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..

Recent years have been very turbulent for most private equity firms. Especially the financial meltdown in global economy has affected the industry, but also the public pressure has made private equity houses change their control strategies towards more conventional methods used in public companies. This thesis aims to put light on the control methods used in listed private equity houses which use a buyout strategy. The paper describes how the control methods change over the different phases the asset experience and how different value generating strategies use altered control methods. Using Merchant's (2003) framework for management control systems and Berg and Gottschalg's (2004) research on value generating strategies in buyouts the thesis shows that action controls as designing instructions for the board and a business plan, together with goal alignment is the commonly used control strategy directly after the acquisition.

The disconnect between assumptions regarding computer users interactions made by software engineers and the actual interactions do, for various reasons, not always match. Gathering actual usage data from user interfaces can enable software designers to make better educated decisions. By buildning a prototype for collecting such data from a diagnosis tool for the automotive industry this project has shown not only how to benefit from the data but also how to perform the work. The data is 1 600 sessions consisting of 26 000 individual events. From this it has shown that available tools can assist in rudimentary questions regarding usage.

The cost of forwarding corresponds to about one tenth of the forestry industries raw material cost. This gives a motive to do good follow-ups to get a good overview of the forwarding distance and, thus, enable improvements. Follow-ups are also justified by the possibility to make more accurate calculations of the harvesting costs, if better estimations of forwarding distance are achieved. Today (2009) Stora Enso has GPS and vehicle-computers in most of their forwarders. These are used mainly for the forwarder to follow the tracks of the harvester and for the planning leader to see how the forwarder has been driving within the stand.

According to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) shall at least a mean of 10 trees per hectare including riparian zones and other areas with high biological values be left in final felling. In addition large clear areas should not be created and all retained trees with high environmental value shall be spared. To leave trees in final felling means a lower cutting volume and hence a lower income from the cutting, but it also means that the production in the next generation becomes less because of competition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect retained trees have on the production in the new generation of forest, and to investigate if there is any way to lower this effect. The environmental care has also been estimated by the amount left in final felling.

Commissioned for this report is Ramboll, Bridge and Tunnel Unit in Stockholm. Theidea throughout the work has been to primarily help bridge designers compilingadvice and instructions on how fatigue verification for railway bridges in reinforcedconcrete shall be performed under the new rules, the Eurocodes.After the introduction of the Eurocodes in 2011 has major problems emerged amongdesigners around Sweden. In some areas, it differs in the calculation rules comparedwith rules from the Swedish Transport Administration and the National Board ofHousing, Building and Planning calculation. Fatigue verification is one area where thenew calculation rules are different from the past.A large part of the report has been to interpret and find the relevant information inthe Eurocodes concerning fatigue. When questions or doubts have surfaced, this hasbeen discussed with Elisabeth Helsing at the Swedish Transport Administration andbridge designers at Ramboll.The result is a report where the structure is organized in the way that the bridgedesigners can move from cover to cover and realize that fatigue verification in realityfollows the same order as the report's sections.

The residential and service sector in Sweden accounts for approximately 38% of the total energy usage and Sweden has an aim to reduce the total energy use by 20% by 2020 compared to 2008, which means residential sector will have to improve energy efficiency. As part of that a law was instituted by the Swedish parliament that all properties must have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) to thereby give the property owners a greater insight into energy use in their buildings and propose recommendations for energy-efficiency measures. On the EPC, a value on the building's energy performance in terms of energy use in kWh / m2 per year is declared, of which electricity is a share of it. Instructions on what to include in the amount facility electricity for running the facilities is regulated by the authority for building, Boverket while SVEBY has made an interpretation of the regulations in their report "Brukarindata bostäder" where they have a table on what should be included in the amount and what not to include.This report is a study of two similar apartment buildings, where one of the buildings recently underwent renovation, to see if the declared amount of energy for electricity, in the EPC, is consistent with the measured value, and whether there has been any reduction in facility electricity in the renovated building after the renovation.The result shows that the measured value of the building electricity was 2.6 kWh / m2 per year, 28,8 %, lower than the declared value in the building that have not undergone a renovation. Calculation of values from previous years (2011) by the same percentage of facility electricity as in the results of the measurements, 56.7%, it becomes clear that the declared value for facility electricity in the EPC of the renovated building do not correspond with reality and that there has been an increase in use of facility electricity after the renovation..

A patient simulator for testing anaesthesia machines has been developed at Maquet Critical Care AB, to reduce costly and time-consuming experiments on animals. The device simulates human lungs regarding lung dynamics and volume, uptake of anaesthetic agents and the production of carbon dioxide, heat and moisture. Further demands on the simulator are durability and size; the device shall be compact enough to be moveable.The resulting simulator fulfils the requirements and enables better repeatability and ability to test extreme cases than experiments on animals do.Uptake of the anaesthetic agent is achieved in a active carbon filter and controlled by regulating the flow. The flow is created by a regenerative blower and controlled using a proportional valve. The uptake can be set by the user or by a simple uptake model modified to recursively handle changes in the concentration of anaesthetic agent.Carbon dioxide is fed into the system from a tank by a mass flow regulator.

Scientific research shows that humans regain their strength when they are spending time in nature. Ulrich, Kaplan & Kaplan, among others, has shown in their research that nature can reduce stress and decrease the after effects of stress. Lund University Hospital, USiL, is a big working place and has a large number of patients. To be a patient often means that you lose control of your daily life which could cause stress. For the personnel high workload can be a stress factor.

This thesis treats the topic of user-generated comments connected with news stories on news sites, meaning electronic word-of-mouth combined with PR. The writers have examined how different types of comments affect consumers' perception of the article and also what communication effects these comments generate in terms of attitudes, purchase intent and word-of-mouth intent. The results interesting to the news site owners, is that lots of comments and negative comments generate a negative effect by making the actual article less credible, attractive and worth reading (relative to the subsequent comments). On the positive side, serious comments imply that the news story is perceived as more interesting, than a news story followed by non-serious comments. From a brand equity perspective, the interesting results show that few comments compared to lots of comments, generate a better attitude to the brand, even though there is no difference in how positive or negative the comments are.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att studera beteende hos lead users angående deras förvaring ochkonsumtion av kaffe. Genom att göra en jämförelse med icke lead users har vi undersöktom lead users uppvisar ett avvikande beteende. Vi har även utifrån svaren kunnat geförslag på lösningar om hur kaffeförvaring kan utformas och förbättras.Utifrån 40 intervjuer med kaffekonsumenter har vi försökt urskilja lead users. Vi harutgått från en modell som vi utvecklat tillsammans och som bygger på tidigare teorier. Vihar poängsatt alla frågor och multiplicerat med viktningsgraden.

This report describes the background, approach, and the final results for the presentation tool PresenteraMera.PresenteraMera is an online-based, interactive presentation tool that is created to improve the quality of sales presentations and simplify the creation of presentations. The client for this project is Dempsey, a digital advertising agency and production company with headquarters in Stockholm. PresenteraMera consists of several features that make it easier for businesses to create, edit and display their presentations. The tool also allows the user to always be sure that the presentations created with PresenteraMera follows a specific design, based on their graphic manual for example..

The environmental demands are increasing when it comes to product development. EcoDesign isabout minimizing the environmental impact of a product, considering the entire life cycle of it,without compromising other qualities like function or cost. In this master of science thesis amobile phone has been analysed with Ten Golden Rules in EcoDesign regarding production, useand End of Life. Also a functional and an environmental profile were made. The goal was tomake a new concept phone, based on the previous analysis, which communicates userfriendlinessand sustainable development.

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 subject of this thesis is to ascertain the task of the public library in Swedish society today according to the employer, that is the State and the municipalities, and according to the public library itself. The thesis also tries to establish as to what extent these different actors share the same view of the task. To this purpose I have studied the library law, the target reports of municipal authorities and public libraries, and made interviews with public library representatives during the autumn of 2001. The particular consideration of this paper is whether the task is being described in active, culture making terms or in passive, service functionary terms. Initially, I describe the task according to the library law.