Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Information'

Library and information science (LIS) may alternatively be labeled library, information and documentation studies, LID or just information science, IS. In taking IS serious as a research field, this paper presents an understanding of one of its core concepts (information) and outlines its fundamental principles. It is shown that there exist hierarchies of information processing mechanisms in nature and culture and that IS is concerned with only the highest forms of such mechanisms, which consist of libraries, electronic databases and related information services. Theories about such high-level information systems are closely related to theoretical views of knowledge, language, documents, cognition, science and communication. Information scientists are not the only experts involved in the handling of information, and a view of our special role is presented. The aspiration of this article is to provide a synopsis of the fundamentals of IS: Principia Informatica.

Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) constitute the backbone of many economies in the world today. This is because they are creating new jobs and contributing positively to their respective economies in which Sweden is not an exception and par-ticularly the municipality of Jonkoping. SMEs invest in IT to gain access to integration of transactions oriented data and business processes.

This thesis, motivational factors for growth in SMEs – (IT perspective) give an overview of how SMEs grow as a result of the introduction and implementation of IT. Information Technology (IT) is seen to be a motivational factor for the growth of SMEs. This is because it acts like an enabler to their businesses and the current business environment.

To answer the research question, I conducted an empirical study of some companies in Jonkoping that are using IT as a motivational factor for growth. Interviews were con-ducted through the use of a structured questionnaire and to a lesser extent, unstructured questionnaire.

Results from studies portrayed that, these companies introduced and implemented IT as a motivational factor for similar reasons though with different objectives.

The development of Information and Communication Technologies has opened up a large pool of possibilities for any and every business actor. These possibilities have brought up new vulnerabilities as well. Information security has become an inherent part of any organization. Companies and organizations invest significant amount of resources in IT security solutions, usually omitting the weakest link of the defense - the people.

The research intended to study and evaluate the information security awareness level of employees in a public organization which preferred to remain anonymous. This study is based on a mixed-methods approach. A survey was built up and performed, basing on the interview of the employees and the IT Security Chief. The interview intended to give a general picture of the attitude, knowledge and behavior the employees towards information security and its constituent aspects.

The results of the survey show that the information security awareness at this particular organization has an average performance based on the grading scale determined by the management of the company. Generally speaking, half of the information security focus areas show underdeveloped sense of awareness among employees, whereas the other focus areas are close to perfect. In terms of information security, the research indicates that there is a gap between the employees' theoretical condition and their day to day be-havior. In other words, the theoretical and practical preparation of the employees does not provide an appropriate information security awareness behavior. Some of the reasons for unsecure behavior were complex and sophisticated security designs including passwords; another problem was inherent in the work design which imposed the use of multiple systems and applications in the daily work.

In the end, the research suggests some recommendations for improvement, as well as practices to sustain a desirable level of information security awareness level. The overall information security awareness program required immediate improvements in order to boost the positive attitude and behavior of employees towards information security, as well as enrich the knowledge of information security in general.

In an information system which includes plenty of information services, we are always seeking a solution to enhance efficiency and reusability. Emergency medical service system is a classic information system using application integration in which the requirement of information flow transmissions is extremely necessary. We should always ensure this system is running in best condition with highest efficiency and reusability since the efficiency in the system directly affects human life.

The aim of this thesis is to analysis emergency medical system in both qualitative and quantitative ways. Another aim of this thesis is to suggest a method to judge the information flow through the analysis for the system efficiency and the correlations between information flow traffic and system applications.

The result is that system is a main platform integrated five information services. Each of them provides different unattached functions while they are all based on unified information resources. The system efficiency can be judged by a method called Performance Evaluation, the correlation can be judged by multi-factorial analysis of variance method.

The management of assets in organisations today can be a challenging task and optimising their usage is critical to ensure maximum profit. For rental businesses offering tangible products efficient management of movable assets are an essential part of the business strategy. The main purpose of this study is to investigate how asset management and asset information management can be carried out in rental businesses and in what ways information technology can support it. By doing a literature review combined with a case study where three rental businesses and their use of information technology were examined we could identify several important aspects regarding asset information management. The results we have found is that rental businesses with a high degree of digitization in existing asset information management systems are able to rationalize existing work processes, which in some ways changes the roles of employees. Our research also shows that use of identification technologies may contribute to making organisations less dependent on personnel. The study concludes with some recommendations for further research.

Patient data in health care have traditionally been used to support direct patient care. Although there is great potential in combining such data with genetic information from patients to improve diagnosis and therapy decisions (i.e. personalized medicine) and in secondary uses such as data mining, this is complex to realize due to technical, commercial and legal issues related with combining and refining patient data. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are great catalysts for enabling evidence-based medicine in clinical practice. Although patient data can be the base for CDSS logic, it is often scattered among heterogenous data sources (even in different health care centers). Data integration and subsequent data mining must consider codification of patient data with terminology systems in addition to legal and ethical aspects of using such data. Although computerization of the patient record systems has been underway for a long time, some data is still unstructured. Investigation regarding the feasibility of using electronic patient records (EPR) as data sources for data mining is therefore important. Association rules can be used as a base for CDSS development. Logic representation affect the usability of the systems and the possibility of providing explanations of the generated advice. Several properties of these rules are relatively easy to explain (such as support and confidence), which in itself can improve end-user confidence in advice from CDSS. Information from information sources other than the EPR can also be important for diagnosis and/or treatment decisions. Drug prescription is a process that is particularly dependent on reliable information regarding, among other things, drug-drug interactions which can have serious effects. CDSS and other information systems are not useful unless they are available at the time and location of patient care. This motivates using mobile devices for CDSS. Information structures of interactions affect representation in informatics systems. These structures can be represented using a category theory based implementation of rough sets (rough monads). Development of guidelines and CDSS can be based on existing guidelines with connections to external information systems that validate advice given the particular patient situation (for example, previously prescribed drugs may interact with recommended drugs by CDSS). Rules for CDSS can also be generated directly from patient data but this assumes that such data is structured and representative. Although there is great potential in CDSS to improve the quality and efficiency of health care, these systems must be properly integrated with existing processes in health care (workflows) and with other information systems. Health care workflows manage physical resources such as patients and doctors and can help to standardize care processes and support management decisions through workflow simulation. Such simulations allow information bottle-necks or insufficient resources (equipment, personnel) to be identified. As personalized medicine using genetic information of patients become economically feasible, computational requirements increase. In this sense, distributing computations through web services and system-oriented workflows can complement human-oriented workflows. Issues related to dynamic service discovery, semantic annotations of data, service inputs/outputs affect the feasibility of system-oriented workflow construction and sharing. Additionally, sharing of system-oriented workflows increase the possibilities of peer-review and workflow re-usage.

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Information is the single most important part of the decision-making process. There are many theories and models of decision-making processes that apply to general decisions and others that are for very specific purposes. No single theory/model applies to all decisions. This thesis identifies several relevant theories/models that are both general and specific and explores each process and how information works within and through them to reach a decision. This exposes commonalities that all the theories/models share. They are identification of the scene, the desired end state, and how to reach the desired end state. The successful use of a theory/model requires the person(s) choosing to utilize a theory/model to address one or more of these common criteria to reach the best decision possible. Additionally, the type of situation and the personalities of the person(s) making the decision impact that decision. The person(s) making the decision should understand and know this information and how it influences the decision-making process. Information influences the decision-making process by influencing how the common criteria are answered, how a decision maker responds to the information environment effects, and the selection of the model/theory used to reach a decision.

In todays sociaty the use of information systems is wide spread and many corporations and buisnesses both in large and small spread make use of more advanced and sopisticated systems. Larger corporations have their own IT sections that maintain and updates their systems on a daily basis. They have the money and resources for it by how do the small businesses coop with it. How satisfied are the small businesses that are maybe runing on systems that might not be supplying the needs that the business is in need of. In this paper we investigate this question in the form of a questionnaire. The investigation is conducted in a selected part of the market in the swedish city of Växjö. The purpose of the investigation is to see how satisfied 30 businesses are with their information systems. The investigations background comes from a similar american investigation and it’s the papers purpose to compare the results that arose during the american studie with the swedish results to see what diffrences and similaritys there is. The investigation spans over 3 sector of bueisnesses, trade, service and consult. The investigation studies how these 3 sectors satisfaction relates to one and other, how satisfied and disatisfiedthey are in different parts of their IT systems.

Quantum theory, as counter-intuitive as a theory can get, has turned out to make predictions of the physical world that match observations so precisely that it has been described as the most accurate physical theory ever devised. Viewing quantum entanglement, superposition and interference not as undesirable necessities but as interesting resources paved the way to the development of quantum information science. This area studies the processing, transmission and storage of information when one accounts that information is physical and subjected to the laws of nature that govern the systems it is encoded in. The development of the consequences of this idea, along with the great advances experienced in the control of individual quantum systems, has led to what is now known as the second quantum revolution, in which quantum information science has emerged as a fully-grown field. As such, ideas and tools developed within the framework of quantum information theory begin to permeate to other fields of research. This Ph.D. dissertation is devoted to the use of concepts and methods akin to the field of quantum information science in other areas of research. In the same way, it also considers how encoding information in quantum degrees of freedom may allow further development of well-established research fields and industries. This is, this thesis aims to the study of quantum information outside the field of quantum information. Four different areas are visited. A first question posed is that of the role of quantum information in quantum field theory, with a focus in the quantum vacuum. It is known that the quantum vacuum contains entanglement, but it remains unknown whether it can be accessed and exploited in experiments. We give crucial steps in this direction by studying the extraction of vacuum entanglement in realistic models of light-matter interaction, and by giving strict mathematical conditions of general applicability that must be fulfilled for extraction to be possible at all. Another field where quantum information methods can offer great insight is in that of quantum thermodynamics, where the idealizations made in macroscopic thermodynamics break down. Making use of a quintessential framework of quantum information and quantum optics, we study the cyclic operation of a microscopic heat engine composed by a single particle reciprocating between two finite-size baths, focusing on the consequences of the removal of the macroscopic idealizations. One more step down the stairs to applications in society, we analyze the impact that encoding information in quantum systems and processing it in quantum computers may have in the field of machine learning. A great desideratum in this area, largely obstructed by computational power, is that of explainable models which not only make predictions but also provide information about the decision process that triggers them. We develop an algorithm to train neural networks using explainable techniques that exploits entanglement and superposition to execute efficiently in quantum computers, in contrast with classical counterparts. Furthermore, we run it in state-of-the-art quantum computers with the aim of assessing the viability of realistic implementations. Lastly, and encompassing all the above, we explore the notion of causality in quantum mechanics from an information-theoretic point of view. While it is known since the work of John S. Bell in 1964 that, for a same causal pattern, quantum systems can generate correlations between variables that are impossible to obtain employing only classical systems, there is an important lack of tools to study complex causal effects whenever a quantum behavior is expected. We fill this gap by providing general methods for the characterization of the quantum correlations achievable in complex causal patterns. Closing the circle, we make use of these tools to find phenomena of fundamental and experimental relevance back in quantum information.
La teoría cuántica, la más extraña y antiintuitiva de las teorías físicas, es también considerada como la teoría más precisa jamás desarrollada. La interpretación del entrelazamiento, la superposición y la interferencia como interesantes recursos aprovechables cimentó el desarrollo de la teoría cuántica de la información (QIT), que estudia el procesado, transmisión y almacenamiento de información teniendo en cuenta que ésta es física, en tanto a que está sujeta a las leyes de la naturaleza que gobiernan los sistemas en que se codifica. El desarrollo de esta idea, en conjunción con los recientes avances en el control de sistemas cuánticos individuales, ha dado lugar a la conocida como segunda revolución cuántica, en la cual la QIT ha emergido como un área de estudio con denominación propia. A consecuencia de su desarrollo actual, ideas y herramientas creadas en su seno comienzan a permear a otros ámbitos de investigación. Esta tesis doctoral está dedicada a la utilización de conceptos y métodos originales del campo de información cuántica en otras áreas. También considera cómo la codificación de información en grados de libertad cuánticos puede afectar el futuro desarrollo de áreas de investigación e industrias bien establecidas. Es decir, esta tesis tiene como objetivo el estudio de la información cuántica fuera de la información cuántica, haciendo hincapié en cuatro ámbitos diferentes. Una primera cuestión propuesta es la del papel de la información cuántica en la teoría cuántica de campos, con especial énfasis en el vacío cuántico. Es conocido que el vacío cuántico contiene entrelazamiento, pero aún se desconoce éste es accesible para su uso en realizaciones experimentales. En esta tesis se dan pasos cruciales en esta dirección mediante el estudio de la extracción de entrelazamiento en modelos realistas de la interacción materia-radiación, y dando condiciones matemáticas estrictas que deben ser satisfechas para que dicha extracción sea posible. Otro campo en el cual métodos propios de QIT pueden ofrecer nuevos puntos de vista es en termodinámica cuántica. A través del uso de un marco de trabajo ampliamente utilizado en información y óptica cuánticas, estudiamos la operación cíclica de un motor térmico microscópico que alterna entre dos baños térmicos de tamaño finito, prestando especial atención a las consecuencias de la eliminación de las idealizaciones macroscópicas utilizadas en termodinámica macroscópica. Acercándonos a aplicaciones industriales, analizamos el potencial impacto de codificar y procesar información en sistemas cuánticos en el ámbito del aprendizaje automático. Un fin codiciado en esta área, inaccesible debido a su coste computacional, es el de modelos explicativos que realicen predicciones, y además ofrezcan información acerca del proceso de decisión que las genera. Presentamos un algoritmo de entrenamiento de redes neuronales con técnicas explicativas que hace uso del entrelazamiento y la superposición para tener una ejecución eficiente en ordenadores cuánticos, en comparación con homólogos clásicos. Además, ejecutamos el algoritmo en ordenadores cuánticos contemporáneos con el objetivo de evaluar la viabilidad de implementaciones realistas. Finalmente, y englobando todo lo anterior, exploramos la noción de causalidad en mecánica cuántica desde el punto de vista de la teoría de la información. A pesar de que es conocido que para un mismo patrón causal existen sistemas cuánticos que dan lugar a correlaciones imposibles de generar por mediación de sistemas clásicos, existe una notable falta de herramientas para estudiar efectos causales cuánticos complejos. Cubrimos esta falta mediante métodos generales para la caracterización de las correlaciones cuánticas que pueden ser generadas en estructuras causales complejas. Cerrando el círculo, usamos estas herramientas para encontrar fenómenos de relevancia fundamental y experimental en la información cuántica

Healthcare is very information-intensive. Hence, it has become necessary to use the support of computers in order to efficiently improve such an information-intensive organisation. This thesis points out deficiencies in the area of information security in home healthcare regarding personal integrity and secrecy. Home healthcare is, in Sweden, performed by the municipalities. The work is based on the recommendations and common advice for processing of personal data compiled by the Data Inspection Board. Two municipalities in the Västra Götaland Region have been investigated. One of the municipalities has a manual system and the other has a computerized system for personal data management. The work includes a field study where persons from both municipalities have been observed. It also includes interviews based on the comprehensive questions from the Data Inspection Board and questions arisen from the observations. The work shows that a very clear need of training among personnel involved in home healthcare. It also shows the need for elaborate security measures including levels on access profiles. A weak point concerning security is also the heavy use of facsimile transmission for information distribution.

This study aims to evaluate the use of the method Information Demand Analysis (henceforth IDA) against an analysis tool. To gain empirical understanding of IDA, the method will be applied to a cooperation process between two business organisations. The research questions of the study are to investigate what can be required of a method, to identify the information demand for the above mentioned cooperation process, and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the use of IDA.

Based on a literature study an evaluation framework, which describes what can be required of a method, was developed. The evaluation framework resulted in an analysis tool, which consists of the elements: method content, method user, method context, method validation, the method creator’s requirements, and the wishes and expectations of the business organisations. The use of IDA implied scoping to delimit the problem situation and a workshop to identify the information demand. In order to gain an understanding of the use of the method IDA, and to identify the information demand, the method was applied to a cooperation process between Steel AB and Wood AB. The information demand was later represented in Extended Enterprise Modelling Language (henceforth EEML). Finally, we analysed if and how the elements in the analysis tool were reflected in IDA and identified the strengths and weaknesses of the use of the method.

The strengths of IDA are that it is general and applicable on different types of business organisations. Furthermore, it has well defined concepts and the possibility of selecting appropriate concepts ensures that it is applicable on different problem situations. The business organisations, which participated in the workshop, found that IDA resulted in a holistic view and increased the understanding for each other. The weaknesses of IDA are lack of documentation of explicitly defined steps, the implications for selecting certain concepts, guidance, and explicitly described notations. Concerning the involved roles, in IDA, we request a description of them, their responsibilities, and the needed knowledge sets and skills for using the method. Since IDA still is under development we had difficulties understanding how our outcome of the method should fulfil the purpose of IDA.

While the Information Structure (IS) is most naturally interpreted as 'structure of information', some may argue that it is structure of something else, and others may object to the use of the word 'structure'. This paper focuses on the question of whether the informational component can have structural properties such that it can be called 'structure'. The preliminary conclusion is that, although there are some vague indications of structurehood in it, it is perhaps better understood to be a representation that encodes a finite set of information-based partitions, rather than structure.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Computer Science, 2007.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: B, page: 6057. Adviser: Geoffrey C. Fox. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 9, 2008).

This work focused on the investigation of the question how the concept of relevance in Information Retrieval can be validated. The work is motivated by the consistent difficulties of defining the meaning of the concept, and by advances in the field of cognitive science. Analytical and empirical investigations are carried out with the aim of devising a principled approach to the validation of the concept. The foundation for this work was set by interpreting relevance as a phenomenon occurring within the context of two systems: An IR system and the cognitive processing system of the user. In light of the cognitive interpretation of relevance, an analysis of the learnt lessons in cognitive science with regard to the validation of cognitive phenomena was conducted. It identified that construct validity constitutes the dominant approach to the validation of constructs in cognitive science. Construct validity constitutes a proposal for the conduction of validation in scenarios, where no direct observation of a phenomenon is possible. With regard to the limitations on direct observation of a construct (i.e. a postulated theoretic concept), it bases validation on the evaluation of its relations to other constructs. Based on the interpretation of relevance as a product of cognitive processing it was concluded, that the limitations with regard to direct observation apply to its investigation. The evaluation of its applicability to an IR context, focused on the exploration of the nomological network methodology. A nomological network constitutes an analytically constructed set of constructs and their relations. The construction of such a network forms the basis for establishing construct validity through investigation of the relations between constructs. An analysis focused on contemporary insights to the nomological network methodology identified two important aspects with regard to its application in IR. The first aspect is given by a choice of context and the identification of a pool of candidate constructs for the inclusion in the network. The second consists of identifying criteria for the selection of a set of constructs from the candidate pool. The identification of the pertinent constructs for the network was based on a review of the principles of cognitive exploration, and an analysis of the state of the art in text based discourse processing and reasoning. On that basis, a listing of known sub-processes contributing to the pertinent cognitive processing was presented. Based on the identification of a large number of potential candidates, the next step consisted of the inference of criteria for the selection of an initial set of constructs for the network. The investigation of these criteria focused on the consideration of pragmatic and meta-theoretical aspects. Based on a survey of experimental means in cognitive science and IR, five pragmatic criteria for the selection of constructs were presented. Consideration of meta-theoretically motivated criteria required to investigate what the specific challenges with regard to the validation of highly abstract constructs are. This question was explored based on the underlying considerations of the Information Processing paradigm and Newell’s (1994) cognitive bands. This led to the identification of a set of three meta-theoretical criteria for the selection of constructs. Based on the criteria and the demarcated candidate pool, an IR focused nomological network was defined. The network consists of the constructs of relevance and type and grade of word relatedness. A necessary prerequisite for making inferences based on a nomological network consists of the availability of validated measurement instruments for the constructs. To that cause, two validation studies targeting the measurement of the type and grade of relations between words were conducted. The clarification of the question of the validity of the measurement instruments enabled the application of the nomological network. A first step of the application consisted of testing if the constructs in the network are related to each other. Based on the alignment of measurements of relevance and the word related constructs it was concluded to be true. The relation between the constructs was characterized by varying the word related constructs over a large parameter space and observing the effect of this variation on relevance. Three hypotheses relating to different aspects of the relations between the word related constructs and relevance. It was concluded, that the conclusive confirmation of the hypotheses requires an extension of the experimental means underlying the study. Based on converging observations from the empirical investigation of the three hypotheses it was concluded, that semantic and associative relations distinctly differ with regard to their impact on relevance estimation.

The conditions for the third, non-profit sector, such as grassroots organisations and trade unions, have changed dramatically in recent years, due to prevailing social trends. Non-profit organisations have been seen as early adopters of information technology, but the area is, at the same time, largely unattended by scientific research. Meanwhile, the field of information systems development is, to an increasing extent, recognising the importance of user involvement in the design process. Nevertheless, participatory development approaches, such as Participatory Design are not suited to the context of entire organisations, and new, networked organisational structures, such as those of non-profit organisations. This reasoning also applies to the theoretical framework of Activity Theory, whose potential benefits for systems development have been acclaimed but less often tried in practice. This thesis aims, first, at extending Participatory Design to use in large, particularly non-profit organisations. This aim is partly achieved by integrating Participatory Design with an Argumentative Design approach and with the application of Activity Theory modified for an organisational context. The purpose is to obtain reasoning about and foreseeing the consequences of different design solutions. Second, the thesis aims at exploring information technology needs, solutions, and consequences in non-profit organisations, in trade unions in particular. The case under study is the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and the design of an information system for its 250 000 shop stewards. The thesis is based on six related studies complemented with data from work in a local design group working according to the principles of Participatory Design. The first study was aimed at investigating and comparing trade union management’s view of the new technology and the actual needs of shop stewards. The second study investigated the situation, tasks and problems of shop stewards, as a pre-requisite for finding information technology needs. The third study merged the previous findings into an argumentative design of an information systems design proposal. The fourth study collected the voices from secondary user groups in the organisation, and presented an Activity theoretical analysis of the union organisation and a modified design proposal in the form of a prototype. The fifth study presented an Activity theoretical framework, modified for organisational application, and used it for producing hypotheses on possible shop steward tasks and organisational consequences of the implementation of the information system. The sixth paper was aimed at the initial testing of the hypotheses, through the evaluation of information technology facilities in one of the individual union affiliations. The complementary data was used to propose further modifications of the integrated Participatory, Argumentative, and Activity Theory design approach. The major contributions of the study are, first, a modified Participatory Design approach to be applied at three levels; in general as a way of overcoming experienced difficulties with the original approach, in the context of entire, large organisations, and in the specific non-profit organisation context. The second contribution is generated knowledge in the new research area of information technology in the non-profit, trade union context, where for instance the presented prototype can be seen as a source of inspiration. Future research directions include further development and formalisation of the integrated Participatory Design approach, as well as actual consequences of implementing information technology in non-profit organisations and trade unions.
On the day of the public defence the status of article V was: Submitted.

Webbutveckling är, i förhållande till traditionell systemutveckling, ett relativt ungt forskningsområde. En hel del forskning har dock gjorts inom området. Många studier har syftat till att utveckla metoder och tekniker som ska stödja arbetet i praktiken. Det har emellertid visat sig att dessa metoder och tekniker sällan används av webbyråer. Arbetssättet inom branschen beskrivs ofta som ostrukturerat och ibland kaotiskt. Denna studie inriktar sig på små webbyråer och vad som karaktäriserar deras utvecklingsprocesser samt vilka problem de ställs inför. Studien genomfördes med en explorativ ansats där anställda med olika befattningar intervjuades på tre små webbyråer. Utöver den empiriska studien genomfördes även en litteraturstudie, vars utfall ställdes mot intervjuresultatet. Utifrån denna sammanställning kunde kopplingar mellan teori och empiri identifieras. Sammanställningen visade också att det fanns luckor. Undersökningen fann att merparten av de identifierade problemen grundade sig i tidspress. Tidspressen ledde till att webbyråerna tog genvägar som i slutändan skapade andra problem. Litteraturstudiens utfall användes för att forma riktlinjer som skulle kunna användas för att undvika de problem som adresserats i uppsatsen.

The focus of this master thesis is to analyze the effectiveness of self-learning and active-learning on biological virtual screening. Virtual screening is used in the pharmaceutical industry to increase the effectiveness of biological screening. Self- learning is a technique where parts of the classified test data are reused for training the classifier again. Active learning gives the classifier the possibility to select certain parts of the test data to use them as additional training data. The experiments in the thesis show that both methods can be used to improve the precision of the virtual screening process, but active-learning is more effective due to the additional information that is provided.

This thesis investigates the challenges within the work of different types of professions; technical professions and human caretaking professions. These professions are faced special challenges in use and development of information systems. Professions within two different complex and critical work practices are focused; aircraft maintenance and emergency medical care. Within the work of these professions some judgements and decisions can imply risks for life and equipment. The use and development of information systems in general is emphasised, decision support systems and other systems for specific tasks have not been studied. The research question in this thesis is:

Which challenges can be related to use and development of information systems within complex and critical work practices, from a profession-oriented perspective?

Two ethnographical studies have been performed within two different work practices. The studies have been rather explorative and inductive. One study has been performed within the aircraft maintenance in the Swedish Airforce and the other study has been performed within the emergency medical care within NU Healthcare, Västra Götaland, Sweden.

From the thesis it has been derived three main challenges for professions within complex and critical work practices; trust, knowledge integration and professional barriers. The main contribution in the thesis is about certain aspects, which can have an impact on a profession-oriented view on use and development of information systems. These aspects concern bridging professional barriers and managing knowledge integration. Furthermore the thesis reflects that a hard systems thinking on use and development of information systems is prevalent within the human caretaking professions, while a soft systems thinking is obvious within the technical professions.

ERP systems link together an organization’s strategy, structure, and business processes with the IT system. The different way of handling the process of ERP implementation brings about many success and failure stories. By doing research on 1) what are the critical success factors in the implementation of ERP 2) why are these factors critical 3) what is the criticality degree of each factor 4) how important are these factors for customers, consultants, and vendors, the report aims to to identify the critical success factors in ERP implementation and understand the criticality degree of each factor from the perspectives of three parties (companies, consultants & vendors).

The research is proceeded with combined methods of qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative method for the interviews was chosen in order to get the information in depth. A semi-structured interview helps to provide some basic questions as guideline.

Furthermore, the quantitative approach contributes to manipulating the data for a more comprehensive analysis of empirical findings. This report states 11 CSFs (Critical Success Factors) from three points of view: strategic, tactical, and cultural. They are: Top management support and ERP strategy, Business Process Reengineering, Project team & change management, Retain the experienced employee, Consultant and vendor support, Monitoring and evaluation of performance, Problems anticipation (troubleshooting, bugs, etc.), Organizational culture, Effective communication, and Cultural diversity. By testing the perceived CSFs in six respondents (VSM Group, Scania, Sogeti, SYSteam, Oracle, and SAP), this report puts the 11 factors into three overall ranks (most critical, medium critical, and less critical), gains 3 other new critical factors (testing, business model, and client’s resources), and clarifies the diverse opinions about CSFs from customers/companies, consultants, and vendors. The most critical factors are Top management support, BPR, Project team & change management, and Effective communication. The medium critical factors go to ERP strategy, Consultant and vendor support, and Organizational culture. And the remaining 4 factors belong to less critical category.

For the differences, their agreement comes into the 4 most critical factors. In monitoring and evaluation of performance they agree on its less criticality. All customers, consultants and vendors have quite different opinions about the remaining 6 factors.

Reviewing the research questions, this report has fulfilled the main objectives and purpose. With better understanding of the comprehensive identification of CSFs and criticality rank of each factor, management will be able to judge and allocate essential resources that are required to bring ERP implementation into success.

 

This thesis is based on a case-study of an IT-system implementation within Jönköping County Council. This new IT-system will cover, and support, all health-care related activi-ties within the County Council. The thesis is concerned with aspects that happened within the pre-implementation phase, and the thesis is furthermore only concerned with so-called „soft‟ aspects- meaning aspects that are not of a technical nature. Instead, attitudes relating to the use of the system and various qualities of the system have been measured; and sub-sequently fit into the categories of the extended Technology Acceptance Model, or TAM2, proposed by Venkatesh & Davis (2000). We have limited our research to only look at the attitudes of doctors. The doctors are also divided into two distinct user-groups: where one group has received more training than the other, and have been assigned as „super-users‟, meant to support the regular users in their use of the system, and also to help train these other, „regular-users‟. The attitudes of the various users of the system have been measured by using a qualitative method, and more specifically interviews based on the elements of the TAM2 model. The results of the interviews were analysed using a number of models and theories relevant to the subject matter. The analysis of the results, and the subsequent conclusions which are drawn as answers to the research questions will be of use in future IT-system implementations, especially within the coming rounds of implementing the spe-cific IT-system which has been studied, in the rest of the Jönköping County Council. The main conclusions which have been drawn can be summarised as the following:

The overall user-technology-acceptance of the doctors towards this system is neutral, but has a strong tendency towards a negative attitude. This conclusion is drawn through combining the perceived usefulness, and its sub-elements, with the perceived ease of use, of the doc-tors- as described in the analysis section. One of the key causes for this is the low subjec-tive norm (or outside opinion affecting attitudes) which is spread about the system. One of the key proposals to avoid these low levels of user-technology-acceptance is to meet the negative subjective norm attitudes being spread, with positive responses; and to optimise the training of all users- but to specifically improve the attitudes and knowledge of the su-per-users, which has been proven to be critical for a successful implementation. This thesis shows the importance of managing the subjective norms of the participants in the imple-mentation project, negative press in the media should in our opinion be met by positive in-formation about the system and the implementation. We have also found that should the training be performed in a satisfactory way the opinions and attitudes of the users will be positively affected. The training of the super-users has been found to be of special impor-tance as the attitudes of colleagues have been shown to be the most important for users, when building early opinions about a system.

 

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been considered a tool that can be used to achieve development goals in developing countries. In the same time, the majority of people living in developing countries, and especially those in rural areas lack access to ICT. Even if there have been many attempts to introduce ICT, they have in general not been long-lasting.

A framework for studying factors that influence use of ICT is desirable. We see it necessary to bring a sustainability aspect into the picture of ICT. In this work the requirement of ‘sustainable ICT use’ stresses that ICT is long-lasting and that ICT meets the needs of the user. Thus, the aim of this work is to develop a tool for conceptualisation that can support the understanding of the conditions for sustainable, and therefore successful, ICT projects in developing countries.

Our theoretical starting point is taken in the Information System (IS) theories. The theoretical base is then broadened to include theories on international development, theories on sustainable development, and theories on diffusion of innovations and transfer of technology. The theoretical foundation, together with four empirical studies, is used to answer the two research questions in this thesis. The first question is: Which are the critical factors influencing sustainable ICT use in developing countries? By using ‘critical factors’ we emphasise a focus on factors which are crucial (even if possibly not sufficient) for bringing about sustainable ICT use. This question is followed by a second question: How would a framework be structured to properly include these factors in order to support analyses of sustainable ICT use?

The framework has evolved through the identification of factors from four empirical studies. Forty-one factors were identified and sorted into fifteen subcategories of five major capital assets. The main contribution of our study is that of a generic framework, which can be used as a guideline for planning, implementation, and evaluation of ICT projects in a rural developing country context achieving sustainable ICT. As argued in this thesis technology is not the key resource; it is the combination and system of different resources distributed along a time and space dimension that is the key. With our framework we have demonstrated that the ICT artefact is not the sustainability tool, it is the combination of different resources that makes it sustainable and competitive.

För att få fram rätt information krävs en metod som belyser patienters behov och på så sätt kan hjälpa sjukvården att på bättre sätt ta hjälp av patienters åsikt. Syftet med uppsatsen är därför att få fram hur patienter upplever att deras informationsbehov av hälsoinformation tillfredställs. Vi vill även ta reda på hur detta behov ser ut idag och på vilka sätt det kan tillfredställas bättre.

Vi vill även testa om fokusgrupper är lämplig som metod för att besvara vårt syfte.

För att uppfylla syftet har vi samlat in data genom två fokusgrupper. En grupp bestod av personer med mer kontakt med sjukvården medan den andra bestod av personer med mindre kontakt med sjukvården. Med hjälp av resultatet från fokusgrupperna genomfördes en analys där vi fann områden som var särskilt viktiga. Vi har även utvärderat fokusgrupper som metod genom att jämföra med tidigare forskning inom området. Utifrån det insamlade materialet har vi utarbetat en modell som visar hur patienters informationsbehov kan tillfredställas. Denna modell är indelad i fyra delar utifrån hur stort behov patienten har av egen samt allmän information.

Diskussionen i Sverige angående dataspelsberoende och att främst att ungdomar, spenderar

mycket av sin vakna tid framför spelen, har på senare tid tagit fart i media. Många har

diskuterat om inte detta är ett samhällsproblem. WoW (World of Warcraft) är ett av de

populäraste spelen i världen och lockar väldigt många individer.

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka spelet WoW för att ta reda på vilken eller

vilka av dess spelkomponenter som kan ha ett samband med ett beroende. Detta har gjorts

genom experiment, observation och intervju av individer som spelar spelet.

Syftet anses uppnått och frågeställningen i arbetet har besvarats. De komponenter som ansågs

ha ett samband med beroende var Spelare (spelarna i spelet påverkade varandra på en social

nivå) och Karaktärsuppgraderingen (jakten efter att få sin karaktär att bli bättre och bättre).

Uppsatsen beskriver hela arbetsprocessen över hur en prototyp för en presentationsvideo kan skapas med stöd av Klaus Fogs fyra element. Information till designen hämtas från en kvalitativ intervju. Intervjusvaren sammanställs därefter och grundstenarna till berättelsen plockades ut med hjälp av Klaus Fogs element. Därefter åskådliggörs elementen i ett storyboard, som därefter omarbetas till en prototyp för en presentationsvideo. Presentationsvideon är ett case åt ett företag med namnet Aktivt Uteliv. Prototypen som skapas i uppsatsen ligger som diskussionsgrund för det fortsatta arbetet med presentationsvideon.

 

By changing focus from the active blogger to the ex-blogger this study focuses on a part of the blogosphere that is generally overlooked, why bloggers stop blogging. 30 terminated blogs where studied and the ex-bloggers where contacted. Six main reasons why a blog is terminated was found: Changed life situation, The blog effecting private life, The blog effecting the professional life, Done with testing to blog, Blogging about an event, Done with the blog – the logical termination. Outside the main focus of the study  it was also evident that most bloggers terminate a blog to put focus of one of their other blogs or start a new one. Thus it seems wrong to equal one blogger to one blog. A theory is presented that classifies a blog as something that will be ended and a blogger that goes from blog to blog is named a chain blogger.

 

This paper is to identify and analyze a new trend which we believehas taken off, based on qualitative interviews and analysis of three productions which we have been involved in during a practiceperiod of two months with a production company in Stockholm. This essay intends to define this trend as an organic formation of digital material and to identify the key characteristics which form the basis of how to create a production of this nature.

Use qualities are sought after in interaction design and increasingly reachable given the new developments in tangible, ubiquitous and embodied interactions. But are they really obtainable regardless of what approach one chooses. This thesis explores how use qualities can be reached by Organic Interaction Design and in doing so it also provides a primer for what this concept entails: A concept which demands a high level of intuitivity in the designs of new media and new interaction trajectories. It is implemented here in a case of an interactive table complete with tangible interactions. This thesis provides examples of how use qualities such as immersion, playability and even vulnerability are reached not via e.g. system transparency but rather via a mimicry of the tacit cues of biological systems occurring in the natural world. The interaction design need be thoughtful and holistic for such endeavors.

Self service providers are making such systems which offer faster and more flexible service to the user. Most of us are familiar about self service technologies such as Kiosk, Auto Teller Machine, Self Check in machine, Self payment machine etc. Unfortunately, users are not using these SSTs commonly as advancement has been occurring in SSTs. Sometimes, people look annoyed and feel fear to use such kind of technology at public spaces. Generally, these systems need interaction between users and technology to create service outcome instead of interacting with a service personnel. These technological interfaces have been called Self-service technologies (SSTs). Yet, not all users choose to use the new technologies and they still feel some hesitations to adopt this technologies in this case SSTs. This study investigated the factors that make users hesitate to use and adopt SSTs.

Den här uppsatsen undersöker sambandet mellan en musikvideoprocess och en

designprocess samt vilka visuella teoretiska verktyg som finns att tillgå vid en

budskapsfokuserad musikvideo. För att ta reda på detta har vi gjort en introspektion av

vår process av att producera en musikvideo åt en etablerad svensk artist. I arbetet

presenterar vi hela processen från första vision till de sista förberedelserna. Uppsatsen

innehåller produktionsmaterial så som storyboard och inspelningsschema. Som stöd

till vår produktionsprocess har vi sammanställt en modell som bygger på Löwgren och

Stoltermans (2004) designprocess samt de budskapsfokuserade teoretiska visuella

verktygen (så som semiotik, sync points och musikanalys) som kan underlätta i just en

sådan här process. Vidare kommer vi fram till att en musikvideoprocess i princip är

identisk med en designprocess och att Löwgren och Stoltermans dynamiska

designprocess även går att implementera på en musikvideoprocess. Om modellen

vidare kan testas och utvecklas med fler dramaturgiska inslag så tror vi att den kan

fungera som ett bra stöd för en kvalitativ budskapsfokuserad musikvideo.

 

Abstract

System methodology is in the very heart of system development, it is a crucial part of how you define your work, how you choose to approach the actual problem at hand and how to solve it. Researchers in the system development field has shown that not all methods in theory are in compliance with how it is practiced by the companies who use them. In our thesis we have studied a larger international IT- company and one of their local offices in Sweden, who some years back changed their system development method from a more traditional to an agile one. Our aim of this study has been to establish whether both of these methods has differed between theory and in actual use, and if so, why this has occurred and what the underlying rationality might have been to promote this change. Our questions that we sought to answer were; 1. Why did the company change system development method in the first place? 2. If the methods, applied by the company, differs between theory and practice, why do they differ and what is the underlying rationality to pander this change?

Our study has shown that in both cases, there has been a need to tailor the methods to fit the organizational objectives and goals but also the current working climate. Reasons for this has been, amongst others, that the methods at hand has not been in complete compliance with how they perform their work in practice. Statements from the interviewees were that it is hard to follow a method in strict accordance with how a method is written in theory, you have to conform it to the actual organization for it to be effective.

The typical traditional tool (i.e. pen and paper) for note-taking is simple and lightweight. Although the methods used by teachers, particularly at university level, have changed significantly from paper documentation to digital resources, most students still feel more comfortable recording class notes using pen and paper. In this paper I argue that digital advances have not been optimized for the once static environment of academic note-taking. The note-taking habits of students must be studied. New systems must be developed if students are to benefit fully from these advances. Lecture handouts given as digital documents should afford students an easier and more pleasant learning experience. Therefore, I investigate the note-taking behavior of students and propose one positive solution to enhance study efficiency in higher education. The solution is based on two perspectives to understand the requirements and design implications of future design in a smart way.

Every municipality in Sweden is responsible for offering its citizens adequate childcare. Parents hand in a preliminary schedule to the preschool for when their child needs to be in childcare, and based on this the preschool staff is scheduled. Some municipalities measure the actual time a child is in childcare. The essay idea comes from when I heard that one municipality was thinking of register the children's actual time in preschools. I started thinking on how to solve such a task. First I needed to get a feel for the context in a preschool. I therefore visited a preschool to interview the staff about their work. Do they have a computer in their workplace? Who is using it? I made five interviews with people whose job is related to childcare. In this essay I have also developed a software prototype to register time, it is intended to be run by the preschool staff on a cellphone. This essay can be a starting point for anyone who is interested in the subject of register time in preschools.

Current social interaction on Internet is continuously taking an important role ineveryday life. In Estimate every computer user will have their account or identity onat least one online social network service in the future. Despite that all this mannersoccur in the virtual world, is possible to bring these useful information from thevirtual space into physical space? This paper presents a design-oriented research ona way to bring available people connection, profile and published personalinformation on virtual space into interactive physical space by enriching the context.Observation was made with focus on how the virtual community influences the socialbehavior. Concerning tangible computing this design more foucs on full-bodyinteraction and manipulation with face recognition or voice command.

Design researchers and design practitioners differ regarding their notion of thenature of design complexity, and how design practitioners should approach it in arational way. By describing three ways of viewing design rationality, differentapproaches of what it means to design and be a designer is presented. This paperargues that design complexity is ‘wicked’, with no definite conditions or limits todesign problems. This means that the designer acts as a ‘bricoleur’; someone whoshares the notion of ‘wicked’ design complexity, and who understands that thecomponents in the design space is interrelated and interdependent. A ‘bricoleur’,engages in the design space with systems thinking, in a dialectic process ofinterpretation and meaning-making, where judgment and imagination are the coredesign skills. I describe this process in terms of the design of a composition, guided bya parti (an early vision of the design) with the aim to create a strong format (agestalt) with desired emergent qualities. In this process I have pinpointed the‘embodiment of a format’ as the key activity if the designer wishes to create a designwith components in harmony and desired emergent qualities. When the designerembodies a format, the designer becomes aware of the different roles that componentsin a design have in the whole design, and as a consequence, this creates awareness ofthe qualities that emerges before the design is implemented. This paper also discussesthe support for this activity in the tools used by interaction design practitioners, andthat sketching is the tool that is mostly used in the activity of ‘format embodiment’.The conclusion is that there is a lack of support for ‘format embodiment’ in the toolsthat are promoted by mainstream HCI-research. Design researchers should view thedesigner as a ‘bricoleur’ to be able to address the need for tools for formatembodiment.

In this paper we take a look at digital applications to help the user with public transportation. The main goal was to evaluate the problem a user can face when aiming to use the public transportation system, and to create a application for Apple Iphone that can enhance and help the user, no matter if he is familiar with the local public transportation system, or if he is less familiar with it. The aim was that the user wouldnt need any previous knowledge to be able to use our application. We combined Location-Based Services with Realtime-travelinformation and trip planning to examine if this combination could make both of the two different user-groups satisfied. To understand the problematics a user faces when approaching the public transportation-scene, Scenario-Based Design is evaluated as a method to grasp this problem. Technological Acceptance Model is used to evaluate the user-centered qualitative tests on the application, which fitted good, considering that there was no other system to compare our application with. Our results show that you can enhance the User experience in the context of public transport for the wide target audience of all bussriders, familiar or infamiliar with using the public transportation. 100% of the users in our tests claimed they wanted to use the system instead of the present solutions. Since the Location-Based Services made it possible to make a travel-search without typing in where you are travelling from, (the built-in GPS in Iphone looked up where your closest busstop is) the use of our application was fast and satisfying for both groups of users. Furthermore we noticed that erlier recommended buttonsize for Smartphones or PDA’s turn out faulty in our tests, but this could need further investigations.

In this thesis an attempt is made to improve on the heuristic model presented by Desurvire and Wiberg from their paper published at the CHI 2008 conference (Desurvire & Wiberg, 2008).  The goal is to create a tool to help identify the types of problems that are found in the article on GAP (Desurvire & Wiberg, 2010).   The improvement that is presented in this work is a flowchart that uses material from GAP. This will simplify the identification of limitations in game designs, using the material collected by Desurvire and Wiberg (2010). The benefit that the implementation of a flowchart hopes to bring to the research and design society is to make the GAP tool more accessible to less informed users. The approach taken in this work, to strengthen the GAP tool was inspired by the solution presented by Barendregt, Bekker and Speerstra in Empirical evaluation of usability and fun in computer games for children (Barendregt, Bekker, & Speerstra, 2003), who made a flowchart to help identify the type of problem that could be found in connection to children playing computer games. The function of such a chart in comparison to a list is to make it more available to personal less experienced in game design and the rules of good game design (Malone, 1982). The flowchart was tested on an expert to verify the issues being used in it and on a usability test material. It was found that the Game Approachability Issue Definition (GAID) flowchart is able to identify, approachability issues, and thereby did improve on GAP as intended.

This thesis has created an image of the exchange of information among teachers in the Swedish upper secondary school. The study indicates that the exchange of information seems to be limited at all levels and the exchange that takes place outside the own teaching team occurs mainly through teachers personal networks. The study also shows barriers that may exist and the opportunities that an increased exchange may generate. From the picture that the empirical material provides and the theory that is presented a discussion is made around how IT can best support the organizational learning in schools. A concrete proposal is that at national level an IT platform should be created, which primarily focuses on materials that are created by its users and has an open architecture with a single login.

In this paper we analyze a social network specifically designed for the elderly, people with Dementia and people with generally low computer experience. This is a relatively unexplored use for such software, and our goal is to find out whether the technique to be used is simple enough to use for the intended user group, and generally how the whole situation is experienced by the users. To achieve this we conducted an expert evaluation and interviewed a number of users at two separate occasions during their first weeks with Modernfamilies. We came to the conclusion that this software generally is simple enough to use for the intended target group. Some of the users we came in contact with experienced the software as a positive addition to their daily lives, while some could not see any reason for a further use. During our own tests we found that Modernfamilies is indeed user friendly, but that it also has a number of technical shortcomings.