User comments:Availability and Utilization in Online News Affiliated with Local Daily PressAuthor: Susanne AlmgrenSupervisor: Mats EkströmConstituent: Dagspresskollegiet (Annika Bergström/Ingela Wadbring)Course: Term Paper in Media and Communication StudiesTerm: Spring Term 2012Pages/word count: 91 pages / 38 334 wordsObjective: To examine the users availability to the user comment feature and how theusers utilizes the user comment feature in the context of an online news site affiliatedwith local daily press.Method: Mixed methods approach, content analysis and discourse analysisMain result: In this context, three out of four news stories (76.5 percent) has beenallocated with the user comments feature. The highest availability to the user comment feature was found in news themes covering sports and entertainment, followed by financial news. News stories lacking the user comment feature weremainly found in news themes concerning crimes and accidents. The user comment frequencies are not normally distributed along news stories. On the contrary, 62 percent of the news stories did not get any user comments at all.

This report is a part of a diploma work, conducted as a part of a Master of Science degree. The diploma work consists of a preliminary study, two case studies, a user study, a paper and this report. It was created at the Linköping University for the department of Science and Technology, in cooperation with Unilever Research in the UK, and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. Hand-held, mobile devices like Personal Digital Assistances (PDAs) are becoming increasingly popular in today?s wireless world.

This paper reports a study in how interaction design and graphic design is affected in the process of developing an mobile application to complement the use of an existing webbsite. The paper also ask how developers are affected in this process by the use of designpatterns. The purpous of the report was to see how designpatterns affects the development of mobile applications and how the interaction and graphic design differs between various company webbsites and their related application. A study was conducted by comparing three diffrent webbsites with three related applications to find material for our thesis. Interviews were conducted on three diffrent companys that work professionaly with creating mobile applications.

This thesis examines and evaluates user boards in Swedish public schools from a democratic perspective. In order to evaluate whether the democratic values are fulfilled five different democratic ideals are selected to serve as a theoretical fundament. These ideals derive from the Swedish Government Official Reports that preceded the reform of user boards in schools, and are identified as the following: participation, dialogue, trust, democratic schooling and influence. The study is based on cases and involves two schools with user boards and two comparative schools with informal parental influence, so called school advisory boards. The study concludes that the main difference between the two types of parental influence is the level of formality.

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.

From a social perspective, I have been working on how to change current consumption patterns through a change in people's behavior and attitude towards their possessions. The concept is based on how we can value, care for, and preserve our belongings by using theories in the empathic design field. I have created a structure that allows people to become an active part of a creative process and create their own products. Through this commitment, an emotional relationship is built between the user and the product, and the product tends to gain a longer life. Based on a method to manufacture your own yarn by reusing old clothes, I want to provide the basic tools for an easy and playful way to build the knowledge needed to produce something useful..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze how to improve the design of a Microsoft Surface SUR40 application. The application in focus was an interactive product browser developed by the company Spree, our external client. Spree is a multi-touch software provider, established in September 2010 and they expressed a need for suggestions for how to improve this application. Our work aimed at revealing how to make the application more suitable for several users and make it easier for them to interact simultaneously on the surface. From a qualitative standpoint we have examined how 17 users experienced the application.

Internet and social media have opened up new possibilities for companies and organisations tocommunicate their brand. It only takes a few seconds to communicate the message of a website to theuser. This indicates the importance of having the intended message of the website communicated clearlyin order to give the user a correct impression of the company or the organisation. When it comes to theconcept design of a website, it?s important that all different parts is presented uniformly.

Companys usually have intern communication platforms where employees can gather information and communicate with eachother. These networks are not public which leads to less resources spent on development. If this network is also used as a work tool may inadequate usability decrease work effeciency. Thats why we, by using known design principles, evaluated an already existing network of this kind along with interviews and think out loud tasks for users. Four users had to do some tasks while they explained how they went through step by step to solve those. This report culminates into a couple of guidelines which can be used to create a user friendly network. The problems that prevented users to feel in control when working resulted in the following guidelines: Create shortcuts of frequently used functions.

This study is an evaluation of the runtime watch function in a OEE software, knownas ProTAK. OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness, it?s a way to measurethe factories process efficiency. The runtimewatch function allows the user to setup and monitor certain critical objects that are of importance for the pulp and paper process at the mill. The data from the runtimewatch can be correlated towards the suppliers specification for the components.

User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

The aim of our study is to deepen our understanding of how both social workers and clients describe how user influence within substance abuse care for adults can work. What difficul-ties do they describe meeting, with regards to possibilities to influence the care? To achieve our purpose we had a qualitative approach for this study. It?s based on open thematic inter-views with 3 clients who have substance abuse problems, and with 3 social workers, working at Social Services in Stockholm.

In recent decades here has been a huge development in information technology (IT), where we humans are increasingly using IT in our daily lives, ranging from social media to music streaming services; this has also been a reflection of the technologies developed to our cars. Infotainment systems have become an increasingly regular feature in modern cars where the high degree of integration such as navigation, mobile and Internet has become more common and more sought after. Despite this, relatively little research problemized User Experience of a complex infotainment system in a car. This study thus has the intention to consider the relevance of reality based tests by examining how the user experiences a complex infotainment system in a car. We asked ourselves; How do the user experience a complex infotainment system in a car? We conducted our qualitative study, an interview with researchers in the field of vehicle and road safety and designed a number of system-related activities in a test session where we observed three users.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine if there where fallacies in the design solutions for the business system IFS Applications from a user perspective, and if so, correct these from a cognitive science approach.Data collection consisted of three main portions. These where; workshop, individual interviews and observations. The collected data was analyzed and resulted in identification of two main areas in the application that where found lacking.The result of the study showed that the usability for processing large amounts of data and the lack of customization where the main flaws in the application. Two low fidelity prototypes where created with the purpose of rectifying the underlying flawed design solutions that where identified from the collected data..

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine what effect two different models of acquisition have on user satisfaction with information resources at academic libraries. The two models examined are the traditional model where a subject specialist librarian makes the selection, and the user-governed model where the larger part of the selection is based on user requests. The scope is the libraries of Roskilde University, which employs the traditional acquisition model and Malmö University, which employs the user-governed. Both libraries have a user-oriented approach to acquisition. The study encompasses a close examination of the acquisition policy through document analysis and interviews with the librarians in charge of acquisitions at each university, as well as a user-satisfaction survey among the professors and senior teachers on two faculties at each university respectively.