In early January 2010 the authors participated in a meeting with the chief engineer for a company in which a central part is manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCB). At this meeting it emerged that the machinery and production methods have changed substantially since the early 1990's. The spreadsheet for preliminary production time calculations by the company is today based on conditions from almost 20 years ago. The company has over the years been trying to adjust the spreadsheet template. The result of these adjustments has filled it with historical residue, something which makes the template difficult and time consuming when the primary user tries to handle it.The purpose of this study was to help the company increase its accuracy in the representation of the production times for the different PCB-based products by developing a new costing model based on an already existing but inadequate spreadsheet template. The company also expressed the wish that the new costing model would be less time consuming to work with.The methods used to achieve the goal are interviewing, participatory observations and meetings with relevant persons. The data obtained were analyzed using the theory on PCB production and visualization of data.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The aim of this thesis was twofold, on the one hand to compile a set of usability and accessibility guidelines in order to establish the characteristics of a user friendly website, and on the other to test these guidelines on eight library webcourses with user education to see how well they adhered to the guidelines. The methods used were literature survey and source studies. The guidelines found in the literature survey were divided into four different categories: document properties, structure and navigability, visual characteristics and accessibility. In order to establish the adequacy of the guidelines, I examined reference sources, mostly on the web. To a certain extent this examination has been based on HCI Human-Computer interaction theories.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

Thousands of people all over the world suffer from injuries that temporary affects their ability to speak or inother ways communicate. A very common procedure for persons that suffer from some kind of breathingproblem in the higher parts of the neck is called tracheotomy. This prevents the patient from speaking whenno air passes the vocal cords. There have been many studies done to understand how these patientsexperience this period. The results are consistent, the patients often feel fear, frustration and worries aboutthe future.Tobii Technology develops a technique called eyetracking wich enables persons to control a computer with theeyes.

As the information society becomes increasingly flooded with digital images, the need for efficient image retrieval systems increases as well. To handle the vast amounts of data involved, the indexing process needs to be run automatically, using content-based descriptors extracted directly from the digital image, such as colour composition, shape and texture features. These content-based image retrieval systems are often slow and cumbersome, and can appear confusing to an ordinary user who does not understand the underlying mechanisms. One step towards more efficient and user-friendly retrieval systems might be to adjust the weight placed on various descriptors depending on which image category is being searched for. The results of this thesis show that certain categories of digital images would benefit from having extra weight assigned to colour, texture or shape features when searching for images of that category..

Our examination project has been to develop today?s existing walking frames and make them more exiting and user friendly for tomorrow?s users.The use of a walking frame today makes it easier for a person with a movement difficulty in different extent. It makes it easier with their living condition and the user get a more movement easier life where they can take care of the daily chores without any help from the society or the family members.With our product we get a product that not only makes it easier for the user to get out and get forward. We help the user to get forward where they often would have difficulties to get forward. An example is where its more steeper parts where it could be more difficult to get up or down and even with more difficult foundation due to bad weather.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a versatile wireless technology usedworldwide. The fields of applications are many and its popularity constantlygrows due to smaller in size, better and less expensive components. RFID isused to identify, track or share information about an object using radio waves.This master thesis describes the process of designing and implementing ahandheld UHF RFID reader. The goal was to, based on a UHF RFID-chipdesign a fully functional, small in size and power efficient device. Amicrocontroller provides the user interface and is also used to control theRFID-chip and a Bluetooth device.

The purpose of this thesis is to make a comparative literary study of ten laboratory experiments with different kind of sources for query expansion terms. The experiments are grouped according to categories of term sources, which are: search results, collection dependent knowledge structures, collection independent knowledge structures and one that combines the two last mentioned sources into one. To enable a comparison all other variables were held as constant as possible. There is the improvement measured in mean average precision, which is used to measure the various sources potential. The result from the study shows a strong connection between the kind of source for the expansion term and improvement of the result.

This report describes the work process to an interactive movie addressed to children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, where Jippieserien is the client. The aim is to explore how multimodal media can convey Jippieseriens message to children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their parents, by taking the users needs into account.It is important to focus on the people who will use the system when designing interactive systems. This project is therefore using the designprocess human-centered design for interactive systems. The process includes four basic elements and provides guidelines for user-centered design. These parts are analysis, prototyping, implementation, and evaluation (Johansson.

In recent years, employees at large companies have started to demand that their employer should work more for good causes. The money the company wants to donate to charity is distributed mostly through a vote to decide where the money will be remitted. The purpose of this design case is to develop a design concept for a web-based donation service that involves all employees at a company. Furthermore, the authors of this study intends to explore how the motivation for employees of a company can be affected by participation in this service. In this design case, the service function, quality and concept was tested and evaluated.

Webbdesign är ett hantverk med potential till oändlig variation och oräkneliga möjligheter, men det är även en process styrd av standarder och förhållningssätt för att optimera resultatet för slutanvändaren. Begrepp så som user experience och framför allt user experience design har i och med utvecklingen blivit allt viktigare aktörer inom webbdesign. Samtidigt som de underlättar i utvecklingsprocessen genom att diktera hur design bör utformas, skapar de inte också då begränsningar av potentialen för webbdesign? Antalet variationer och möjligheter minskar drastiskt när webbdesigners anpassar sig efter dessa standarder.Den här undersökningen syftar till att utveckla nya metoder och strategier för att främja innovativ webbdesign och undersöka hur modebranschens konstanta strävan efter innovation skulle kunna inspirera och kanske till och med förändra webbdesign utvecklingen. Genom att bryta ner, analysera och sammanfoga designprocesserna för haute couture och webbdesign skapas en designmetod som ger medvetenhet i designval och hjälper att ifrågasätta standarder samt att undersöka alternativa lösningar.

Location-based services (LBS) contains of services helping users of finding positions of themselves or other objects. LBS applications can present information in varies types of ways, these could be threw speech, text, geographic symbols, photos etc. Not many studies have been done to examine the aspects of LBS communication and there is a demand for user and context centered mapping.The purpose of this report is to present a model for the development of user and context based services. The model will give guide lines of recommendations when implementing LBS. The different technologies that support LBS will also be noticed.

This report details the development of an application for personal safety for the Android operating system. Android is a relatively new platform, primarily used on mobile phones.The purpose of the developed application is to give the user the possibility to easily and quickly alert a number of contacts by phone in case of emergencies, and to show the user?s location on a map. This is not only used during emergencies, but for other purposes as well ? for example to monitor a jogging round.The project was carried out in co-operation with the company D-Safety, the developer of the "SoftAlarm" ? the product on which the developed application is based..