AbstractThe Swedish Road Administration in the region of Mälardalen has since 2004 worked to in¬crease the efficiency of the maintance of bridges based on limited functional requirements and time demanded action.The maintenance of the bridges is contracted in the county of Uppsala since 2004, and Örebro since 2007. The county of Nyköping and Västerås is contracted by the traditional system. The contractor will perform a regular maintenance on all bridges. The bridges are inspected by the contractor at least once every year.The contractor registers the result of the inspection in a database called BaTMan. BaTMan is a Bridge and Tunnel Management system and is a strictly web solution were the user logs in via the internet.The Swedish Road Administration also inspects the bridges to se that the demands on the bridges are followed.My work is to compare these different inspections and to see any development..

The aim of this master´s thesis is to examine how librarian´s views of the users can vary for different types of materials in public libraries. We have seen that literature and reading are the central parts of the libraries in Sweden. All other types of media are traditionally seen as complements and in focus for the study is feature film as an example of these other medias. We examine policy documents to see the official view of the general target group of the libraries and compare it to the view of the users of feature films as expressed by the librarians. The study includes several different types of empirical materials such as interviews, observations and documents and the method used is case studies.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the view on the personal encounter between staff and visitors in public libraries in order to detect possible differences between the two groups in order to see if the personal encounter as such could be used in order to market libraries. We believe that social competence must interact with the initial personal encounter in order for the visitor to experience the visit as positive. We have based the theoretical framework on Erving Goffman?s theory on social interaction, as well as on Christian Grönroos? theory on quality of service and marketing. We use the following questions: How do library staff view the personal encounter? How do library visitors view the personal encounter? How does the library staff?s treatment affect the visitor?s view of the library?Are there any differences in view between visitors and staff concerning the personal encounter? If so, what kind of differences are they? Using qualitative interviews, we have interviewed nine visitors and six staff members at two public libraries.

Results have shown that flow batteries may be a solution in the future as an effective and environmental friendly method to an energy storage system (ESS). The technology is reliable and has a high efficiency that comes with low energy losses and a long lifetime. The range of possible fields is suitable for cutting energy peaks in the power grid, by always have a ready and available energy storage that balances the production. By comparing the advantages of flow batteries with conventional batteries it is mainly the fact that they can conserve energy for a long time without being self-discharged thanks to that the storage capacity is in principle endless and limited by the size of the electrolytes tanks that makes them a great energy storage system. The batteries won?t take any damage or decrease in performance when charging or discharging it or if you exhausts it to 100 % and leave it discharged for a long time.

AbstractPurpose/Aim: To describe in-classroom use of mobile phones amongst teenagers.Material/Method: The data was collected through as use of focus groups and field studies.Main results: The main findings confirm the findings of other studies on teens and mobile phones. Teens use their mobile phones for much more than just sending text messages and making calls, there are many different types of localized usages. There is also a strong emotional connection between the device, its content and the user.Keywords: mobile phone, teens, classroom, focus groups, observation, field studies, mobility..

The communication with government and municipality through Internet has in-creased during the last couple of years. Therefore we have chosen to focus our bachelor thesis in this particularly area and the needs for usable web services for the citizens. In this bachelor thesis we are studying a increasing group users, namely elderly citizens. During the study we have analysed E-governments ser-vices usability through usability tests. The combination of conversations and meetings with individuals, observations of interactions and literature studies give us the opportunity to explore the users needs.

AbstractAttitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian?s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden.

The traditional lawn is believed to be facing a dilemma. On one hand, it is valuable for people because of its esthetical and functional values. On the other hand, the lawn is perceived as a monoculture without biological diversity that hinders the domestic landscape?s flora and fauna. In this graduation-thesis, the private and public lawn?s dilemma of ?to be or not to be?, is examined from these two different perspectives.

The purpose of our study has been to analyze the character of the interaction between music labels and media and to examine to what extent the artist brand is being considered in music labels relationship with media. This has resulted in our research question:What characterizes the large music labels relationship with media?For this study we have used a qualitative approach to achieve a deeper understanding of our chosen topic. We have conducted seven interviews with representatives from both major record labels and media companies with great knowledge about our subject. Five of the interviews were conducted face-to-face and two were performed via e-mail.In the final chapter we answer our research question and thus present our conclusions.

Namibia, southern Africa, suffers from an energy shortage and is therefore facing severalchallenging problems. The use of firewood as fuel for cooking is common in the whole countryand has negative consequences for health and the environment. This work have focused ondeveloping a solar baking oven, calledSunbaker, adapted for Namibian families needs forbaking. The development was based on classic solar cooking limitations, specific needs forNamibia and to have a feasible manufacturability.The project started with a theoretical study in Sweden where different solar cookers, informationregarding Namibia, technical aspects and end user aspects were studied. To assess the need for asolar baking oven aMinor Field Study took place in Namibia during eight weeks in July toSeptember 2009 and resulted in a product design specification.

This work derives from the question ?What is a beautiful road??. The question is being discussed in interviews with two employees at the Swedish National Road Administration and two former members of the ?Council of environment and beauty? at the Swedish National Road Administration. The interviews are summarized in my own discussion about the concept of ?Beautiful roads?.

The purpose of this work is to study a circulation project in Enköping municipality, where the society?s rest products are used to make beneficial products. In Enköping the rest products from waste treatment plants and private sewers are used to fertilize and irrigate Salix plantations that later are harvested and burned at the local combined heating and power plant, ENA Energy AB, to produce electricity and heat. Possibilities to apply this kind of project ona municipality in Russia are also explored.Guryevsk municipality in Kaliningrad region was chosen since there is a need to improve energy systems and reduce emissions to water and air. This municipality strives to become environmentally friendly.

This report describes the initial work intended for updating the car sharing service Roadmate. Roadmate is one of the services received by the car rental company Hertz First Rent a Car. The goal was to present the client with design- and structure proposals for a car sharing service that includes high usability and at the same time remains aesthetically pleasing.The work is based on an initial study with data collection, mapping the target user group and its needs. Subsequent structural and design proposals for Roadmates company carpooling service are based on the facts surrounding the target group's needs. The result are well developed and tested design sketches with accompanying visual identity and sitemaps that can be the basis for the further work on the development of the service..

The aim in this project was to spread play in the city and acrossgenerations. My way of approaching this challenge was to explore theborderland between playground equipment and street furniture. Thisopened up many possibilities to afford play in places where playgroundequipment often is excluded.The goal was to create one, or more, furniture with play value. The targetgroup was all vivasious people spending time in the public outdoorspace. Through user studies, a lot of serious playing and a lot of testing,the project resulted in a bench called Rollin´.

This report evaluates various methods that can be used to position a smartphone running the Android platform, without the use of any special hardware or infrastructure and in conditions where GPS is unavailable or unreliable; such as indoors. Furthermore, it covers the implementation of such a system with the use of a deterministic fingerprinting method that is reasonably device independent, a method which involves measuring a series of reference points, called fingerprints, in an area and using those to locate the user.The project was carried on behalf of Sigma, a Swedish software consulting company..