The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the librarians? perception of the users of children?s and young people?s literature. Questions posed in this study are: How are the librarians described according to appearance, personality and interaction with the users? How are the librarians described compared to former studies on the subject? Which perception can be seen, based on Douglas Rabers?s theory which describes the role the public libraries can take in the society? The study is based on content analysis. We have examined 15 descriptions of librarians in both picture books and literature for young adults, published between 1985 and 2006.

This essay explores to what extent the Swedish language version of Google Images meets the usability requirements of average everyday users. Previously published studies on user behaviour and users? interface and search option preferences define the usability requirements, which are matched against Google Images? actual interface and search options. The retrieval method of Google Images is also briefly discussed, and users? opinions about Google Images too, as they come across in the previously published user studies.The findings are that Google Images lack some of the things that users ask for, but it still seems to be the most used image search engine among average internet users and more appreciated than other search engines.

Many interactive products constructed today is not produced towards a specific targetaudience and how they will interact with the product. This master's thesis follows the designprocess in the development of the Let's Walk webapplication. In the designprocess has users of the webapplikation been identified, prototypes developed and an interactive version has been evaluated. The Let's Walk webapplication is a fully working system used to administrate Let's Walk, an exercise competition between companies. Experts and users have been involved to evaluate the Let's walk high-fidelity webapplication prototype.

Studies in the field of interaction design and the human memory claim there can be positive effects on the memory when information is presented for the user as a graphical pattern rather than a series of numbers. This thesis aims to influence designers to choose graphical patterns as an interface for information display. Low-fi and hi-fi prototypes of graphical patterns were constructed and tested in a variety of configurations by two users. The users showed differences in the ability to memorize a sequence of digits depending on how this sequence was presented. This study suggests that users are more easily able to recall information presented via a graphical user interface than when the same information is only presented digitally..

The aim of this study is to understand how the library environment affects the experiences and feelings of public library users. In order to concretise this, the study sets out from the public library in Bollebygd. We wanted to find out how the library users experience the library environment. Does the library environment affect the meeting between library users? How does the environment affect their moving patterns inside the library? Which environmental factors influence the users' experiences? Our questions were: how do users experience the library environment - as a mediating space for information and culture? - as a social room and meeting place? The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of qualitative observations and interviews, and literature studies.

Our digital society encompasses nowadays different channels, which includes social media where many users consider it as a platform where they can fetch news or exchange news and information. This leads to a large spread of news exchange in a very fast speed, which involves the global users within social media to be a part of this social interaction. This study is focused on how Twitter affects the usage of the user?s news consumption. By reaching out to our specific target audience, which includes Twitter users in Sweden, we made a web based survey with a content of relevant questions.

Social intranets are based on the Enterprise 2.0 expression and create a new way for organizations to communicate and work. It brings possibilities to leverage user generated content and engage in cooperation across organizational borders where users can get to know each other and share knowledge.This thesis aims to explore what expectations motivate decision makers in implementing social intranets. It is interesting to discover what is expected to happen in an organization that implements a social intranet and chiefly what the actual effects are. Through interviews of both management executives and intranet users at a consulting company called Ninetech, we have plotted out managers? expectations and effects experienced by users.We have categorized managements? expected effects in two themes; expected effects on corporate culture and expected effects on informational work.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to study how well the online catalogue of The Music Library of Sweden works when ordinary users are searching for sheet music. The issues studied are: Why do the users fail to find the sheet music they are looking for? Do the users take advantage of the possibilities that the classification codes of the SAB system offer? If not, why?The source material of the study is 144 comments from a user questionnaire about the online catalogue and, in addition, the search log for one day (513 queries). The comments were sorted into seven groups depending on the type of information need, for example searches for certain instrumentation or genres and problems with spelling.

In this Bachelor?s essay we discuss whether eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) is perceived as advertisement or as normal information, which is not influenced by any company, on the platform Facebook. The information which we were interested in is the one spread by normal users, and user?s perception of it. To find our results we have conducted a study in which we have used the method interview, which gives qualitative results.

The purpose of this study was to look for tendencies that social media can contribute to exposing users to a stronger perception of opinion polarization, and further to see if the daily presence of social networking sites can put normative pressure on the users. The study was made using a survey with participants from Umea? University during the time frame of november-december 2014. The theoretical framework behind the study was mainly drawn from The Spiral Of Silence by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and was further supplemented with more current research, studying the effects from The Spiral Of Silence in the modern and more fragmented media landscape that exists now then when her theory was written. Further theoretical tools for analysis of the results came from Michel Foucault and his discussions in Discipline and punish, specifically his views on how surveillance can be discontinous in practice, but still permanent in it?s effects.The results of this study indicates that social media users tend to isolate themselves from uncomfortable opinions, and do not follow or read opinions they do not already agree with.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine whether a web-based library catalogue is to be considered user-friendly. We have examined this from a user-perspective by interviewing users of a web-based catalogue at a public library. In order to get a picture of the user-friendliness of a catalogue, the thesis is centred upon the following questions: How is a web-based catalogue used? What problems do the users experience? How is the catalogue perceived by its users? Since the producers of these catalogues now are taking into account the research upon human-computer interaction, we are also interested in finding out whether a web-based catalogue is more user-friendly than a more traditional OPAC. We do this by comparing the results of our examination with earlier studies of OPAC use.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to study through discourse analysis how users talk about librarians and the librarian profession and what perceptions they have regarding it. I have tried to do this by asking the questions: How do the users describe librarians and the librarian profession? Are there any patterns in what they say? The method and theory I have used is Laclau and Mouffes? discourse theory and partially structured interviews. The material consists of interviews with eight users that are both women and men, both students and members of the public and they were between 25 and 50 years old. In the material I found two discourses: the discourse about librarians and the discourse about the librarian profession.

"Outstanding" or "They ought to know more about computers" : A study on computer support at university libraries.The main purpose of this study is to investigate the support computer users are given at university libraries. Further, the aim is to find out if the users thought they received the support that they needed. The study is carried out at two different university libraries. The data is obtained through interviews with the librarians, observations of the daily work at the information counters and questionnaires handled out to the users.The study indicates that variables such as knowledge, time and equipment play a central role in making the computer support successive. To a great extent the computer support is synonymous with information search, but it also deals with word processing and technical support connected with computer errors.

Almost all Swedes today have access to the Internet, if not through the home then via the library or work. Despite this, around 20% of the population stand outside the information society in that they lack in knowledge, assistive usability tools or positive attitude towards technology and its influence on society. The main factors influencing the digital divide in today's society are age, disability and education, while the main reason for staying outside seems to be disinterest.The question about digital inclusion is important as we now stand on the breaking-point between a society where the industry has had a prominent position for private as well as national economy and a digital society where access to the Internet is no longer about prestige, but where significant differences between users' knowledge levels can create a power gap. Gaps in access and use not only reflects already existing socio-economic conditions, but can also maintain and enhance these.It is crucial for the future expansion of Internet usage how today's non-users feel about becoming users. To understand what underlies the motivations not to use computers is one of the keys to get non-users to embrace becoming users.