This aim of this thesis is to measure the effect of the user interface in real searches on the Internet through a small experiment. Theories on web and search usability and psychological factors concerning usability were first explored. Then three interfaces were constructed, one "good" that followed usability guidelines and had multiple search functions, one "bad" that completely disobeyed those guidelines and had only a simple and small search field, and one "intermediate" interface that was a mix of the two. The search field was set to different sizes, with the shortest in the "bad" interface, a medium field in the "intermediate" interface and several long fields in the "good" interface. All three interfaces were then attached to the same web search engine, Altavista.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Sweden and how the design may contribute to realize central democratic goods. The study records the different PB experiences in Sweden and focuses on one particular case, which is the only case that successfully qualifies as a genuine PB-process according to international standards and definitions. To examine this, the following questions are asked: which municipalities in Sweden have implemented Participatory Budgeting? How can the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting be described and to what extent does it enable the realization of central democratic goods? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the democratic goods inclusion, popular control, considered judgment and transparency? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the institutional goods of efficiency and transferability?The study is based on an institutional theory of democracy. The method used is a mixed method ideal type analysis that combines document analysis, surveys and interviews.

This thesis examines the democracy theories that can be found in the internet websites of Region Skåne and Stockholm county council. Within the framework of deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and electoral democracy, the author tries to distinguish democratic aspects by empirically studying these websites and their communicative effect on the internet users.This research shows that Region Skåne is slightly better in implementing democratic aspects at their home page, which is probably due to an active work with these issues carried out by the politicians and the report on the democratic development from 2004. However, a great deal of work regarding democracy and the possibility of civic participation in the decision- making process is still to be done.The problems and challenges in using internet as a democratic tool shows that citizens run a risk of being neglected, due to their uneven participation in using internet in daily life. The conclusion of this thesis is that the politicians have to make an active choice in deciding to what extent the internet is allowed to be used when it comes to developing democracy. This work has to be done in cooperation with political scientists and IT experts, in order to assure a correct democratic model..

In this Master we have studied classification system and alternative arrangements of books in a public library. The public libraries in Sweden use the SAB classification system. This system was created nearly a hundred years ago in order to suit the librarians and the Swedish society at the time. Today many library users find the system difficult to understand. This and other factors have inspired a number of libraries to arrange books in an alternative and more user-friendly way.

This study is a thorough comparison between what people think about the website www.sl.se, which is a Swedish web-based travel planner for Stockholm metropolitan public transport (such as subways, busses and suburban trains), and how these views compares to the design of the actual website itself. The travel planner offers a wide range of functions and services for their targeted audience to find the fastest route between their current location and their destination. These functions are for example real time information on hold ups and malfunctions on different travel routes, and an interactive map of specific destinations so that the user can get a clear view of the area and nearby traffic stops. But how much does the average user care for these functions, and how often are they used on an average visit? What are the users? motivations when they visit the site? Earlier research suggested that there are services and functions on this website that are useful and well crafted, but that some people may not be aware of.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 moved from a low-key position in exile to become one of the main actors in the political opposition. There appears to be a consensus among researchers today on the democratic commitment of the Syrian Brotherhood. However, ambiguity remains regarding its commitment towards gender equality, women?s rights and participation. This essay focuses on the gender discourse of the Syrian Brotherhood?s leadership, according to its policy-documents, from 2004 ? 2013.

This paper reports a study on the usability of e-commerce accessed through smartphones. There is much research in the usability of mobile interfaces and many sets of design patterns have been created but a few studies are available for specific domains, and in this report we focus on mobile e-commerce. In this study a framework is developed for how to design mobile e-commerce interfaces with a high degree of usability. Furthermore, the study also contributes a method to how other specific domain can develop a framework with general standards to work from when creating a web interface. By examining two sets of design principles and 14 design patterns, we evaluate which ones are critical in the design of a mobile e-commerce interface for achieving a high degree of usability.

This thesis is about language planning in Faeroese libraries as seen from the countrys specific situation, with Faeroese as a mothers tongue, but with great dominance of the Danish language within media. The purpose of my thesis is to examine language planning activities within the library, and the consequences this planning has for the system. Different theories about language planning provides a framework for my model of the library as a linguistic eco-system with actors performing status planning, represented by the government with its influence in cultural politics, the librarian with his or her library tasks and the user with his or her needs. The thesis has a qualitative attempt, and the empirical material consists of different documents about the country and materials from interviews made with seven qualified librarians, employed within general libraries in the Faeroe Islands. The analysis shows that the librarian in different ways promotes the Faeroese language within library activities, and because of the attention paid to the user in the public library he/she influences the librarians planning.

Idag kopplas ofta etik inom användarmedverkan till behovet av användare i utvecklingsstadiet av IT-produkter. Det är svårt att hitta etiska riktlinjer för bemötande av användare genom en projektprocess. I denna studie hanterades detta genom att identifiera etiska temaområden relaterade till bemötande och samarbete med användare genom en litteraturstudie. Studien syftar till att undersöka hur praktiker hanterar utmaningar som de upplever vid användarinvolvering i ett IT-projekts olika stadier. Den syftar även till att ge praktiker stöd vid upptäckt och hantering av etiska utmaningar.

The aim of this master thesis is to study what relationship mentally disabled adults have with the public library and what factors affect their meeting with the library. The work of the library is also studied so that the experiences of the mentally disabled can be put in relation to the work performed for the group. The method used was interviews with four mentally disabled adults and one librarian responsible for the social function and availability at the library. As a theoretical framework Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model over the profiles of the library and Michael Buckland?s barriers, which must be overcome to achieve full access to information, were used.

About 35 years ago the WHO advocated that countries with injecting drug users should introduce the so-called needle exchange programs (NEP) to curb the spread of infection by blood-borne diseases. In Sweden the first NEP started 1985 in Lund, but the program was extremely controversial in a country with such a restrictive drug policy like Sweden.The study you are about to read shall process this controversy, when a NEP opened in Stockholm, by analyzing the articles published in the newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. By using discourse analysis as a processing tool we?ll try to see the difference between the two chosen newspapers. We will identify and analyze the different participant?s, such as doctors, politicians, user associations and media, arguments in the needle exchange issue.

The purpose of this study is to determine if and how municipal consultative entities through influence may affect the legitimacy of the Swedish democratic model. The study aims to do this through analysing the opportunities for influence present with the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality, to determine how the councils may affect political participation and the role of elected representatives. To do so, the study asks the following primary research question:"What requisites for influence are present for participants of municipal consultative entities, as found for the representatives of the youth and the retired within the framework of their participation in the Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality?"The study answers this research question by dividing it into one question of policy and one question of democratic perspective, and investigating these matters through nine snowballing interviews with the decision makers, organisational actors and participants of the councils. The information from the interviews is then analysed per council through a framework of democracy theory, policy process theory and organisation theory.

The power system modelled in this thesis work has been developed for simulationwhen e.g. the production in some part of the power system is changed. The powersystem has been modelled according to the swing mass of the system, the frequencydependency of the load and the turbine governor. The model determines the systemfrequency, the period of regulation and the power exchange between the differentsubsystems in the Nordic synchronized system.In this model the system frequency is assumed to be the same in all different parts ofthe power system and the voltage conditions in the power system are neglected. Forthat reason power swings does not occur between different subsystems in the powersystem, which usually occur as a result of the swinging connection between thetransmissions line.

This thesis aimed to study the interaction between an educational technology system and its users and give suggestions for design improvements. The technology system is called EDIT (Educational Development through Information Technology) and has been developed and applied at Linköping University?s Faculty of Health Science. EDIT supports Problem Based Learning and enables scenarios to be presented through the World Wide Web. The study was divided into two parts.

The aim of this thesis is to study the phenomenon of read/write OPAC by looking at how students at Pennsylvania University use PennTags in order to influence document descriptions in the library catalogue. The main questions to be answered are to what extent PennTags is being used in different subject areas and what users contribute to document descriptions through tagging in different subject areas. Studying the posts created by a sample of PennTags users from a quantitative approach I try to find out if there is reason to believe that the activity of users and users? possibility to make meaningful contributions are dependent of the subject matter being dealt with in documents described, as anticipated by the theory of pace layering. I find that user interest in influencing the library catalogue through PennTags appears to be low in general, with exception for in the subject areas of the main classes Language and literature and Social sciences in Library of Congress Classification.