This study has researched different motivations for User participation in brand related activities on social media. The study used three types of participation to evaluate motivations for User participation. These types were the following: consuming content, contributing to existing content and creating new content. An online questionnaire was distributed on brand Facebook pages and was used as a foundation for two focus group interviews that were then held. The goal of the study was to see what motivates User participation, in order to aid companies and organizations in understanding users.

Studies have shown that User participation is a good method when improving or developing a product. The method gives a company insight in what the customer wants and needs. It has also been shown that User participation benefits all parts included. For example, it creates a greater relationship with customers than most other methods do. Webportals is one of the most interactive systems online and it gives companies a unique chance to improve and maintain their relationship with customers.

Computer use at work has risen considerably over the past fifteen years and is currently a relatively common phenomenon when 76 percent of women and 72 percent of men using the computer in their daily work (SCB Arbetsmiljörapport 2009).According to Gulliksen and Göransson (2009), Sweden is one of the countries which are more advanced in the procurement of computer systems at work. He means that Sweden has unique opportunities and conditions for User participation in the development of computer systems, when the user has the right to influence their working environment through a law in the Work Environment Act. The paper examines the importance of user involvement in system development and the Swedish company's approach and experience of user involvement. To highlight and explore the importance of user involvement, there has been a case study in which users have been representative of the development process. The case study has been conducted on a case company where the system IST analys was in need of a new interface.

There are several methods and models within the areas of software engineering on how to proceed during a software development process. For each of these methods and models there are benefits and drawbacks, depending on how you choose to look at them. A difference of principle between the different models is that they either advocate iterative development or not. In parts of software engineering one makes use of different methods depending on which is most fitting in a specific situation. There are several methods on how to recieve more qualitative data from the end-users during the requirement collection, but the reappearing pattern is still user centric participation, which means that the user participates more actively in part of or the entire development process.

According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

Public participation in urban planning is meant to increase democracy in the planning process. Even though all citizens have the option to participate in urban planning debates, few seize their chance to partake. This thesis describes a study on how user needs are met and prioritized in design processes concerning urban planning. The aim was to determine whether user-centered design (UCD) methods could be used as an avenue for public participation in urban planning and ultimately invite more citizens into the planning process.The thesis details a design process where a team worked to develop Farsta, a suburb of Stockholm. The design problem was the question of how Farsta could become an attractive business location.

There are several methods and models within the areas of software engineering on how to proceed during a software development process. For each of these methods and models there are benefits and drawbacks, depending on how you choose to look at them. A difference of principle between the different models is that they either advocate iterative development or not. In parts of software engineering one makes use of different methods depending on which is most fitting in a specific situation. There are several methods on how to recieve more qualitative data from the end-users during the requirement collection, but the reappearing pattern is still user centric participation, which means that the user participates more actively in part of or the entire development process.

The question of direct citizen participation in politics and administration is a contestable one. Its proponents claim that it has positive consequences even for the more "traditional", representative democracy, since participation leads to an increased political knowledge and increased political interest, and thus creates a revitalised democracy. Critical voices have however been raised to the validity of this claim. Critics have also pointed out direct participation as problematic, because it leads to problems of political inequality: a difference of political influence between ? on the one hand, the citizens participating directly and those that restrict their political participation to voting, and ? on the one the other hand ? between the institutions, for example schools, that employ, and don?t employ this method of direct citizen influence.In this essay, these two points of criticisms are tested in the context of user-boards in elementary and secondary schools.

The aim of our research in this study, which has a qualitative attempt, is to investigate participation concerning to a few co-workers in the old-age care. The co-workers experience of participation and their definition of participation, and how participation is related to our different themes. Our themes are the present and wanted assumptions, to make participation possible. Further more does this study discuss participation in relation to the themes communication, competence education and to physical and psychic health. The method we used was primary semi-structured interviews and some observations.

User participation in the planning process of renewing the yards of existing residential areas was introduced in Sweden in the 1970s. It arose as a solution to many of the problems which became common in the residential areas built within the Swedish million program. The aim with the million program was to build one million homes within ten years. The same year as the million program was completed, in 1975, government subsidies to improve the residential yards were introduced. One of the conditions to get the subsidies was that the residents had to be involved in the planning process.

The aim of our research in this study, which has a qualitative attempt, is to investigate participation concerning to a few co-workers in the old-age care. The co-workers experience of participation and their definition of participation, and how participation is related to our different themes. Our themes are the present and wanted assumptions, to make participation possible. Further more does this study discuss participation in relation to the themes communication, competence education and to physical and psychic health. The method we used was primary semi-structured interviews and some observations.

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.

User friendly and usable are two words that are often mentioned in the context of marketing new products. By doing so it adds an extra sense of quality to the product. The meaning of these words is therefore something that every product wants. But what is it that makes a product usable and user friendly? What methodology exists formaking sure that a product is usable? Does it exist applicable processes to ensure user centered development? These questions together with a practical example are parts of what will be addressed in this report.The thesis was carried out for C2 Management, a company that works with supporting other companies in their work with quality and constant improvements.

The aim of this study was to try to get an overall image of how participation is constituted in the organization of AMA, a Human Service Organization (HSO) that is part of the Vasteras municipality.  With focus on mainly participation but also communication and leadership the goal was to find out more about how the governing parts of the organization was able to communicate and create participation amongst their employees. Did the message come across? Using a triangulation method including interviews, surveys and observation hopefully this question would be answered along with trying to depict an overall image of the participation within the organization. The results indicated that there were both differences as well as similarities between the employees and the management with regards to how they experienced participation. A surprising result was that the geographical location was found to have an impact on how the staff perceived participation.

The aim of this study was to, through a qualitative method, investigate students? participation in a specific library blog to find out what motivate them to create and share digital book recommendations through videos. It also intended to describe the students? own views of their participation.We conducted interviews with eight students in the ages 12 and 13, who all had similar experiences regarding the blog creation but diverse attitudes concerning the blog production and intentions to participate.The results showed that the strongest motivating forces behind the students' participation in the blog creation was that they enjoyed the making of the videos and also because they wanted to inspire others to read more and create resembling blogs..