Search

This pilot study investigates how personalized content can be used in banking applications to encourage shaping good saving habits and increase overall financial literacy among young people. The preliminary result are recommendations including providing clear and personalized saving goals, incorporating educational content on investing and financial planning, and implementing features for tracking and categorizing expenses. Some trade-offs in usage that are presented are to minimize the use of personal data to what is necessary for personalization purposes, treat the data on a group level or increase transparency of data usage. The pilot study concludes that personalization is likely to be beneficial for both banks and their customers, given personal data is handled carefully and used in a sound financial consumer protection framework.

Providing necessary knowledge and skills for engineering students to become successful professionals is a tricky task. Besides disciplinary knowledge, e.g., communication skills, ability to work in teams, and international experience are often mentioned as important. Regarding internationalization, most engineering programs in Sweden rely on either student exchange or low-level internationalization-at-home, such as international literature and lecturers. This paper explores sustainable international experiences for students on their home turf provided through an international interdisciplinary collaboration where engineering students in Sweden and marketing students in Australia work together on a project. The setup simulates a consultancy firm with development and marketing offices in different countries that cooperate to launch an application for the Australian market. The paper is based on interviews and surveys with students and teachers participating in this, since 2017, ongoing project. Findings reveal that students encountered several challenges that are hard to simulate in an ordinary university setting, e.g., language barriers, cultural differences, time differences, differences between disciplines, and varying work habits and values. The results also highlight opportunities such as learning from each other's perspectives and expertise, developing a more professional approach, presenting to people from other industry backgrounds, and gaining a better understanding of different cultures. The results show that the students gain professional experience that is of great value for their future profession. From a teacher's perspective, the paper discusses important issues when setting up an international inter-disciplinary collaboration, e.g., alignment of exercises, building a common ground, and the need for flexibility.

Programming has gradually become an essential skill for engineers and scientists across disciplines and is an important part of the CDIO Syllabus covering fundamental knowledge and reasoning. Recently, there has been a shift away from introductory programming languages like C and Java towards Python, especially in programs where the focus lies on handling and analysing large quantities of data, such as energy technology, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. This paper illustrates the successful setup of a one-week-long introductory Python programming course with a hands-on approach. Given the limited time, a challenge is how to effectively teach students a meaningful set of skills that enables them to self-guide their future learning. Moreover, since the course does not include any summative assessment, we need other means of measuring students’ learning and guiding course development. We address these challenges by coupling short lectures with short quizzes for formative assessment, adding another learning activity to the course. We find that, in the absence of summative assessment, short, frequent quizzes with immediate feedback are an excellent tool to track the learning of a class as a whole. Students report that the quizzes, albeit challenging, improved their understanding of programming concepts, made them aware of potential mistakes, and were a fun learning experience. Furthermore, the results from this paper illustrate how a new programming language can be taught to students without prior programming skills in a short period of time. We summarise our lessons learnt for designing and integrating quizzes in short-format programming courses.

This paper examines Slack's effects on perceived stress levels among employees compared with classical work communication such as email. The study also investigates whether or not modern work platforms such as Slack affects the way people view and separate work and leisure time. As work from home increased drastically with the spread of Covid-19, simple and fast communication at work became more important than ever. Employees did not have the same possibility to meet daily at the office which created new demands on text-based communication platforms used for work purposes. The study was performed through a survey with 113 contributing respondents as well as three follow-up interviews. The study shows a difference in the respondents' approach toward Slack compared to email. Close to 11% stated that they read emails after work hours whereas 24% stated that they read Slack messages after work. Even though a slight difference can be seen between the two ways of communication, it becomes clear that it is more likely the ease-of-use and simple accessibility of modern work communication can cause stress than Slack itself. The results show that platforms such as Slack make it easier to interact with colleagues even after work hours. These results illustrate the issue of living in a time where the office is equally as remote as fixed.

Scrollytelling is the most common form of long-form journalism and has become a popular communication device because of its ability to capture an audience’s attention. This could make scrollytelling a suitable format for younger audiences, whose attitudes towards news differ from older generations; it is more individualistic and is driven by progress and entertainment. This paper investigates the effect scrollytelling has on journalistic content according to a younger audience. This was done by letting participants consume an article in both a normal static format, i.e., non-scrollytelling, and a scrollytelling format, and then provide insights through a questionnaire and interview. The results showed a significant difference in perceived engagement favoring the scrollytelling format and clear indications of which features scrollytelling can produce and how desirable these are. It also showed the strength of scrollytelling in its ability to invoke an emotional response.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was passed in 2016 to regulate companies’ use and storage of personal data, such as cookies, which are a common feature of the modern internet used to track user’s activity and preferences. This paper aims to examine people’s perspectives on cookie consent prompts and the effects of using deceptive design in cookie consent prompts. The results suggest that the design, rather than trust in the website’s organization, is crucial for users’ decisions to accept, decline, or manage cookies. Honest design is emphasized, and the dangers of deceptive design in cookie consent prompts are highlighted. Prompts that require full attention from the user and cover the content of the page are more likely to result in reflective and active decisions, but design friction that forces users to make a reflective choice causes irritation. The study also reveals a discrepancy between self-reported and observed behavior regarding cookie acceptance, as users tend to accept more cookies than they say they do.

The recent global pandemic has had great impact on our society, were restricted physical social interaction created changes that will have long-lasting effects on how certain activities are performed. One example is how the restrictive use of training facilities has impacted people's motivation of working out. Training online, through e.g., social media, increased during this time and many new apps for this purpose were launched. One way of differentiating in this landscape is the use of augmented reality. This paper investigates how augmented reality can be used in mobile fitness apps to improve the digital social interaction when working out. The study is based on prototyping and testing of a conceptual app and the results show the potential of augmented reality to improve social interaction in this context.

People make a vast number of decisions every day and these decisions invoke either a reflective or automatic behavior. Using e.g., nudging to influence a person’s behavior in a positive direction can have beneficial sustainable effects. This study aims to illustrate how digital nudging and design friction can be used to induce a reflective behavior in users of digital services during their decision-making. The field of study is the user’s reflection regarding sustainable choices when ordering meals online. The results provided from this initial case study showed that the participants preferred prototypes with implemented design approaches of digital nudging and design friction over a neutral prototype. Nudging had great impact on the decision-making process and provided feelings such as guilt if the participants did not select the option with the lowest carbon footprint. The design approach also induced a reflective behavior among the participants. Introducing so-called design friction provided a reflective behavior but had no impact on the participants decisions. Results also showed that even detailed information in the neutral prototype provided an informative and reflective behavior, which in some of the cases had an impact on the participants’ decisions.

TAIGA - Trasndiciplinary AI, Umeå university

Innovation has become increasingly important for most industries to cope with rapid technological changes as well as changing societal needs. Even though there are many sectors with specific needs when it comes to supporting innovation, the medical technology sector is facing several unique challenges that both increases the lead-time from idea to finished product and decreases the number of innovations that are developed. This paper presents a proposed innovation guide that has been developed and evaluated as a support for the innovation process within medical technology research. The guide takes the unique characteristics of the medical technology sector into account and serves as a usable guide for the innovator. The complete guide contains both a structure for the process and a usable web application to support the journey from idea to finished products and services. The paper also includes a new readiness level, Sect. 4.2 to provide support both when developing and determining the readiness for clinical implementation of a medical technology innovation.

Att främja interaktion och inkludering med AI-baserad teknik för barn som är långvarigt sjuka

This short paper describes the first prototyping of a self-evaluation process of Curriculum Agility at a Faculty of Technology in Sweden. The process comprises guided, semi-structured, individual interviews at different organisational levels within the faculty, a joint narrative based on those interviews, prioritizing development strategies per level, and jointly mapping them on importance and implementation time. The self-evaluation is part of and based on the research on the principles of Curriculum Agility. The results show the interplay in timely curriculum change for futureproof engineering education between the teaching staff, the systems and the people who control the systems. The self-evaluation brings together the different perspectives and perceptions within the faculty and gives insight in how those affect the willingness towards and occurrence of curriculum development. This work in progress indicates how doing such a qualitative self-evaluation paves the road for transparent strategic dialogues on a holistic level about what to give attention and organize differently.

Higher education should provide learning situations that prepare students for a future profession and make them world-ready. This paper reports insights from an international interdisciplinary collaborative project aiming to create learning experiences that are close to a professional situation. The collaboration setup simulates a setting of a digital agency with a development team in Sweden and a marketing team in Australia working together to solve a task. The collaborative project has been active since 2017, completing its fifth iteration in 2021. Postcourse survey results show that the students felt that a real situation was created with a high level of collaboration and commitment, internationalization, well selected digital collaborative tools, and that an interdisciplinary community of practice was created among the students.

Immersion has become an important factor for video games. This study investigates the effect that haptic feedback has on the perceived immersion of the player in two different setups; one with haptic feedback in the game controller and one with feedback in a haptic vest. Both experiments consisted of a user test, followed by answering a questionnaire. The results show tendencies of haptic feedback both increasing and inhibiting the ability to feel immersed by certain metrics, even if the statistical analysis shows no significant difference between the groups in any of the sub-scales. The results also show that most of the test subjects thinks that the vest and its' haptic feedback delivers more immersion to the gaming experience. The conclusion that can be drawn from both experiments is that haptic feedback improves the user feeling of immersion, more specifically regarding the players awareness of the surroundings in the game.

Den generella digitaliseringen av vårt samhälle och snabbheten i den digitala distributionen har bidragit till att alltmer av det som produceras publiceras på webben eller via andra digitala gränssnitt. Informationen syftar till att sprida ett budskap eller initiera en interaktion, vilket ställer krav på webbdesignen att skapa hög användbarhet och därmed öka effektiviteten hos gränssnittet. Konceptet webbdesign är brett och inkluderar kunskap inom alla de discipliner som behövs för att skapa och underhålla webbplatser och webbgränssnitt. Detta involverar såväl webbprogrammering, grafisk design som interaktionsdesign. I detta kapitel introducerar vi kortfattat hur man skapar effektiva designer för webbgränssnitt, genom att beskriva och diskutera detta utifrån perspektiven design, funktion och innehåll, kopplat till webbgränssnitt och webbaserade applikationer.

As a larger proportion of our lives moves onto the web, so does important and valuable information. This has led to an increase in different kinds of manipulative patterns (dark patterns) in web design with the sole purpose of being deceptive and tricking users. This paper discusses the comprehensive suite of deceptive design patterns on Internet services where the users are expected to comply with the use of cookies. This was done by analyzing 50 different home cooking recipe websites, regarding their appliance to GDPR and how they use different dark patterns in their design. Even though legislation tries tomove the choices from the website to the user, it is clear that by using deceptive design patterns it is possible to "bypass" the legislation and trick the user into making a favorable choice for the owners behind the website. The results show that out of the websites that were GDPR approved, a majority still use two types of deceptive design patterns - misdirection and sneak into basket.

This paper aims to provide guidance when designing acall to action in a digital system with the purpose to create anintended feeling and user engagement. The paper is based on a test of four different simple call to action constructions. The users clearly prefer constructions that have a high explainability and feels intuitive. Hence, the design should have a high level of transparency and show the user straight away what it demands from the user and what the result of the action is. Furthermore, the design should have a high usability to make it clear how touse the call to action.

Purpose – Children suffering from cancer or cardiovascular disease, who need extended periods of treatment in hospitals, are subjected to multiple hardships apart from the physical implications, for example, experienced isolation and disrupted social and academic development. This has negative effects long after the child’s recovery from the illness. The purpose of this paper is to examine the non-medical needs of children suffering from a long-term illness, as well as research the field of artificial intelligence (AI) – more specifically, the use of socially intelligent agents (SIAs) – in order to study how technology can enhance children’s interaction, participation and quality of life. Design/methodology/approach – Interviews were performed with experts in three fields: housing manager for hospitalized children, a professor in computing science and researcher in AI, and an engineer and developer at a tech company.Findings – It is important for children to be able to take control of the narrative by using an SIA to support the documentation of their period of illness, for example. This could serve as a way of processing emotions, documenting educational development or keeping a reference for later in life. The findings also show that the societal benefits of AI include automating mundane tasks and recognizing patterns. Originality/value – The originality of this study concerns the holistic approach of increasing the knowledge and understanding of these children’s specific needs and challenges, particularly regarding their participation and interaction with teachers and friends at school, using an SIA., Att främja interaktion och inkludering med AI-baserad teknik för barn som är långvarigt sjuka, lict

The Student Conference in Interaction Technology and Design is the annual grand finale of the course Current Topic in Interaction Technology and Design at the Department of Applied Physics and Electronics, Umeå University, Sweden. The main objective of the course is to give the participants a forum, where they can actively discuss scientific research and development through the implementation of their own ideas and interests. The course introduces students to independently finding and researching a topic of interest for them, finding related sources of information and related research publications, writing a scientific article, peer-reviewing, and presenting their work at a conference. The course is conducted in English which is a foreign language for most of the students. The final examination format is chosen as a conference to provide a realistic environment for the presentation of the results. The work of each student has been reviewed by other participants on the course and members of the department acting not only as teachers and consultants but also as program committee members. If the reviews are favorable, the paper is accepted as a full paper at the conference and included in the proceedings.

The concept of creativity is an important part of human society and the continuous evolution of artificial minds has raised questions on creativity among machines. This aim of the this study is to explore machine learning algorithms' ability to be creative. The study reported in this paper uses short samples of music generated by IBM Watson beats that are evaluated using expert assessment of 51 music teachers together with samples generated by humans as control samples. The results show that one of the machine learning generated samples showed the same level of creativity as the human generated samples. Hence, there are indications that today machine learning algorithms can create music that is hard to distinguish from human created music and can be considered creative.

Mentorskap bygger på att en erfaren yrkesutövare (mentor) hjälper någon annan (adept) att bli mer kompetent i sitt yrke. Den grundläggande idén är att ta vara på och sprida erfarenhetsbaserad kunskap inom organisationen. Genom att bidra till en kollegas professionella utveckling kan mentorn utveckla sina egna kunskaper, förmågor och förhållningssätt. För adepten är det en möjlighet att utveckla sig och sin egen roll som lärare inom akademin (Mathisen, 2009; Eastcott, 2016). Syftet med denna presentation är att delge erfarenheter från ett pedagogiskt mentorskapsprogram som utvecklats, genomförts och utvärderats vid Umeå universitet. Mentorskapsprogrammet är ett komplement till det högskolepedagogiska utbildningsutbudet och samtidigt ett sätt att tillvara ta de pedagogiskt meriterade lärarnas kompetens och vilja att bidra till hållbar pedagogisk utveckling. Umeå universitet har en pedagogisk meriteringsmodell där lärare kan ansöka om prövning mot kriterier för utnämning till meriterad eller excellent lärare. Modellen har haft stort genomslag och det finns över 200 utnämnda lärare. En fråga som uppstått är hur lärosätet kan ta tillvara dessa lärares erfarenhet, engagemang och kompetens. I en undersökning av de utnämnda lärarnas förväntningar och önskemål framkom en stark vilja att dela med sig av sin kunskap och inspirera andra till pedagogisk utveckling. Detta ledde till att ett pedagogiskt mentorsprogram initierades 2019 med syftet att främja erfarenhetsutbyte och kollegial samverkan inom lärosätet. Mentorskapsprogrammet består av en utbildning för mentorerna och ett pedagogiskt mentorstöd för adepterna. Ett intyg motsvarande en veckas högskolepedagogisk kurs utfärdas för de som genomför mentorsutbildningen och agerar mentorer. Vid antagning till mentorsplatserna prioriteras sökande med lång undervisningserfarenhet och ett reflekterande förhållningssätt till lärarrollen. Med andra ord: utnämning i Umeå universitetets pedagogiska meriteringsmodell är meriterande. För

Content in digital services is often filtered for users based on individual preferences with the possible consequence of creating a state referred to as a “filter bubble”. The objective of this paper is to examine which of a user’s inherent needs that are important to satisfy when a user is consuming personalized content in a digital service. The paper uses a survey to measure the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness of the Self-Determination Theory when users are consuming filtered content in digital services. The results show that the investigated services fail to satisfy all needs. A satisfactory user experience should include the opportunity for the user to satisfy the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness. For autonomy, transparency of filtering and choice about filtering should be offered. For competence, it is essential to offer content that the user can learn from, and also provide the right amount of choice throughout the service. The danger of filter bubbles is not personalization, but to remove choice about personalization.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate the use of Twitter in business as a medium for knowledge sharing and to crowdsource information to support innovation and enhance business relationships in the context of business-to-business (B2B) marketing. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a combination of methodologies for gathering data in 52 face-to-face interviews across five countries and the downloaded posts from each of the interviewees' Twitter accounts. The tweets were analysed using structural topic modelling (STM), and then compared to the interview data. This method enabled triangulation between stated use of Twitter and respondent's actual tweets. Findings: The research confirmed that individuals used Twitter as a source of information, ideas, promotion and innovation within their industry. Twitter facilitates building relevant business relationships through the exchange of new, expert and high-quality information within like-minded communities in real time, between companies and with their suppliers, customers and also their peers. Research limitations/implications: As this study covered five countries, further comparative research on the use of Twitter in the B2B context is called for. Further investigation of the formalisation of social media strategies and return on investment for social media marketing efforts is also warranted. Practical implications: This research highlights the business relationship building capacity of Twitter as it enables customer and peer conversations that eventually support the development of product and service innovations. Twitter has the capacity for marketers to inform and engage customers and peers in their networks on wider topics thereby building the brand of the individual users and their companies simultaneously. Originality/value: This study focuses on interactions at the individual level illustrating that Twitter is used for both customer and peer interactions that can lead to the sourcing of

This research investigates the role and use of Twitter inbusiness markets and benefits of using open social media channels to crowd source information to support innovation and build relationship in the context of business-to-business (B2B) marketing. This study is based on a combination of methodologies, 52 face-to-face interviews across five countriesare compared with a sample of their Tweets using Structural Topic Modelling (STM) which enabled triangulation between stated use of Twitter and respondent’s actual Tweets. The research confirmed that individuals used Twitter as a source ofinformation, ideas and innovation within their industry. Twitter enables the building of relevant business relationships through the exchange of new, expert and high quality information within like-minded communities in real time, between companies and their suppliers, customers and also their peers. This research highlights the business relationship building capacity of Twitteras it enables customer and peer conversations that eventually support the development of product and service innovations.

Within engineering education, there is an increasing need for providing our students withinternational experiences. This is most often done by exchange studies abroad. However, amajority of the students on engineering programs do not engage in any international exchange.This paper presents insights from a collaborative cross-disciplinary international project to givestudents international experience without having to travel. From both a sustainabilityperspective and a situation where e.g. a global virus outbreak stop students from travelling,solutions that give engineering students experience of working in an international setting arebecoming increasingly important. Initial challenges, for the teachers involved in the project,that were addressed before the project started, included the assessment of students, the useof online collaborative tools, assessment of students and the dependence between the twocourses. The learnings from the first and second iteration of the collaborative project weremainly focused around transparency, introduction of students to each other, communication,real-time issues and deadlines. By gradually remove these peripheral challenges for thestudents, resulting in making the students focus on the actual challenges surrounding theactual collaborative project. Even though this project is ongoing, the initial results clearly showthat by integrating courses between different countries and disciplines, it is possible to createan environment that strengthens the students’ ability in teamwork, communication andaddresses the cultural and professional aspects of working as an engineer in an internationalcontext.

This study evaluates how Generation Y, also known as millennials, perceive different web design approaches. Two web design approaches were compared, using methods in User Experience design. The first approach is minimalism and the second one is maximalism. Minimalism has been a recurring web design trend ever since the end of the twentieth century. Maximalism is claimed to be the most important web design trend of 2018. The interesting question is if millennials who have grown up with minimalism in web design are interested in a new approach – the maximal approach. This study probe the opinions, thoughts and emotions of millennials after they have browsed two websites, one developed with minimalism and one developed with maximalism. The results show that the participants in this study were more exited by the maximal design. However, combining quantitative and qualitative data, the conclusion is that the different design approaches are more or less suitable to use depending on the message that the website is supposed to convey.

This study evaluates if intentionally added design friction affects users level of satisfaction when using a mobile application. Today most applications are designed to have as little friction as possible. An interesting question is if a more mindful interaction will lead to more satisfied users. In this study two prototypes inspired by the Headspace application where tested. One prototype had added design friction and the other had none. The participants were asked to rate their experience and to choose which prototype they preferred. The result shows that most participants of the test would choose the mobile application with added design friction and that they felt more satisfied when they had a clear understanding of the goal of the task.

In recent years, electronic paper – a display technology known for its low power consumption and paper-like appearance has started emerging in several consumer products, replacing reading and writing on regular paper to some extent. In this paper, the capabilities of electronic ink technology is evaluated in the context of drawing and note taking. Our tests were done by letting test participants use two different tablet devices as replacements for daily activities that usually require pen and paper; the reMarkable, using an electronic ink display, and the Apple iPad, using an LCD screen. The results from the tests showed that for writing, the reMarkable was superior to the iPad, although insufficient when it comes to software and user experience. This shows that the nature of tasks performed throughout a day benefits from a less niched, more do-all device such as an iPad. In summary, the results from this evaluation shows that while the technology has come a long way mimicking the look and feel of paper, integrating electronic paper technology into a tablet in this case demands a little too much of the technology itself. Ultimately, electronic paper still has some way to go before being the go to paper replacement that has been long sought after.

Pupils with concentration disorders need an education that is adapted for them for fulfilling the goals of their education. They often need an adjustable learning environment with fewer distractions. Unfortunately, the public education system often fails in providing such pupils the aid and the support they need. This paper presents a study regarding how virtual reality (VR) can be used as a learning support for pupils aged 16–18 years with diagnosed concentration disorders and how this technology can support them in accomplishing their educational goals. This study was performed as a case study with three sources of data – (1) observations during a key task test, (2) qualitative interviews with the participants, and (3) a survey. The findings are presented in three themes; 1) increasing the ability to concentrate, 2) the suitability of using VR technology in learning, and 3) developing knowledge acquisition with the support of VR technology. The findings indicate that the level of concentration can be increased while using VR technology due to a controlled environment and that VR technology can be suitable as a complement in education for pupils with concentration disorders and can support pupils in developing their own knowledge according to their specific needs.

The global nature of business has increased the importance ofstudents’ international experience during their studies at the university. Usinginteractive technologies the projects investigated ways to increase students’motivation to take responsibility for the learning process by creating “real”international co-creation experience online. This paper presents learningsfrom two consecutive international collaborative teaching between EdithCowan University, Australia, and Umeå University, Sweden, in 2017 and EdithCowan University and the University of Rijeka, Croatia, in 2018. Feedbackfrom the students showed they enjoyed working across cultures and academicdiscipline on simulated products and marketing campaigns. Issues raisedincluded: the need to explicitly explain how all parts of project is going to workand how the students execute their role. Incorporation of a formalintroduction process for the students in each location so all students have thesame knowledge about each other. Furthermore, the provision of real-timeopportunities to collaborate in lectures and the setting joint deadlines betweenthe units are of importance. Despite some of the shortcomings of the project,it has provided a firm foundation for the refinement of ongoing collaborativeteaching.

With the digitalization and increasing number of Internet users,more and more personal data breaches occur. Many people are not awareof their personal data rights and have not received any instructions on howto act in situations such as when their personal data is abused. This issomething that illustrates the flaws of the Internet. A technology thatprovides solutions to some of these problems, such as trust andtransparency, is the blockchain technology. Hence, the objective of thispaper is to investigate knowledge about personal data rights and to explorethe design of a prototype of a blockchain application for increased securityand transparency. User tests were conducted, highlighting the greatestneeds for users to feel secure and in control over their personal data. Thisknowledge provide the foundation for a prototype based on blockchaintechnology that gives the users increased security and forces those whostore personal data to be more transparent with the usage.

When using online nudges to steer people in the right directionwhile they are making a decision, there is usually one preferable outcome.What might happen if the user experience is inadequate, will the nudgesstill work or might they be undermined? In this paper we investigate thecorrelation between user experience and digital nudges in a decisionmaking process. A user A/B test was conducted to investigate theproblem. The test participants visited one of two websites that includedthe same nudges where they were nudged to choose option (a) instead of(b). The only difference in the websites was the quality of the userexperience, one website design had a good user experience while the otherone offered an inadequate user experience. The results showed thateveryone who was assigned the good user experience chose (a), while twoof the inadequate experience participants chose (b). The results indicatethat user experience design can be used for digital nudging.

The global nature of business has made international experience during studies at the university important. This short paper presents learnings and gives insights from a project that seeks to investigate the possibility of giving students international experience international experience without having to travel abroad. The paper describes two test runs of an ongoing collaboration between Umeå University in Umeå, Sweden, and Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. The results show that students want to engage in international collaboration, however, there are many issues to address to create a working collaboration.

The global nature of business means getting international experience during studies at the university is continuously increasing in importance. Many students on the engineering programs in Sweden also make the decision to abroad to gain international experience that is valuable in their future profession. However, this is usually not the majority of the students. Therefore, it is of great importance that engineering students get the possibility to get international experience without having to engage in exchange studies. This paper presents learnings from a pilot study from a project that seeks to create international experience without having to travel abroad (Wen, Zaid, & Harun, 2015; de Marcos, Domínguez, de Navarrete, & Pagés, 2014). The project involved the interweaving of the content of two units, an engineering unit at Umeå University and a marketing unit at Edith Cowan Univer-sity (ECU) in Perth, Australia. In 2017, the collaboration was set up between the fourth year engineering unit Prototyping for Mobile Applications and the third year marketing unit Current Issues in Marketing. Consequently, the engineering students created prototypes while the marketing students created marketing material. The virtual communication platform Slack was used to assist collaboration between students (Labus, Despotovi´c-Zraki´c, Radenkovi´c, Bogdanovi´c, & Radenkovi´c, 2015). During the second iteration in 2019, the engineering unit Social Media Technology was the counterpart to the marketing unit. However, the setup regarding the different chores was the same. The student reviews of the two units and of the project showed that they liked the idea of international collaboration. However, a more structured approach would be beneficial. Students on both sides struggled with the unknowns, as they were, sometimes, dependent on students on the other side of the planet. Evaluating the project among teachers involved, revealed some challenges. However all teachers consi

The growth of social media has impacted on people’s everyday life, precipitating the development of a new set of guidelines for designing applications (apps), creating heightened user engagement without crossing the line to frustration. This study focuses on how push notifications from social media apps should be designed in order to keep the user intrigued and returning to the app, without annoying the user to the point where they turn the push notifications off. The exponential growth in the usage of social media has emphasised the importance of designing apps with a user-centred functionality. The study used a combination of a survey questionnaire and a qualitative perception study, with the results collected as both data and extracts from interviews. This study identified that a high frequency of notifications from social media apps has led to resentment by users against pushes notifications in general. The app-user relationship is cemented from the beginning of the experience and the action the user takes in relation to notifications depends on their perception of the senders’ intentions. Younger users’ actions are also predominately driven by the phenomena Fear of Missing Out.

The global nature of business means getting international experience during studies at the universityis continuously increasing in importance. This project seeks to investigate the possibility of increasing students’ motivation to take responsibility for the learning process by creating “real” situations including international experience without having to travel abroad (Wen, Zaid & Harun, 2015; De-Marcos et al, 2014). This project involved the interweaving of the content of two units: Prototyping for Mobile Applications at Umeå University, Sweden, a fourth year unit on the five-year MSc engineering program in interaction technology and design and Current Issues in Marketing at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia, a third year marketing unit. Consequently, the engineering students created prototypes for mobile apps while the marketing students created marketing material. The virtual communication platform Slack was used to assist collaboration between students (Labus et al,2015). The challenge in the design of this collaborative curriculum was that the students must be able to finish their unit in case of collaborative problems. Hence, there was no total dependence between the two units and the lecturers used ad hoc flexibility over the course of the collaboration. It was also decided not to give the students all information about the project at the start of the units but rather on a need-to-know basis. The student review of the project showed that they liked the idea of the project but a more structured approach would be beneficial. Students on both sides of dyad often struggled with the unknowns, as they were reliant on students half a world away. However, from the communication platform it could be observed that the students exhibited skills in finding solutions and workarounds to complete their assessments. Analysing the project among teachers involved, revealed some challenges, however all teachers consider that this type of international collaborative

Loading screens are still important in 2018, and there is a reason for that: they provide a great way to give feedback to the user in the interface during wait times after a user's action. Previous research shows that it is essential for a well designed interface and it is a well established way to increase and maintain a user's satisfaction. This study specifically examine the looped, passive animation screen with regards to how the animation speed affects the user. Results suggests that with faster animation, perceived wait time gets shorter and the user is more satisfied.

Progression bars and spinners have long been the norm when providing feedback during wait times on the web. However, a more recent trend is the use of skeleton screens. This paper aims to evaluate the usefulness of skeleton screens as an alternative to spinners. This is done user testing a fictional news site with two variations, one showing skeleton screens before content is loaded, and another utilizing spinners. Both a questionnaire and measuring timing while finding a specified article when entering a website for the first time was used. The results show that the page using skeleton screens, scored higher on average on both perceived speed and ease of navigation. However, people using the page with spinners were faster at finding the article when entering the site for the first time. The results of this paper cannot show any significant differences in any of the comparisons between the web pages.

In recent years, schools made large investments to increase the integration and use of contemporary technologies in teaching and learning.Today iPads and educational applications are growing in popularity and are commonly used. These technologies have a potential beneficial effect on the learning, but studies show that some applications have flaws that hinder these positive effects, for example regarding the feedback provided to the user. This study has determined a number of guidelines for effective feedback in a learning situation and has further shown how well these guidelines can be reached in an educational application today. The study shows that there are both advantages and disadvantages of feedback in an application compared to giving feedback in a more traditional learning situation. Many of the guidelines for effective feedback were found to be possible to reach in an application, and the greatest advantage found in applications is that they can provide feedback timely on each action taken by the pupils.