This project report shows the work around a mockup to a three-dimensional avatar-making application. An avatar-making application is a computer-based software program in which it is possible to create your own personal virtual character. The possibility to use three-dimensional avatars can in the future be essential for adding extra personal information or characteristics to social communication over the internet or over mobile phones. The problem of transforming a physical form and reconstruct it to a virtual basis has been an important problem to solve for many companies and software developers in the, for instance, virtual worlds area. Methods and ideas over making this transformation is the key throughout this project.

Our purpose is to display the meaning of fan clubs and further reveal the potential value of fans. This study has an abductive approach with a qualitative data collection, where empirical material has been collected through a micro netnographic study along with qualitative interviews. IKEA and IKEA Family have been applied together with virtual fan clubs to study the fan club phenomenon. The study is based on prior literature concerning loyalty, customer clubs and brand relations. This theoretical framework was chosen to fulfil the purpose of unveiling the meaning of fan clubs and the potential value of fans.

In today's society, the internet is an important part of everyday life. Over recent years the number of electronic services has increased markedly. Communities such as Facebook, consume more of people's time than 5-10 years ago. How can public authorities benefit from these communities or are the municipalities not ready for this? The municipalities determine how their resources should be allocated based on the municipality's needs.

The aim of the study was to distinguish if there was a difference between how work is perceived and how unemployed are viewed by people in collectivistic and individualistic cultures. A phenomenological approach was used in order to capture the participants life-worlds and their meaning constitution of a phenomenon, in this case the meaning of work and how unemployed are viewed. Subjects from different parts of the world, belonging to either a collectivistic or individualistic culture, participated in this study. Data was collected by self-reports which were analyzed by the method of MCA (Meaning Constitution Analysis) and the software Minerva. The results indicated that there were differences in how individuals from collectivistic cultures compared to individuals from individualistic cultures reflected about the meaning of work.

This essay examines the differences and similarities, weaknesses and strengths of the two Cognitive Semantic theories Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Principled Polysemy Approach to Meaning Analysis. To illustrate the two theories, the Swedish verb-particle construction "gå upp" is examined and analyzed accordingly. The results showed differences in the number of polysemous meaning found. The methodological evaluation showed that the differences in the underlying ideas concerning meaning-construction behind these two theories make them incompatible..

This essay examines the differences and similarities, weaknesses and strengths of the two Cognitive Semantic theories Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Principled Polysemy Approach to Meaning Analysis. To illustrate the two theories, the Swedish verb-particle construction "gå upp" is examined and analyzed accordingly. The results showed differences in the number of polysemous meaning found. The methodological evaluation showed that the differences in the underlying ideas concerning meaning-construction behind these two theories make them incompatible..

Virtual communities are a phenomenon that is becoming more common as the information technology comes with in reach for the general public. This report will bring the theories and construction of a virtual community together. The purpose of this report is to describe the different theories that have emerged from the research within this field and to examine the work procedures that have been used during the development of a site for a MDA-community. The MDA-website is a homepage on the Internet that was developed to bring the students closer together. The report describes the work of the project group, why the website was not completed and at the end the theories are looked at on the basis of the construction of the website..

Sammanfattning Titel Visualiseringsmediernas betydelse vid försäljning av nyproducerade bostäder ? En studie av modeller i Virtual Reality och fullskala. Författare Jennifer During Helena Fällås Syfte Denna uppsats syftar till att utreda om modeller i Virtual Reality och fullskala kompletterar befintliga visualiseringsmedier i försäljningen av nyproducerade bostäder, genom att dessa stödtjänster skapar ökad förståelse för bostadens utformning och därmed ökar nyttan för kunden. Vidare syftar uppsatsen till att utreda hur projektsäljare och privatpersoner ställer sig till användandet av denna typ av modeller samt om kvaliteten på företagets tjänster därmed kan anses öka. Metod Uppsatsen är framarbetad både med en kvalitativ och med en kvantitativ metod. Genom att göra djupintervjuer med projektsäljare på Peab Region Bostad samt med sakkunniga personer inom områdena för Virtual Reality och modeller i fullskala, har intervjupersonernas kunskaper och inställningar kunnat inhämtas.

Distributed system development is a common occurrence in today?s technological and global world. Because the consequences of its geographically distributed nature it creates barriers between people that affects their communication and collaboration efforts in the distributed context. Despite a lot of technological breakthroughs over the last decades and the occurrence of video-conference applications and other tools for communication and collaboration, cultural and geographical issues have so far not yet been completely resolved. In this study I have made a literature study over distributed system development to form a set of central factors that affects the distributed development process.

Captured in the room of Göran Tunström?s spoken language, fenced behind his barrier of manic words. This essay is about the limit of language and world?s necessity to be spoken to be experience, about telling as a manufacturer of meaning and a subject?s motion between fiction and reality. Based on the novel Skimmer from 1996, my purpose is to identify ?a linguistic room? in Tunström?s narration and show how this room is given an existential character by its temporal and spatial dimensions.

The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to a rather new phenomena, virtual bullying amongst young people. Bullying has been known for a long time but today, bullying has found new ways of expression. New technology, which includes the Internet and cell phones, has given the bullies new weapons to use in their bullying.The study I have done has been qualitative and contained interviews. Represents from two communities, Playahead and LunarStorm, and two organisations, BRIS and Friends, all together five persons (two persons from LunarStorm) have been interviewed and had the opportunity to tell me their view on virtual bullying.The results show that young people see the new technologies as a valuable prolongation of their reality that they won?t give up if they don?t need to.

Ofta sker planeringsarbete i en tvådimensionell miljö, där man går miste om både djup och närvarokänsla. Därför är det intressant att undersöka ifall möjligheten att själv effektivt navigera sig runt i en tredimensionell miljö med hjälp av virtual reality-teknik har något värde för planeringsprocessen, där utställningsansvariga på museer är målgruppen. För att undersöka detta modellerades virtuella rum, skript skapades för utplacering, borttagning samt val av objekt. Dessa integrerades med en spelmotor och Oculus Rift, varpå användaren själv kan ?kliva in i? en virtuell miljö presenterad tredimensionellt och som reagerar på huvudrörelser, tangentbord och mus.

The purpose of this study has been to examine online travel magazines as an information source and as a virtual service scape. The traditional travel magazines are facing a change due to the technological development and the web has become an important platform for both customers and companies. The virtual service scape opens new opportunities for interaction and we found a great interest in examining which possibilities and limitations travel magazines are facing. This study is based on a qualitative approach because we wanted to gain a deeper understanding and a complete picture of our chosen subject. We have completed six interviews; three of them were consultants, one publishing director, one editor and a research student.

Virtual communities are a phenomenon that is becoming more common as the information technology comes with in reach for the general public. This report will bring the theories and construction of a virtual community together. The purpose of this report is to describe the different theories that have emerged from the research within this field and to examine the work procedures that have been used during the development of a site for a MDA-community. The MDA-website is a homepage on the Internet that was developed to bring the students closer together. The report describes the work of the project group, why the website was not completed and at the end the theories are looked at on the basis of the construction of the website..

The competitive nature of the automotive industry has always implied a necessity to improve product development concerning time-to-market, cost and product quality. As capacity of computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools has evolved, so has the strive for simulation-driven design. Virtual durability testing using full vehicle models is one of many challenges posed in front of vehicle manufacturers when computer simulations are given a key role in product development.This thesis has been initiated as a preliminary step towards implementing dynamic virtual durability testing in the development of buses and coaches at Scania. The objective has been to assess the predictability of a full vehicle coach model and to what level of precision structural loads can be predicted. Previously performed proving ground testing of a Scania Touring coach has been the basis for the modelling and simulations in this thesis.A virtual model of the Scania Touring coach has been created in multi-body simulation software package MSC.Adams.