Analogies can be used in most areas of human communication to highlight points of special interest. The creation of specific, specialised patterns, examples, or analogies for facilitating communication is resource-consuming. We therefore hypothesize that there are universal patterns that can be used and reused more economically, compared to specialised patterns, for indexing and communicating knowledge. We have conducted empirical tests with altogether 204 students, each one of whom was given 20 minutes to solve problems from six different scientific areas. The results of our tests show clearly an improvement of their problem solving skill when universal patterns were employed as cognitive aids. The average result of the test group that used universal patterns was 81 per cent higher than that of the control group.

This feature article applies the concepts of ‘make-believe’ and ‘make-belief’ formulated by performance theorist, Richard Schechner, in a study of two role-play communities, Midian City and Gor in the online 3D environment Second Life. With make-believe fantasy role-play at their core, members of the two communities negotiate the social and political norms, the goals of the com- munity and as well as the boundaries of the virtual role-play. The article explores the innovative forms of interaction at play in these negotiation processes, using (cyber)ethnographic methods and the analysis of various textual sources, Goffman’s theories of social performance as well as various types of performance discussed by Schechner and Auslander. The innovative forms of interaction are analysed in the light of the new technology and as performances and make-belief strategies directed towards realizing performative utopias, towards influencing the direction in which leaders and residents of this digital context want the role-play to develop, and towards shaping the emergent social and cultural rules and the political framework of the role-play. 

This study investigates how the members of four different role-playing communities on the online platform Second Life perform social as well as dramatic roles within their community. The trajectories of power influencing these roles are my main focus. Theoretically I am relying primarily on performance scholar Richard Schechner, sociologist, Erving Goffman, and post-structuralists Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felìx Guattari. My methodological stance has its origin primarily within literature studies using text analysis as my preferred method, but I also draw on the (cyber)ethnographical works of T.L. Taylor, Celia Pearce, and Mikael Jakobsson. In this dissertation my focus is on the relationship of the role-player to their chosen role especially in terms of the boundary between being in character, and as such removed from "reality," and the popping out of character, which instead highlights the negotiations of the social, sometimes make-belief, roles. Destabilising and problematising the dichotomy between the notion of the online as virtual and the offline as real, as well as the idea that everything is "real" regardless of context, my aim is to understand role-play in a digital realm in a new way, in which two modes of performance, dramatic and social, take place in a digital context online.

Linden Lab, the company behind the online world Second Life (SL), invites multiplic- ity with slogans like “Your World. Your Imagination.”1 Yet many SL residents’2 profiles give evidence of adjustment to group narratives or norms in various social spaces inside the world. They seem to favor already established social and cultural conventions when creating an online identity; hence they also adjust to already existing hierarchies. I argue that residents in SL recreate social orders and power structures similar to ones already existing outside SL, even though they are of course under no obligation to do so. In that sense social and cultural patterns are reproduced and in some cases even amplified. My aim here is to trace social dynamics evident in three groups within this digital space and my hypothesis is that the rules of these social spaces then function as a foundation and guideline for identity formation, and in fact almost seem to prescribe a certain way of acting or behaving. Two of the groups have a clear role-playing profile, based on books and movies, whereas role-playing is not required, although possible, in the third group. All of them are thus removed from the lifeworld by constituting either purely fictive or, conversely, historical constructs, but they can nevertheless provide clues to how the residents think in an environment that is not primarily “real life” based, and in which anything, even a utopia, can be possible. By reading group charters and profile descriptions found in the SL search engine, and studying articles and blogs functioning either as group information channels or journals for individuals in each community, I examine the motivations and power structures driving avatar and online identity construction in role-playing communities, with a focus on the interac- tion between the overarching “state” power, the Linden Lab, the three communities, their respective role-models, and the rules that govern them, as well as the individuals that are a part of them. 

A purpose behind the United Nation’s Agenda 2030is that no one shall be left behind, which implies that supportfor vulnerable people shall be seen as clearly significant. Inthat context, assistive technologies serve purposes of improvingdisabled individuals’ inclusiveness and overall well-being. Thiscontribution covers ongoing experiments on techniquesdeveloped for Smart Homes, where the outcomes of suchdevelopments are targeted towards young people withfunctional disabilities, in order to provide them withindependence in their own living space.

This is a qualitative study of the relationship between search engine optimization (SEO) and usability in web development for mobile devices. The aim of the study was to examine Google's algorithm update Mobile-First Index (MFI) and its impact on web development with the goal of gaining high positions for websites in Google's indexing. In previous research, results were found on the relationship between SEO and usability on computers, where the intent was to determine what was most important of the two. Related research also discusses how opinions about SEO differ between experts and end users, as well as the importance of different SEO parameters in indexing. Scientific basis was not available for MFI, due to the modernity of the update. Therefore, interviews with five experts in the field of SEO were conducted in this study. There, SEO and usability were discussed along with the growing use of mobile devices and the update that Google is now implementing to its algorithm, which has been summarized in eighteen parameters to use as web development support. Their perceptions about the area show that the difference between SEO and usability is considerably reduced today than before. It is no longer about usability versus SEO, but SEO has changed to work with usability as well. In this conclusion, it is therefore possible to argue that usability is more important than SEO, especially in mobile situations. Updates such as MFI will not have a major impact on design methods and web development if websites are mobile-friendly, hence positions in Google's indexing should not be affected. The experts instead see greater opportunities for web development today, as the more technical web also offers more opportunities, which contribute to a growing digital market. 

It is easier for students to learn tacit skills if they get much feedback on their behavior. Extensive resources are required for providing students with enough quantities and qualities of a specific feedback that is directly related to the students’ skills or lack of skills. We demonstrate how the demand for extensive feedback resources can be decreased by allowing the students to review film-clips from situations when they and their fellow students received qualified feedback. We will demonstrate a strategy in which we can film students’ behaviors by using cost effective filming techniques. The films allowed the students to study their own behavior in detail. Our conclusions from the study is that the presented type of strategy for supporting learning works very well and we advise other researchers to test similar strategies when they need to mass-produce teaching of tacit skills.

People who suffer from dementia are often isolated due to lack of ways of communication. In many cases verbal communication can be difficult to perform at all. We created Beacon with the goal to let people with dementia interact with a very simple and intuitive control interface to give them a means of non-verbal communication, and let them take control over the soundscapes that Beacon is capable of producing. In this paper we describe our concept Beacon, its physical form and how the design makes it possible for a person with dementia to control the software by moving around items of different colors and sizes on its surface to create synthesized and sampled sounds. We hope that Beacon will produce positive results among people with dementia, and that the interaction will be rewarding.

The software engineering community is concerned with improvements in existing methods and development of new and better methods. The research approaches applied to take on this challenge have hitherto focused heavily on the formal and specifying aspect of the method. This has been done for good reasons, because formalizations are the means in software projects to predict, plan, and regulate the development efforts. As formalizations have been successfully developed new challenges have been recognized. The human and social role in software development has been identified as the next area that needs to be addressed. Organizational problems need to be solved if continued progress is to be made in the field. The social element is today a little explored area in software engineering. Following with the increased interest in the social element it has been identified a need of new research approaches suitable for the study of human behaviour. The one sided focus on formalizations has had the consequence that concepts and explanation models available in the community are one sided related in method discourses. Definition of method is little explored in the software engineering community. In relation to identified definitions of method the social appears to blurring. Today the software engineering community lacks powerful concepts and explanation models explaining the social element. This thesis approaches the understanding of the social element in software engineering by applying ethnomethodologically informed ethnography and ethnography. It is demonstrated how the ethnographic inquiry contributes to software engineering. Ethnography is also combined with an industrial cooperative method development approach. The results presented demonstrate how industrial external and internal socio political contingencies both hindered a method implementation, as well as solved what the method was targeted to do. It is also presented how project members’ method deployment - as a social achievement is played out in practice. In relation to this latter contribution it is provided a conceptual apparatus and explanation model borrowed from social science, The Documentary method of interpretation. This model addresses core features in the social element from a natural language point of view that is of importance in method engineering. This model provides a coherent complement to an existing method definition emphasizing formalizations. This explanation model has also constituted the underpinning in research methodology that made possible the concrete study results.

Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur några förskollärare upplever digital kompetens, hos sig själv samt i verksamheten, deras upplevelser av hur digital kompetens kan påverka deras arbete med IKT och deras upplevelser av att arbeta med IKT. Forskningsfrågorna lyder: Hur upplever några förskollärare sin digitala kompetens? Hur upplever några förskollärare att deras digitala kompetens påverkar hur de arbetar i förskolans verksamhet? Hur upplever några förskollärare arbete med IKT? Studien har en kvalitativ forskningsansats med semistrukturerade intervjuer som datainsamlingsmetod. Det har medverkat sex förskollärare från sex olika verksamheter i studien. Bearbetning av det insamlade materialet skedde genom en fenomenologisk analys samt en tematisk analys. Analysen presenteras i fyra kategorier: förskollärares upplevelser av digital kompetens, ett kvalitativt arbete med IKT, stöd och möjligheter för kompetensutveckling samt styrdokumentens roll och förväntningar. Resultatet visade på en skillnad mellan förskollärares definition av digital kompetens och hur skolverket definierar digital kompetens. Det framkom även en stor variation i hur säkra förskollärare upplever sig vara i sitt arbete med IKT. Resultatet visar även att det finns en skillnad mellan tillgången till digitala verktyg i verksamheter samt tillgång till kompetensutveckling. Slutsatsen är att arbete med IKT i förskolans verksamhet har en koppling till hur förskollärare ser på sin egna digitala kompetens, deras attityd och intresse till arbete med IKT samt de digitala möjligheter som verksamheten har att erbjuda.