesis is to develop didactic support to make iteasier to implement Lean in SMT R & D department.

Denna uppsats beskriver fenomenet shared services, varför företag satsar på shared service centers (SSC) och hur de går tillväga när de designar dem. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av en litteraturöversikt och en fallstudie av TeliaSoneras nu pågående implementering av ett shared service center, FSS. Fallstudien består av fyra intervjuer och en genomgång av TeliaSoneras egna informationsmaterial och medarbetarenkäter. Litteraturöversikten visar att shared services utlovar väsentliga förbättringar av ekonomifunktionen och besparingar, att det finns en stor tilltro till dessa löften men att det saknas underbyggda bevis för hur stora besparingarna egentligen är. Designen på TeliaSonera FSS visar sig följa litteraturen relativt noga, förutom vad gäller placering.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study students perception of the services that the library staff provides and the library staffs opinion of the students perceptions. With the concept service we mean the treatment, the attitudes and the qualities that exist between the library staff and their users. Our purpose is also to examine how the users experienced services quality. Our survey was conducted at an academic library with questionnaires to both students and library staff. We analysed the result of the survey by using three theories by Lundmark, Keen and Grönroos and Monthelie.

This qualitative study investigated what factors influenced older adults to motivate themselves to continue to be pshysical active in their later life. Six individuals, both men and women in the ages of 65-89, were interviewed. The interviews were analysed by informal content analysis. The results showed that there is a certain group who had a strong will to lead a long, well-conditioned and sound life. Although, the seniors are getting older, they continue to make active choices about physical activity on a daily basis.

The purpose of this study was to examine high school students conceptions of young people who run away or get thrown out of their homes. Earlier research shows that this group of young people often come from families were physical, psychological and sexual abuse is reappearing factors. They often face a life of homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution. Still there is little research done about this phenomenon and what kind of help and support these young people could need. This study was done in a qualitative approach with the use of focus groups.

 AbstractThis study is performed by studying seven livestock businesses in the agricultural sector. The focus of the essay has been put on the structures that limit and enable the lives of the farmers in this study. One of these major structures that affect everyday life is the gender structure and to this day the housewife role exists where the women are responsible for the home, family and domestic pets while the men are responsible for the production, machinery and the heavier tasks on the farm. This is grounded in the history and the development that agriculture has gone through, but also in the strong patriarchal power structure that exists in this industry. In this essay I also show how the life form analysis of Liselotte Jakobsen and the independent life form can not be fully applied to the farmer as he is not completely independent in his work.

Stress is part of everyday life and in the working conditions of the social services in Sweden. Thus each and every person has resources and strategies to cope with those stressors that construct the assumption of stress. The aim of this study was to understand how persons in leading positions of the LSS of Social Services in Kalmar experience and cope with stressors in their leadership and organization and to investigate what factors during working and non-working hours promote health. Influenced by the theoretical approach of Aaron Antonovsky´s Sense of Coherence seven qualitative interviews were conducted with persons in leading positions. They were asked about stressors, coping strategies, resources and health promoting factors that help to cope with stressors.

In relation to the development of IT-products it is very important that the software supplier is aware not only of the target group but also the field of application. Usability should characterize the whole IT-design process as, in relation to this context, design includes more than merely those aspects which are visible to and thus can be interpreted by the naked eye. The study examines the specific qualities and properties that substantiate the usability and the demands that a customer rightfully expects from an IT-product. The user and the customer are highlighted in the same context in order to demonstrate that it is through the customer that an IT-product is defined as being useful. Thus, from this perspective, the user and customer can be considered as being the same person.

The increased specialisation and complexity in products and services has created the need for Swedish companies to focus more on their core businesses. This has resulted in them opting to buy services and products that lie outside of their core business from consultancy businesses or other types of suppliers. When companies describe their offers in internal and external marketing it is done often in terms of company or service attributes that are not based on customer value or offered value for the customer. The reason for this is that companies have not adapted their services to the different needs of their customers. As a result of this, they run the risk of offering the same services as their competitors and communicate values that the customers either do not understand or experience as value adding. By using the theory on the data collection from the case company we have an understanding and shown how the customer values can be developed from a service company?s internal and external prerequisites and competitive advantages.