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.

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 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.

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.

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.

We suggest a rough and straightforward method to predict the dispersibility of modified cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) in nanocomposites using Hansen solubility parameters (HSP). The surface of CNC was modified using a novel approach where Y-shaped substituents with two different carbon chain lengths were attached to the surface. Approximate HSP values were calculated for the modified CNC, and dispersions of unmodified and modified CNC in solvents with varying HSPs were studied. The best dispersibility was observed in dichloromethane, when the CNC surface was modified with longer carbon chains. Dichloromethane has HSP similar to low-density polyethylene (LDPE). Nanocomposites with both unmodified and modified CNC were produced. The materials with modified CNC showed increased adhesion between the filler and the matrix, followed by a decreased water permeability compared to unmodified CNC, suggesting a better dispersibility of modified CNC in LDPE and confirming the usefulness of this approach.

This paper presents a multi-bit, continuous time delta-sigma modulator with 20 MHz bandwidth implemented in 65nm CMOS for cellular communication. The modulator features a third order, single loop filter and a 4-bit internal quantizer operating at 640 MHz. The DACs are resistive for lower thermal noise compared to the current-steering DACs and nonreturn-to-zero DAC pulse is used to reduce the clock jitter sensitivity. The measured prototype consumes 11mW from a 1.2 V power supply, and achieves an SNDR/SFDR of 63.5dB/76dB.