Med afsæt i en case om udviklingen af en mobilapplikation til at understøtte specialestuderendes proces argumenterer artiklens forfattere for, at der eksisterer et stort og uudnyttet potentiale i forhold til at udvikle læringsunderstøttende apps til smartphones, ikke mindst når det gælder læreprocesser, der foregår uden for skemalagte undervisningsforløb på universitetsuddannelserne, såsom specialeforløbet. En gennemgang af den pædagogiske litteratur om specialeprocessen skaber grundlag for at vie begreberne personalisering og motivation særlig opmærksomhed i forhold til specialeapp-casen. Central to this article is the case of developing a mobile application to support the process of writing a Master’s thesis. The authors argue for the existence of a large and unexploited potential in respect to developing academic learning apps for smartphones, especially apps supporting learning processes that do not take place within scheduled university courses, such as the process of writing the Master’s thesis. A review of the pedagogical literature on this process serves as the basis for bestowing special attention to the concepts of customization and motivation in the case of the Master’s thesis app.

As part of a project aiming at designing a smartphone application for students writing their Master's thesis, Mobile Probes were used as a method to gain knowledge about thesis writing students' day-to-day life and their work processes. The conducted probe did generate insights into students' daily routines. However, it also proved to have a value beyond the study. Participants in the probe reported how the questions of the probe led them to reflect on their thesis writing practices and in a few cases even develop them, and we suggest that this reflective aspect of the probe should be integrated into the smartphone application.

Formålet med artiklen er at sætte fokus på læringspotentialerne i mobilt medieret information og kommunikation. Artiklen diskuterer, hvad der er karakteristisk for mobilt medieret kommunikation og information med udgangspunkt i begreberne personalisering, stedspecifik information og kommunikation og perpetual contact. Disse begreber danner udgangspunkt for en diskussion af perspektiverne i anvendelsen af mobile teknologier og internettet i en læringssammenhæng. Endelig kobler artiklen til en række pilotforsøg på Aarhus Universitet, hvor der eksperimenteres med at indtænke mobile teknologier og internettet i undervisningen. Artiklen konkluderer, at de centrale læringspotentialer ved mobilt medieret information og kommunikation ikke knytter sig til særlige karakteristika ved teknologien eller til individets mobilitet, men snarere at den konstante og allestedsnærværende adgang til internettet formår at knytte information og kommunikation fra forskellige kontekster sammen og derved inviterer til læringsaktiviteter, der transcenderer skillelinjen mellem kontekster som eksempelvis institutionel og ikke-institutionelle.

This paper proposes co-designing personas with users as a strategy to overcome a challenge inherent in the design of personas or fictitious users: On one hand, personas should appear realistic and believable as individuals, and on the other hand, personas should represent a broader range of users. By involving empirical users in all parts of the process of persona design, the risk of creating personas that are too stereotypical is minimized, as the participating users enrich the data on which the personas are based with up-to-date and firsthand contextual knowledge. Advantages of co-designing personas with users is illustrated by a case from higher education in which personas were co-designed with students as part of a project aiming at designing a smartphone application for Master's thesis students.