This field study examined how elderly and cognitively disabled people used and experienced a social companion robot. The following pages explores the questions: Which are the physical, social and affective qualities during the interaction? The aim was to through observations see how qualities of interaction could activate different forms of behavior. The results show that motion, sound and the eyes together created communicative and emotional changes for users who felt joy and were willing to share the activity with others. The robot stimulated to some extent users to create their own imaginative experiences but often failed to involve user or group for a long time and was also considered too large and heavy to handle..

Immersion is a construct that measures how deeply engrossed a user is with any mediated situation. In the field of game design, immersion is a significant aspect of what makes a game enticing, and as such it is of pivotal importance to create and maintain it to keep the player's mind off the real world while inside the confines of a game framework. According to the GameFlow theory, it is one of seven key tenets of evaluating and implementing a successful game design. Yet, certain multiplayer online games are designed in a fashion that in some cases seem to break immersion, where the player is frequently put out of action, sometimes for minutes on end. In this study, using online questionnaires, we discover that players, despite claims otherwise, seem to be in several ways affected negatively by this breaking of immersion.

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.

Denna rapport är en beskrivning av ett examensarbete utfört vid SPM Instrument AB i Strängnäs. SPM Instrument utvecklar och tillverkar produkter för konditionsmätning av maskiner. Målet var att skapa en cd-presentation i redigeringsprogrammet Macromedia Flash 5.0, som på ett enkelt sätt med rörliga bilder förklarar en konditionsmätningsmetod som kallas för Stöt Puls Metoden.Uppgiften löstes genom att först inhämta information om Stöt Puls Metoden, sedan utformades Flash-filmen och slutligen testades och utvecklades filmen tills dess att jag och SPM Instrument var nöjda.

Wallyfy is planned to be a social webmagazine with a focus on good content, with a quality check and moderation of the published content. The author of the study provides Wallyfy with thoughts and ideas about the website content and functionality. The main problem of the study was to explore what makes good content in social media for the potential users of Wallyfy, also using this insight to provide Wallyfy with directions for making decisions regarding both functionality and content. The theory of the study is being used as a starting point for understanding the phenomenom social media and to easier grasp the problem. The method of the study is based on user- centered thinking in design, where the author seeks to understand the participant?s emotions, values and dreams.

Thousands of people all over the world suffer from injuries that temporary affects their ability to speak or inother ways communicate. A very common procedure for persons that suffer from some kind of breathingproblem in the higher parts of the neck is called tracheotomy. This prevents the patient from speaking whenno air passes the vocal cords. There have been many studies done to understand how these patientsexperience this period. The results are consistent, the patients often feel fear, frustration and worries aboutthe future.Tobii Technology develops a technique called eyetracking wich enables persons to control a computer with theeyes.

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.

Under sommaren 2014 kommer Norrköping locka många turister till staden genom ett flertal stora evenemang, till exempel Bråvallafestivalen och Harry Potter: The Exhibition. Som besökare från en annan stad kan det vara svårt att hitta lämpliga parkeringsplatser i sådana situationer. I nuläget har Norrköpings kommun en karta över parkeringsplatser på deras hemsida. Denna är endast anpassad till webbläsare och ger en översiktlig bild över var parkeringar finns utplacerade i de mest centrala delarna av staden. Att söka upp kartan på en mobil enhet, lokalisera sig på kartan, välja lämplig parkering och sedan hitta till denna kan vara svårt och tidskrävande för den som har bråttom eller inte hittar i staden.Syftet med detta examensarbete är att ta fram ett användarvänligt gränssnitt för en mobil applikation som ska underlätta parkeringsprocessen för förare som bor i eller besöker Norrköping.

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.

This report is the result of a diploma work made at IMT at US in Linköping. The purpose of this piece of work is to investigate the possibility to design a general program for data-acquisition using LabVIEW, suiting different hardwares and connections. Great importance has been attached to communication with serialport, using bluetooth, because different wireless PPG-instruments has been developed parallel to this project. These PPG-circuits uses this type of serialcommunication. Communication with USB, GPIB and analog connection has also been examined and analog communication has been tested practically.

The project was carried out in cooperation with the department of product development IOS at IKEA. The work included improvements of a new existing product that Ikea soon will release on the market, Observatör, a wall bracket for flat screens. The product is supposed to fulfil the needs within this market for IKEA. However, since Ikea was not satisfied with it, our work was to carry out the improvements that were specified in the beginning of the project. Another task in the project was to develop a side-product that is supposed to be used together with Obeservatör for storage of DVD/decoders.The project included labour as problem definition to final technical drawings and a prototype.

Minimizing power consumption is a critical part of many embedded design projects. Thechallenge is to limit the power consumption of the system and at the same time providesatisfactory service to the user. With regards to microprocessors, the main way of limiting powerconsumption during program execution is to adjust the frequency and the voltage at which theprocessor operates.To enable the implementation of real-time scheduling with support for dynamic voltage andfrequency scaling, an exhaustive study of the Freescale i.MX31 embedded microprocessor isperformed. Specifically, the power consumption relationship to all relevant frequency andvoltage settings is investigated. In addition, to enable frequency and voltage scaling in a real-timeenvironment, a complete timing analysis of proposed voltage and frequency scaling methods isperformed and their suitability for use in real-time systems is evaluated.To integrate voltage and frequency scaling capability into OSE RTOS, a software module hasbeen developed for this operating system.