High demands are set on all equipment used in emergency service work, where small margins can be the distinguishing factor between life and death during a rescue operation. It is important that tools such as ladders quickly and easily can be dismounted from a vehicle and still satisfy the regulatory requirements for securing loads during transport. The existing solution for getting ladders down from the roof of a fire engine requires a large manual effort from the user in an ergonomically unsound posture.In this degree project a new ladder holder is developed with focus on the user to solve the ergonomic problems and at the same time create a more compact design that can be adapted to several different types of ladders. After an initial pre-study with user-interviews and measurement of forces and distances a set of requirements was formulated that came to govern the project's direction. Creative methods were used to generate concepts that improved the function and through design solutions, calculations and testing in CAD a base for manufacturing of a new product was created.The result is a completely new type of ladder holder that minimizes the user's manual effort and simplifies the securing of ladders in the holder.

The aim of the study was to understand how the family home secretary reasons and thinks and how they express themselves in their actions towards the family home?s biological children. The method used is qualitative semi-structured interviews, involving six family home secretaries from four different municipalities. The results were analyzed with the help of two theories ? the theory of grassroots bureaucracy and the sociology of childhood theory.

Title: Journalism 2.0: About the journalist's perspective on citizen participation and its influenceon the news content.Purpose: The aim with this study was to examine whether, and if so how, professional journalists experience that the production of news has changed as the media development has progressed and the citizens opportunities for active participation in this process has potentially expanded.Research questions:Does professional journalists experience that the opportunities for citizen participation in the news making-process has changed with the spread and accessibility of new media- if so, in what ways?Wheatear professional journalists experience that the relationship between themselves and their news sources has changes with the spread and accessibility of new media?What consequences can an empowerment from citizens have on the production of news and on the professional role of the journalist?Theory: This essay is based on theories about convergence, gatekeeping, agenda building, participatory journalism, news sources and the journalistic profession.Method: The survey is based on ten qualitative interviews with ten professional journalists, eight reporters and two web editors from the newspapers NWT and VF.Results: The results of this survey shows that the citizens? opportunities in influencing the production of news has partly changed. The journalists do not experience that citizen participation affects their professional role. Citizens have always had an impact on the production of news but new technology offers citizens and journalists new channels that facilitate the communication and interaction. The gatekeeping process is protecting the decision-making role of the journalist, which restrains citizen participation.

During spring 2001 we have been involved with our bachelor thesis at Doberman Digital Agency, an Internet related webdesign company. We have focused our work on the registration process via digital medias such as the Internet. During our workprocess we have been conducting a number of studies and analyses of workrelated materials. Ethnographical methods such as structured interviews and participant observations were primarily used in our work. We also widely used brainstorming in our designprocess.

The purpose of the study was to examine if Talking Mats® couldsupport communication and participation for people with Huntington?sdisease, carers and a dental hygienist in conversation about oral care. Elevendyads, a person with Huntington's disease and a carer, participated.Conversations with and without mats were video recorded and compared.Each participant responded to a questionnaire about how they experiencedthe conversations. Analysis with Effectiveness Framework of FunctionalCommunication showed that two participants increased their communicativeeffectiveness using Talking Mats®. Feelings of participation increased forall participants and were significantly higher for participants withHuntington's disease.

This Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Silva Sweden AB. A companywhich manufactures products like compasses, pedometers, headlamps, hiking poles and otherequipment for the out door life and navigation. The purpose of the project has been toassemble methods and models which support user involvement in Silva?s design process.Thus, to increase the number of products with purchasing power, enhance product quality aswell as increase foundation for new product ideas.The focus through out the project has been to assemble a pallet with methods for userinvolvement and from this select a few methods that will fit the company. The purpose of thepallet is to be accessible for the company during their work of change with the design processthat has been going on and will be in the future.

Background Participation in the community is vital to mental health and is beneficial to individuals and society. Many studies discuss this issue in relation to the disabled, and this study investigates this further. The goal of this survey, performed in Göteborg, Sweden, is to study issues relating to the participation of people with physical disabilities, according to their own perceptions and experiences on this issue. Method Qualitative methodology was used to explore experiences of participation in twenty physically disabled adults by means of semi structured personal interviews. Results From a social constructionist view, disability is explained in terms of being socially constructed.

Introduction: Psychiatric nurses in the psychiatric care can meet complex situations if the basic knowledge is not enough. Therefore it demands research for secure, improve and develop care processes that will be benefit for both patients and nursing staff. Aim: The purpose of this study was to highlight psychiatric nurses? experiences of patients' involvement in their own care. Method: Qualitative method was chosen for this study.

The project is a thesis which intends to strengthen the form language and increase the user friendliness of an International Moth. This is a single handed dinghy with only one sail. It sails on two hydrofoils and receives a very high speed compared to its size, and are therefore often referred to as ?the Formula One on water ?. The result is a new concept where the aerodynamic forces have been used to stabilize the boat and relieve the hydrofoils.

Fastighetsregistret (The Cadastre) is a large and important information sourcesupplied by Lantmäteriet (the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registrationauthority). Fastighetsregistret provides geographical information about the 3.2 millionestates in use in Sweden. Fastighetsregistret has a large number of users who trustthat the provided data is reliable, but experience shows that the data can have varyingquality. As a user it is not always possible to access more detailed information inorder to assess to what extent the data in Fastighetsregistret is reliable.The purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate the possibilities of a system with agraphical user interface that present, classify and visualize the quality of the data inFastighetsregistret. The defined user group for this suggestion is internal users atLantmäteriet who have a good understanding of Fastighetsregistret.

St. Jude Medical Inc is one of the worlds leading companies in the medical technology area with cardiovascular devices as its specialty.Manufacturing implantable medical devices such as Pace Maker Electrodes requires complex design, safe processes and well trained operators. User friendly manufacturing operations are a necessity.Lately there?s been an increase of the manufacturing volume which also increased the number of operators. More operators need to be trained and cross-trained.

This master thesis states the following questions: Is it easy or difficult to retrive information from a mobile phone manual? How can the search process be described among user for a mobile phone manual? What similarities and differeces can be identified between users? Arhe there any variables that affect search performance such as reading skills or technical domain knowledge? Eight mobile phone users participated in an empirical observation and the scope was to find information in a paper version of a mobile phone manual according to given tasks. The results shows that some users has problems to retrieve information due to that the correct page in the mobile phone manual could not be located. The results show that the user is using several search strategies, for example the table of contents and the index, when trying to locate information. The results also revel that the user initiates multiple search steps before the correct information can be located.

Since social media is used more today than just a few years ago, it is easier to share our lives to the public in just a few seconds. Social media is easily accessible on smartphones, tablets and computers which allow us users to use them whenever we want.Instagram is an example of a very popular social media today. In this paper we focus on how younger women think about their privacy when using and publishing pictures on Instagram. We have been using a qualitative research method in which ten people were interviewed. All respondents agreed that privacy is important when publishing pictures or videos on Instagram, but there were also some differences between users with public and private accounts.

The concerning issue of declining number of hunters in North America is also apparent in Europe and Sweden. When the bulk of research found on human dimensions and hunting participation has almost exclusively been done in the United States, this report seeks to add to the needed knowledge on a national level focusing on the causes of hunter declines related to social factors within Sweden. Using hunter data reaching from commune, county to National level, this report describes the correlation between a number of variables and the hunting participation in Sweden.The typical Swedish hunter lives in an area with low population density, the person usually has higher education, the living situation is stable with no recent moving and there is relatively good access to forest land. Persons with weaker connection to the Swedish culture such as foreign citizens, people with foreign background and people born outside ?the Nordic countries? are less likely to start hunt or participate in hunting.A strong relationship was found between the favorite game, moose (Alces alces), and the amount of hunters participating in the hunting.

Water is vital for all life on earth. But it can also be dangerous, even fatal, if it is polluted water. 60 percent of child mortality can directly be deduced to dirty water. Not only developing countries are affected, even in the western world epidemics are breaking out by partake or bathing in dirty/polluted water.MIP, Molecularly Imprinted Polymers, is a biosensor technology that can provide faster and more reliable response than the current methods of water analysis. It is also cheaper and due to that more samples can be taken and analyzed.