The project was intended to produce a brush simulation plugin to the image processing program GIMP which would use a 6DOF drawing tablet for user input.Too ambitious goals coupled with compability issues between the resources used resulted in that no meaningful software was produced. Experience was however obtained, and this paper is intended to give an overview of relevant concepts for- and the process ofcreating a brush simulation..

Physical activity can reduce the risk of developing dementia, and studies show that people who already have some form of the disease can get a better memory function and find it easier to perform daily tasks if the activity is performed regularly. People who are diagnosed with dementia are generally not offered physical activity to a high extent, nor is there a wide range of equipment developed to suit the target group.The Bike Around project was launched during a workshop in Copenhagen and was organized by HCH and Techna Science with the aim to develop new training equipment for people with dementia. The workshop resulted in the development of a customized training bike where the user can get a biking experience from his wheelchair or favorite chair. By integrating the pedal movement with a prerecorded movie projected on a screen, the memory can be stimulated both visually and by the activity itself.Our assignment in the project consisted of three parts: design of the bike, movie playback and software programming. During the project a prototype has been created that meets the requirements of ergonomics and usability..

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to study howuniversity librarians in a South African context relate to theconcept of information literacy. We investigated differencesand similarities in approaches to user education andinformation literacy. We have based our study on thefollowing research questions: What are the prerequisites foruser education at the University of the Western Cape? Howdo these prerequisites influence librarians' approaches toinformation literacy and user education at the University ofthe Western Cape? We have used a sociocultural theoreticalperspective and Hofstede's cultural dimensions in orderto pay particular attention to the cultural and social contextof user education.

Previously when I have made proposals for privately owned gardens, I have found it difficult to find strong, extensive designs and to work with room and space. Since this is the field within which I am going to work in the future I feel that I need more experience, reference material and ideas on how I, in an early stage of the working process, can work with and consider room and space. The aim of this project has therefore been to procure experience, reference material and ideas for design of a garden in relation to space. To procure experience and reference material I have, during the fall of 2008, made two incredible study tours to France and to Japan. I have interviewed the landscaping architect Maria Arborgh and studied literature. I have also used a garden outside of Gothenburg in which I have been able to try out different thoughts and ideas regarding shape that have appeared during the course of my work. My conclusions about landscaping are that you should first find the different functions in the garden. The next step is to find an overall theme or shape, use a small number of materials, build a room with sealing, walls and portals with the help of vertical elements e.g.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how seams in an interactive system should be managed. Seamsin this study refer to the boundaries that arise when users move between for example differentsoftware, products or positioning systems. These seams are a cornerstone of the relatively unexploredarea called seamful design, which is based on that users can avail highlighted seams through activeparticipation in the use of a system. To analyze this area, seamful design is applied to the developmentof an interface of a smoothie vending machine. This smoothie machine thus provides the analyzedinteractive system, which the research questions are applied to as well as answered by.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how Digital Signage systems such as public info kiosks can be designed to better fulfill its main use; to enlighten, encourage and influence the public with information. The challenges presented from earlier studies shows that the public interests and goals, together with proper and relevant content displayed in info kiosks have impact on the attention the public have towards public displays. Qualitative methods such as interviews, usability testing and observations were conducted to further examine how a public info kiosk can be designed to draw attention and grow interest amongst students at K3, Malmo University. Usability testing were used on the digital prototypes that were developed to ensure that the gestural user interface meet the requirements of a proper interaction from the users. Important insights were made concerning; the attention and interest to relevant content, the aspects of the gestural user interface along with the placement of the info kiosk in terms of context.

The purpose of this thesis is to create opportunities for an efficient interchange of information between humans and technology, especially for the skilled user, and put the designprincipal for informative structures and features into practice. Informative structures and features in a large number of information items helps the peripheral visual system to automatically capture knowledge through logical patterns.A field experiment was done to evaluate if informative structures and features, implicate efficient human information-processing, even in a small study. The results was ambiguous because the quantitative part of the investigation didn?t show any significant differences, whereas the qualitative showed that people prefer a dynamic document with a high degree of informative structures and features over a dynamic document with a low degree of informative structures and features. Even if this study was inconsistent, probably because to few subjects where used, the implication of the research that?s behind it is solid.

Energy efficiency is important both to reduce costs and to reduce greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. In Sweden 40 percent of the energy consumption is related to the buildings sector. Hospitals are complex buildings with different activities in the same building, which requires flexible technical systems for ventilation, heating and lightning. A quarter of the total energy consumption in Swedish hospitals is related to user activities in the hospitals. Therefore it is not only important to work with operational optimization but also to change user activities, to reduce energy consumption.The objective of this thesis was to examine the user-related energy efficiency work at two care units, at the central hospital in Sundsvall within Västernorrlands County.

The object of this study is the female user of amphetamines and the characteristica which she is often described by. Many of these descriptions regard the female amphetamine user's sexuality which also have come to form the assumption that these women make a living from having sexual relations with men in exchange of drugs.In order to be able to draw any kind of conclusions regarding this, we found it necessary to investigate how the stereotypical female user of amphetamines makes a living and also whether it is possible for a female drug user to decide for her self how to support her habit.The disposition is a qualitative study of literature and the perspectives that we focused on in this study are gender roles, relationships and sexuality, criminality and finally the drug using woman as a victim. The theories used deal with social constructivism, respectability and shame.The main discussion of our study has been how women amphetamine users are moulded to become victims through interaction with other people but also with the society as a whole..

The aim of this Master Thesis is to examine how the national intranet at Nordea serves the organisation as a channel of information and communication. The intranets of today, have partially or completely come to replace other channels of information within larger organisations, and the intranet has become an increasingly important issue to the communicational process of organisations. To address the problem stated, qualitative interviews was accomplished with several employees at a department at Nordea. The achieved result reflects how the intranet supports variable everyday end-user situations. The result shows an intranet that is sparsely used in comparison to other channels of communication such as colleagues.

During my final examination project, I have been working with a design process to develop a new set of candle lanterns for the company Sagaform AB. This company has a large and significant role on the Swedish interior design and retail market. The assignment was developed when the company stated that they would like to supplement and expand its existing range of products. The research and surveys I have done have helped me to create eight different concepts and one of them ready to compete with the existing candle lanterns on the market. The result of my concept proposal expected to be included in Sagaform?s 2013 spring catalogue. During the project I have developed 3D-rendered images, a physical model, and a solid foundation for making prototypes. The Balloon has an attractive design language that fits both every day and more festive events.

In today?s computerized society more and more companies choose to utilize new applications that can ease the way of handling the information. For many of us is imperative that the process as efficient as possible if one takes in consideration the size of savings that this new application can bring.The developer of the evaluated system is SYSteam AB Huskvarna and they are the ones that gave us this assignment. The application that we evaluate is SCM (Secure Connection Manager). It is already used today by big companies such as Telia and Ericsson to search for errors in telephone servers placed all over the country.

There are several methods and models within the areas of software engineering on how to proceed during a software development process. For each of these methods and models there are benefits and drawbacks, depending on how you choose to look at them. A difference of principle between the different models is that they either advocate iterative development or not. In parts of software engineering one makes use of different methods depending on which is most fitting in a specific situation. There are several methods on how to recieve more qualitative data from the end-users during the requirement collection, but the reappearing pattern is still user centric participation, which means that the user participates more actively in part of or the entire development process.

This master?s thesis was performed at PartnerTech AB in Åtvidaberg. It addresses the problem of managing test results obtained from testing electronics manufactured by PartnerTech. PartnerTech has developed a test system, called Tor, which performs tests on manufactured boards and stores the test results in files. The Tor system consists of both hardware and software part, where the software runs on an ordinary PC with MS DOS/Windows 2000.

This degree project deals with the concept of creativity and the creative output based on howSwedish upper-secondary design teachers within the Technical Engineering Programexperience this from a student's perspective. The project discusses how the concept creativityis interpreted and how the creative output is regarded by educationalists and professionaldesigners and how this then can be related to literature on the subject and in the steeringdocuments. The purpose of this degree project is to visualize the interviewees' viewpoint oncreativity and the significance of experience, skills, and environment for the creative outputand within the field of design. This in order to, in the pedagogic and didactic situation, enablethe improvement of teaching so that creativity and its output come to show. Moreover, theproject aims to create a ground for discussion of the view of the importance of these skills inthe pedagogic/didactic situation.In order to reach this aim, I have read literature on creativity from several perspectives andcarried out eight qualitative structured interviews: both with three educationalists withoutexperience within the design profession, and with two educationalists who are or have beenactive within the design profession, as well as with three professional designers.