In this Bachelor Thesis (20 p.), we present the history and development of "Intelligent Houses", and most important- explore some of the future possibilities in this area. The project has been carried out through an interdisciplinary cooperation between three different educations at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. By conducting a dialogue with various actors with different professions, we have been trying to identify needs within the concept of "Intelligent Houses", were the end user is not only the tenant or homeowner. Through Participatory Design methods, such as a Future Workshop, we have brought the users together to discuss their own and each others needs and hindrances in their respective work practice, and how intelligent house technology could improve their work conditions. We have also been testing a highly sophisticated CO/CO2/Moisture/Temperature/Enthalpy multi-sensor & controller, originally developed for regulating indoor climate systems.

There are several ways to identify individuals with dry mouth, but there are few studies made in which the different methods have been compared with each other.The aim of this pilotstudy was to compare different methods for identifying individuals with dry mouth. Fifty individuals aged 50 to 75 years were included in this studie. These where randomly chosen among patients at the dental clinic at Kristianstad University College. Four different salivary measurements were conducted: 1) collection of unstimulated saliva, 2) collection of stimulated saliva, 3) the so called ?mirrortest?, and 4) analyse using cottonrolls.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to our knowledge about what methods? teachers say they use in the work with pupils? early reading acquisition, and how they evaluate the pupils´ reading development. I also like to find out what educational interventions teachers believe that pupils with reading difficulties need, and how they say they work to meet the needs of these pupils. The project is based on the following questions: What methods do teachers say they use in the work with pupils early reading acquisition? What extra resources do teachers consider that pupils with reading difficulties need? How do teachers evaluate children's reading development? In order to answer my questions, I've done qualitative interviews with three teachers, at two schools, in two medium-sized municipalities.

To succeed, and make money at your animal production you need to feed your animals with high quality fodder. Other condition to succeed is that you keep your production costs at a minimum. To be able to produce baled silage at a low cost it?s very important that the bales have a high density. Density is measured in kg dry matter (DM) per cubic meter. The purpose with this report was to learn more about making silage in round bales and to how much the bale density varies between different brands of round balers.

Automatic trimmerhead is an examination project for making an automatic trimmerhead for grass trimmers with the user and functionality in focus. Our perception is that a happy user is a user who can pick up his or her trimmer, use it and put it back to its place when the job is done. It should not be necessary to interrupt work and perform maintenance on the machine just to make it work as promised.The project has been made in collaboration with the company Husqvarna, which is one of the biggest actors dealing with garden machinery on the market. Together we determined the project goal, ?To invent, construct and test a brand new concept for how an automatic trimmerhead can look and function?.At this day there are several different automatic trimmerheads on the market, both semi and fully automatic.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how librarians working in academic libraries are experiencing the reference situation from a pedagogical point of view, by applying a theoretical framework consisting of learning strategies and their different characteristics, to qualitative interviews. Other goals are to elucidate the fact that learning takes place every day at libraries during the reference situation and that this work must be seen as ?one of the most important activities that takes place at the library?, using the words from one of the interviewed librarians, but also to make place for more discussions regarding pedagogic and library work. This is done by posing questions about knowledge, learning, information literacy, communication, the reference encounter, the roles of the librarian, policy and also architectural aspects of the reference situation. The interviews were taped, transcribed and categorized according to the earlier mentioned areas of interest.

Volvo Human Monitoring (VHM) is an ongoing project at Volvo Cars where they measure, amongst other parameters, inhalation and exhalation through a device called Respiratory Inductance Plethysmograph (RIP), on drivers. RIP measures changes in the cross-sectional area of the chest and abdomen. When the driver is in motion, such as when she is turning the vehicle, the cross-sectional area changes and noise in the RIP signal may arise.The noise results in a large number of manual adjustments in the analysis of the RIP signal, which is very time consuming and the validity of the device for measuring inhalation and exhalation is questioned.The purpose of this study was to improve the efficiency of the analysis of the RIP signal. The goal was to create a new data processing tool in Matlab that automatically detects inhalation and exhalation from a RIP signal with higher validity compared to the previous data processing tool.In this study, nine tests were performed on drivers while they were driving in different scenarios such as highway, country road and in city traffic. Inhalation and exhalation was measured using a RIP, a pneumotachograph with a tightly sealed facemask and a thermocouple placed between the nose and mouth, which was used as reference to the RIP.The result of this study was a data processing tool that automatically detects inhalation and exhalation with higher validity compared to the previous data processing tool.

The object with this work was to create a simple feeding program for beef cows. Another object was that I could learn more about the properties and functions of Excel and Visual Basic. I used parts of a program I designed a few years ago. This old program was neither user friendly nor had it an appealing layout. Initially I decided how I wanted the new program to appear and on which foundation it should be built. I designed various forms into a spread sheet, such as lists and multiple choice buttons. Using VBA (Visual Basic for Application) I could create macros, which used the information chosen in the lists and with the multiple choices to calculate the feeding requirement or the feeding plan.

The purpose of this thesis is to create opportunities for an efficient interchange of information between humans and technology, especially for the skilled user, and put the designprincipal for informative structures and features into practice. Informative structures and features in a large number of information items helps the peripheral visual system to automatically capture knowledge through logical patterns.A field experiment was done to evaluate if informative structures and features, implicate efficient human information-processing, even in a small study. The results was ambiguous because the quantitative part of the investigation didn?t show any significant differences, whereas the qualitative showed that people prefer a dynamic document with a high degree of informative structures and features over a dynamic document with a low degree of informative structures and features. Even if this study was inconsistent, probably because to few subjects where used, the implication of the research that?s behind it is solid.

Användarskapat innehåll, eller UGC från engelskans User Generated Content, har med teknikens utveckling blivit allt mer populärt på webbtidningar. Det ses som en konkurrensfördel men kan även innebära risker för tidningen, inte minst kostnadsmässigt. Det blir därför viktigt att satsa på UGC som läsarna vill ha, men vad detta innebär är inte ett välutforskat ämne. Denna uppsats ämnar svara på vilket användarskapat innehåll läsare av webbtidningar föredrar, samt varför de föredrar just detta. Med utgångspunkt i en litteraturstudie identifierades fem aspekter som kan hjälpa till att beskriva UGC.

Control and comparison of various cleaning methods on restaurants in Södra RoslagenThe purpose of this report is to find out and analyze the efficiency of cleaning methods in restaurant kitchens. The investigation was carried out through unannounced inspections at 89 restaurants in Södra Roslagen (municipality of Danderyd, Täby and Vaxholm). ATP-measuring was done on a plate, a knife, a bench surface and a cutting board. The ATP-method measured the amount of food residue on equipment and working surfaces after cleaning, with a luminometer and swabs. Restaurant staffs were asked to describe in detail how and when the last cleaning was carried out on the surface.

The purpose of this essay is to function as a guide in the future development of the Umeå University Library?s webbsite by examining its users? web experiences as well as their web surfing behaviours. In this essay, a number of opinions in usability and accessibility coming from writers and organisations are presented. Using the writers? theories and previous research, along with the results from the evalutation, the essay attempts to explain the behaviour of users when they get in touch with technology, aswell as what the web users perceive as user friendly.

The aim of this Master Thesis is to examine how the national intranet at Nordea serves the organisation as a channel of information and communication. The intranets of today, have partially or completely come to replace other channels of information within larger organisations, and the intranet has become an increasingly important issue to the communicational process of organisations. To address the problem stated, qualitative interviews was accomplished with several employees at a department at Nordea. The achieved result reflects how the intranet supports variable everyday end-user situations. The result shows an intranet that is sparsely used in comparison to other channels of communication such as colleagues.

The purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine how students at Högskolan i Borås experience the web-scale discovery service Summon, based on the theoretical model of ?The Five Dimensions of Usability?, defined by Whitney Quesenbery. The study aims to answer the following research questions: How do the students execute search assignments in the Summon interface? How intuitive and easy to navigate is the system from a user perspective? What are the students? opinions about Summon, regarding usability?Five students with varying information seeking skills are asked to perform search assignments during controlled observation, followed by semi-structured interviews. Our findings are presented in the context of previous research and show correspondence with the results of related studies.

This report was written as a result of a Bachelor Degree Project at the School of Technology and Society at University of Skövde spring 2007, together with Jede AB in Mariestad. The report covers the development of a door to a coffee vending machine that is under construction, and will in a chronological order describe the project from ideas to final product.The project started with a rather extensive feasibility study that thru market research and User tests sorted out the opinions of potential customers, concerning today?s available assortment. Technical areas concerning materials and manufacturing methods were also scrutinized for the consideration of the possibilities of a future production.The next step was to constructively generate ideas and thoughts that later on could grow to be potential solutions. After several weeks of hard work and pieces of good advice and recommendations from the assigner, four comprehensive concepts were built up.