In this paper findings are presented from a study on how sensor equipped computer game technologies can be used to create tools for educational settings to learn about for example concepts in physics. In a workshop focusing on the concept of gravity, a group of children interacted with an environment consisting of both physical and digital interactive components. We discuss how the mixed digital and physical setting affects the children's coordination and collaboration and their strategies to solve the given assignment. Findings suggest that the embodied nature of the technology create new opportunities for collaboration and that the alignment of the physical and digital parts of the interactive setting is important in order to create a seamless experience that takes advantage of the properties of the respective media.

Quite often the product of design is assessed in interaction design education, but we need to develop criteria also for courses that focus on learning to conduct and manage the design process. An earlier approach to set grading criteria has been grounded in the SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome) taxonomy. Students need, however, to learn practitioners' criteria, rather than teachers' criteria, to make a successful transfer to practice. One way of achieving that is to align criteria with the conceptions of design process quality used by professional interaction designers. The question is then what those conceptions are, and how they can be accounted for in assessment criteria for projects in interaction design education. A phenomenographic research method was used, and interviews were conducted with ten experienced interaction designers. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results show that professional interaction designers see design process quality as inspiration, a well-grounded rationale, employment of established methods, and constraints management. These conceptions are mapped to a criteria-referenced grading scale. The criteria should, with careful transfer, be applicable also in other design disciplines.

This paper reports the results of an action research project investigating the articulation of interaction design qualities for a web portal for urban planning and development. A framework for analyzing interaction design qualities is presented. The framework consists of the practical, the social, the aesthetic, the structural and the ethical quality dimensions, and it was tried out in practice with developers and designers of the portal. This provided experiences used to revise the framework. The results indicate that the framework can be improved by splitting the social quality dimension into a communicational dimension and an organizational dimension. The structural dimension is also renamed to the technical dimension.

In designing socially interactive robots we have focused on robot movement and its role in multi-modal human-robot communication. In this chapter we describe design and evaluation of robot body movements supporting communication, investigating the idea of using speed and orientation adjustments as design elements in human-robot interaction. The scenario studied includes a robotic shopping trolley that offers products via speech and GUI to the user while both are moving in a supermarket-like environment. Our results show that if the robot slows down while making such offers, users are more prone to react upon them and to take the product. However, even from our early pre-study with mock-up robots we observed that users tended not to mention the robot’s slow-down movements, even if these movements were shown several times to them during a video-based debriefing. This phenomenon, that users react implicitly on the robot’s movements without being consciously aware of them, was confirmed during an experimental study with a fully integrated robot prototype. We discuss our results by reflecting on human-robot interaction design methods, and we draw implications from the lessons learned in the study of the design of robot behaviours. In particular, we list a whole set of challenges for HRI when both the user and the robot are moving.

This article highlights how a gender perspective can be performed by design as critical practice. Two common household appliances – a drill and a hand blender – were used as a starting point. Inspired by Derrida’s term deconstruction, the product language of the tools was analysed and then switched in two new prototypes: the hand blender Mega Hurricane Mixer and the drill Dolphia. The prototypes were shown at exhibitions and lectures. The comments by the audience show that a switching of product language entails that their relationship to the artefact itself also changes. Overall, the elements, which previously had been perceived as ‘lacking transparency’, were now visible. For example, the drill was identified as a "drill for women" and considered inadequate for drilling, and the mixer revealed needs and functions that the traditional mixer did not satisfy. This implies that design should not only be seen as ‘final products’ but as a part of a social process that takes place between the user, the artefact and the norms of society. By switching the product languages it was possible to highlight how gender values are connected to each design and each artefact. This means that the design of the artefacts around us is not fixed, but can be renegotiated and situated in time, place, and context.

PHP är ett av de ledande programmeringsspråken för webbutveckling. Det är ett flexibelt och enkelt språk som används för att skapa dynamiska webbplatser. Denna bok ger en lättillgänglig och komplett introduktion till PHP. Läsaren får den kunskap som behövs för att snabbt komma igång och skapa egna webbapplikationer.

Boken erbjuder stöd i det egna arbetet, möjligheter till fördjupning och ger en beskrivning av allt från installation av PHP till felsökning av programmeringskod. Bokens pedagogiska framställning kräver ingen teknisk kunskap, läsaren leds framåt genom ett rikt utbud av övningar som ger möjlighet att tillämpa innehållet.

Webbutveckling med PHP och MySQL är i första hand en lärobok för universitetsstudier i webbprogrammering men även en handbok för webbdesigners och programmerare i näringslivet.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how potential circumventing media and communication technologies could potentially assist the information flow when authoritarian regimes decide to block the main channels, such as the Internet and the mobile phone networks. The point of departure is the recent Internet blackouts in countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), such as Egypt, Bahrain and Libya. We discuss several applications that were developed as a response to state repression in these countries, and their future potential that would allow people to communicate more freely despite Internet and mobile network blackouts.

This paper explores the attitudes, conceptions and use of social media in net-based higher education. By using statistical and content analysis of data generated by two surveys directed to students (n = 109) and teachers (n = 77) involved in net-based higher education, we explore how social media influence the design of learning context in net-based higher education courses. By applying the affordance theory, we describe actual as well as preferred use of social media from an educational, social, and technical perspectives. The results showed that the potential use of social media have not yet been fully found in the context of net-based higher education. However, the perceived benefit of using social media differs in relation to educational topics. The potential use of social media in net-based higher education courses is discussed.

The design and development of commercial AAA videogames is a difficult and complex endeavor. It involves large development teams that together aim to create high quality, entertaining games that sell well. Up to now, very few scholars have documented or problematized this practice. This thesis presents a study of the design practices in big game development studios that make commercial AAA videogames. The study focuses on the so called ideation part of videogame development, in which the design ideas are generated, developed and communicated in the work team. The primary data comes from interviews conducted with seven Swedish game developers, but a large quantity of secondary data has also been used. The study shows that the design practice in many studios is to focus on the player experience instead of game features. To secure the intended player experience, the studios have moved away from "big design up front" in the form of classical game design documents, and are instead using a variety of verbal, visual and audial tools to articulate and communicate their vision of the game-to-be. In the thesis, I coin the term lodestars to denote these articulations of the main game concept and the intended player experience. I then move on to describe, exemplify and categorize them. The main purpose of lodestars is to allow everyone in the development team to make design choices in line with a commonly shared design vision in order to create a unified player experience.

In this paper we introduce an application for tablet devices with Android operating system called The Music Puzzle.This work is part of an ongoing projectcalled The Soundparkï¿œUsing modern smartphones to create interactive listening experiences for hearing impaired. In the Soundpark, we intend to provide different experimental applications for interacting with sound. The aim of the presented study was to create interactive and game-inspired listening experiences for persons with hearing impairmens (and possibly using hearing aids or having cochlea implants). Audio-based programs constitute a significant part of the Android market, but the scopes of existing applications are limited. Modern smart devices open up new possibilities both in terms of usingexternal information as input and providing real-time audio feedback to the user, and the Music Puzzle has a novel approach that explores the new possibilities.

In this paper we present findings based on the design and study of a game like activity that allows for physical and bodily interaction around abstract concepts like energy and energy consumption in a collaborative learning setting. The game, called Weather Gods and Fruit Kids, uses motion sensing technologies in combination with tactile and audio feedback to create an embodied interactive setting without computer screens. We analyze and discuss the properties of the interactive setting as well as the interactions with and around the system using characteristics such as multiple modalities of response, large space interaction and aspects of focus and attention. The work suggests that alternative pedagogical activities can be created providing new entries to theoretical concepts using an embodied interaction approach. In particular it may support kinesthetic learners in their preference to learn by being physically engaged.

In this work we present the monster eye installation, consisting of an artifact with which you can examine secrets that are hidden inside the walls.

Based on strong philosophical traditions, cognitive science results and recent discourses within the discipline of knowledge organization, the authors argue for a perspectivist approach to concepts in information systems. In their approach ontology is dissociated from concept, and instead conceptualization is left up to the epistemic activity of the information system user. A new spatial ontology model is explicated that supports multiple perspective-relative conceptual projections of the same domain. With an example domain and a demo application they provide a preliminary proof of concept of how different perspectives yield alternative classifications, categorizations and hierarchies, all the way to a different ways of narrating the domain. The results suggest the potential of multi-perspective knowledge organization systems that not support search and retrieval of information but even the articulation and conceptual disposition of information.

This paper proposes the concept of enactive system as an alternative to the standard assumption of the human-computer-interaction and elaborates the idea of content mediation as enactive media. Our system consists of the two elements coupled in a holistic manner by means of bodily and spatial involvement, or enactment. It has two directions and is recursive by nature involving the impact of the technology on the human agent and the effect of the human experience on the technology. Instead of the standard explicit interface in the middle there is an implicit connecting surface, based on unconscious psychophysiological reactions. Our aim is not only to point out an analytic approach to existing media systems, but also to develop radically novel media concepts implied by the concept.

In this paper we focus on mobile language learning, and the design and development of a mobile application for teenager’s homework in Swedish as a second language. In the project we have used participatory design methods, with the aim to have a user-driven design process. We wish discuss how these design methods, and design activities relate to how design is viewed in the field of educational science.

How players experience games emotionally is the central question in this essay. The answer varies and depends on the game. Yet, most of the actions in games are goal-driven. Cognitive emotion theories propose that goal status appraisals and emotions are connected, and this connection is used to formulate how goal-driven engagement works in the games. For example, fear is implied when the player’s goal of keeping the player character alive is under threat. This goal-driven engagement is not enough to explain all the emotions involved in gameplay. Empathy, reacting emotionally to an emotional expression is a potential source of emotions in character-based games. As such, the visual beauty of the environment and character can be pleasurable. Lastly, sounds and music can modulate the emotions of the player. For example, loud and fast music tend to correlate with emotions with high arousal. The emotional experience of playing is an amalgam of these different sources. Importantly, the emotional experience is not straightforwardly caused by the game but it depends on the players’ appraisal of the situation in the game.

Gameplay design patterns are semiformal interconnected descriptions features of gameplay. While most previous patterns have been identified through analyzing existing games, this paper proposed how patterns can be identified using theories as starting points. More specifically, we propose three different approaches to harvesting gameplay design patterns: 1) using theories as analysis foci, 2) distilling patterns from theories, and 3) using theories to understand the consequences of having or not having patterns present in a game design. The three approaches are presented together with examples of their use, and based upon this the concept of Theory Lenses as an analytical tool is introduced as a way of allowing theories independent of their research field to be applied to research on gameplay design.

The article proposes that the theories of grounded cognition and embodiment can be utilized in explaining the role-playing experience. Embodied cognition theories assume that cognition is not only a feature of the brain, but the body as a whole and it’s interaction with the environment  it operates in. Grounded cognition proposes that an action, perceiving an action, and thinking about an action rely on the same processes. Moreover, knowledge is inseparably grounded to bodily states and modalities. Based on the grounded cognition theory and especially embodiment, we argue the character immersion and bleed are natural consequences on how the brain works. Also we illustrate how the operation of  simulators explain some of the central features in the creation of fiction and it’s similarities to our everyday experiences. In general, grounded cognition provides a rather simple explanation how fiction is experienced as in this theoretical framework action and thinking about an action largely utilize the same brain mechanics and so are phenomenally similar.

Critical perspectives are rare in human-computer-interaction (HCI) research. Although digital artifacts constitute a fundamental part of the contemporary lifestyle it is seldom discussed how the use of such objects affect the way we understand the world. We propose a new concept, norm-critical design, in which the unit of analysis is the interaction design consisting of technology, interaction, images, sounds, text and how they together construct meaning.  We argue that there is a need to unpack how digital design embeds norms and to examine how the relationship between norms and design can be critically examined.

     The discussion in this paper is based on two different empirical studies. First we will discuss how normative structures are present in the image blog site bilddagboken.se The other empirical material that we discuss is a case study of the design work in a youth counselling site in Sweden (umo.se). The case study gives examples of how different design elements are used in the design and development of websites in order to create a norm-critical experience for the users. We describe how these concerns affect the design outcome in the development of an animation about love.

Although digital artefacts constitute a fundamental part of thecontemporary lifestyle it is seldom discussed how the use of such objects affect the way we understand the world. We propose a new concept, norm-­critical design, in which the unit of analysis is the interaction design consisting of technology, interaction, images, sounds, text and how they together construct meaning. We argue that there is a need to unpack how digital design embeds norms and to examine how the relationship between norms and design can becritically examined. We base our discussion on studies of online youth counselling.