A mentor and friend, from whom I have learnt the vital skill of disciplined critical thinking

Foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my two supervisors, Professor Phil Trinder and Dr Patrick Maier. Their patience, encouragement, and immense knowledge were key motivations throughout my PhD. They carry out their research with an objective and principled approach to computer science. They persuasively conveyed an interest in my work, and I am grateful for my inclusion in their HPC-GAP project.

Phil has been my supervisor and guiding beacon through four years of computer science MEng and PhD research. I am truly thankful for his steadfast integrity, and selfless dedication to both my personal and academic development. I cannot think of a better supervisor to have. Patrick is a mentor and friend, from whom I have learnt the vital skill of disciplined critical thinking. His forensic scrutiny of my technical writing has been invaluable. He has always found the time to propose consistently excellent improvements. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Phil and Patrick.

I would like to thank Professor Greg Michaelson for offering thorough and excellent feedback on an earlier version of this thesis. In addition, a thank you to Dr Gudmund Grov. Gudmund gave feedback on Chapter 4 of this thesis, and suggested generality improvements to my model checking abstraction of HdpH-RS.

A special mention for Dr Edsko de Vries of Well Typed, for our insightful and detailed discussions about network transport design. Furthermore, Edsko engineered the network abstraction layer on which the fault detecting component of HdpH-RS is built.

I thank the computing officers at Heriot-Watt University and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre for their support and hardware access for the performance evaluation of HdpH-RS.

Contributor: Rob Stewart

Source: Stewart, R (2013) Reliable Massively Parallel Symbolic Computing: Fault Tolerance for a Distributed Haskell, PhD, Heriot Watt University

I want to thank my secondary school history teacher

I would like to thank both of my supervisors Bob Harris and Charles McKean for their support throughout the many years of a part-time PhD, keeping me going when times were tough, asking insightful questions, and offering invaluable advice. I would also like to thank my fellow student Louisa Cross for her support, in the form of lively discussions, encouraging emails, and sharing relevant publications. I must also thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council who funded my doctoral research.

Thanks are also due to all the librarians and archivists who facilitated access to various records and publications, but particularly to the staff of the archives at the University of Dundee, Hazel Anderson at the National Archives of Scotland who arranged for me to borrow a substantial amount of digital images of Dumfriesshire testamentary records, and the staff at the Heritage Hub in Hawick who allowed my husband to digitally photograph Selkirk Subscription Library’s voluminous borrowing records, letting me transcribe and analyse them at home, the only way I could work through them practically by that point.

Both of my parents have been a great help throughout my history studies, both at Dundee and before. In addition I want to thank my secondary school history teacher, Ian Landles at Hawick, who at an early stage set my class a school project to produce a family tree, which was the prompt for my own journey of historical research, leading me to visit archives in the Borders and Edinburgh from a young age. But the greatest thanks of all must go to my husband Martin, who understands the challenges of doing a PhD more than most people, particularly when long-term ill as I am, and has been a rock throughout.

Contributor: Vivienne Dunstan

Source: Dunstan V (2010) Reading habits in Scotland circa 1750-1820, PhD, University of Dundee

…my parents for everything. You made me into who I am.

Although writing up the PhD thesis might be the effort of one person, the reason that person even gets as far as starting to write up is thanks to all the people supporting that PhD student. I am grateful for everyone who has been there to support my journey towards the finished thesis. I’m indebted to and grateful for the following persons…

… my main supervisor Stefan Holmlid, for all the support and letting me find my own path whilst at the same time showing me which alternate paths I might be missing. Never forcing, always suggesting suits me perfectly!

… my two co-supervisors Arne Jönsson and Björn Alm. Both of you have provided invaluable outsiders perspectives on my research when most needed. Björn, a special thank you for all the fruitful discussions in general and on the methodological approach in general. And to Arne, thank you for your experience and making sure the research continued to progress towards a finished thesis.

… everyone who has participated in my studies. I am extremely grateful for all your help. In total roughly 50 people have been involved in one way or another in providing the data used in the studies. This thesis would not have been possible to write without your help. An extra warm thank you to everyone in the three agencies I worked in/with for the final study for allowing me to be a part of your work places.

… HCS for providing an enjoyable place to work in. And special thanks to IxS and the fika-crowd. IxS for providing an intellectually inspiring  environment to work in, in which there always are new perspectives to be found when needed – thank you Stefan, Johan, Matti, Johan, Lisa, Eva, Mathias and Tim. And to the fika-crowd for providing many laughs, exciting discussions and a few beers during my PhD studies. So a big thank you to all of you; those of you who were here when I started and now have moved on (Sanna, Maria and Sara), those who have been here throughout most of my PhD (Johan, Amy, Jody and Anna) and all of you have joined the last few years (Lisa, Jonas R, Mattias, Kricke, Falkenskägg, Robin, Tim, Camilla and Karin). Also, thanks to all the administrative staff, especially Lise-Lott and Anne.

… an extra thank you to Johan and Lisa, the ones I tend to turn to first when I have something to discuss. Or just need a break.

… all the photo models. For the cover I want to thank the Zodiaken-staff in general for allowing me to take the photos on the front and back of the thesis cover, and Kristofer Frendesson in particular for getting in front of the camera. Similarly, my thanks go to the “customers” Matti, Lisa, Johan, Amy, Stefan and Tim. Furthermore, many thanks go to Jalal Maleki for taking the photos at Zodiaken. For the examples of visualisation techniques, my thanks go to Anna for modelling and Jonas H for photographing.

… my parents for everything. You made me into who I am.

Research support: The research presented in this thesis has been supported by: Vinnova: SERV project: Service Design, innovation and involvement. Ref no: 2007-03444. European Union: CIP Competitiveness and Innovation Program, research project “Service Design as an approach to foster competitiveness and sustainability of European tourism”.

Contributor: Fabian Segelström

Source: Segelström F (2013) Stakeholder Engagement for Service Design: How service designers identify and communicate insights, PhD, Linköping University

I have also been saved many times from depression and writer’s blocks by good music

Working on a PhD is supposed to be an endeavour completed in seclusion, but in practice one cannot survive without the help and support from others, fruitful scientific discussions, collaborative development of tools and papers and valuable pieces of advice.

My work was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ralf Lämmel and Prof. Dr. Chris Verhoef, who often believed in me more than I did and were always open to questions and ready to give expert advice. They have made my development possible.

LPPR colleagues — Jan Heering, Prof. Dr. Paul Klint, Prof. Dr. Mark van den Brand— have been a rare yet useful source of new research ideas.

All thesis reading committee members have dedicated a lot of attention to my work and delivered exceptionally useful feedback on the late stage of the research: Prof. Dr. Jean Bézivin, Dr. Jean-Marie Favre, Prof. Dr. Willem Jan Fokkink, Prof. Dr. Paul Klint, Dr. Steven Klusener. I am also grateful for Cor-Paul Bezemer and Toon Verwaest who provided proofreading and correcting services for the Dutch part of this thesis. There have been a lot of insightful discussions in the rooms and hallways of the Vrije Universiteit with Dr. Niels Veerman, Ernst-Jan Verhoeven, Łukasz Kwiatkowski and Johan Vincent de Vries.

I would like to thank my family that backed me up with complete support and encouragement through the years of research, especially my mother, Dr.ir. Liudmila Zaytseva; my grandmother, Dr. Svetlana Bocheva; my grandfather, Prof. Dr.ir. Alexander Bochev; my uncle, Dr. Michael Bochev and my godfather, Prof. Dr. Yuri Bashmakov, MD.

My close friends’ understanding, respect and interest in my work was also among the most important things that kept me going: Dr. Alexander Gufan, Dr. Stanislav Tsykavy and Stanislav Rezhabek.

I have also been saved many times from depression and writer’s blocks by good music.I cannot name all the artists responsible for that, but the most credit goes to Huddie Ledbetter, William Broonzy, Fulton Allen, Thomas McClennan and Bruce Springsteen.

Contributor: @grammarware

Source: Zaytsev, V (2010) Recovery, convergence and documentation of languages, PhD, Vrije University

…anyone who has added useful mathematical information to PlanetMath or Wikipedia

Dedication
For John Peel
Haud certus sum si istam recte aut perperam modulabar.

Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the following people: Joel Feinstein for his useful guidance and discussions; the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for financial support, including tuition fees and money for travel; Teresa for looking after the author; family and friends; my sixth form maths teachers, June Cooper and Roger Clarke; anyone who contributed free code to LaTeX, Kile, TeXnicCenter, XFig or GNU/Linux (or anything else I have used and forgotten to list); anyone who has added useful mathematical information to PlanetMath or Wikipedia, which I have used frequently in the course of researching this thesis (although they do not appear in the bibliography); novium at the Piled Higher and Deeper comic forum for translating the inscription in the dedication; the people on that forum more generally.

Contributor: @matt_heath Matt’s blog is here
Source: Heath, M (2008) Bounded derivations from Banach algebras, PhD, University of Nottingham

Because of you, all this was made possible

To use the terminology from the service blueprint (after all, research is a kind of public service) ─ I may be the one interacting with you, the reader, but I would not be able to do it without all the people in the back office, be they colleagues, friends or professional acquaintances. A warm thank you to…

… my advisors; Stefan Holmlid for always being open to discuss new ideas and concepts and encouraging me to find my way in the research landscape. The plentiful short two-minute-discussions are invaluable! Arne Jönsson, for your no-bullshit attitude and providing a different angle so that I do not get caught up in the service design-bubble. Björn Alm, for many fruitful discussions and reflections, especially when it comes to the methodology.

… my informants. Without the willingness to share their ways of working and produced visualisations, this thesis could not have been. I’ve been fortunate enough to have 21 practicing service designers from 15 companies in seven countries to sharing their time and efforts with me.

… the IxS research group (Eva L, Eva R, Johan B, Johan Å, Matti and Stefan) for good discussions and an open climate. There is always someone to strike up a conversation on any given design-related topic or just chit-chat with for five minutes. And of course the weekly meetings with cake!

… my fellow PhD students (past and present) and others who join in on the so well needed coffee breaks; Amy, Anna, Arne, Jody, Johan, Jonas, Lars, Maria, Magnus, Sanna and Sara. I think it’s time for the next PhD pub soon though…

… everyone who has helped in one way or another in making this thesis take the shape it is, be it modelling (Anna), photographing (Jonas), proof reading (dad), sharing typographic formatting (Sanna) or giving feedback on the presentation of my ideas in the thesis (Stefan, Björn, Arne and Johan). And a special thank you the tweeters who have responded to my thesis-related tweets, be it questions about nuances in the use of English words or encouraging pads on the virtual back.

… Diana, Pacenti & Tassi for letting me re-print their model in the thesis.

… all my friends who make life as good as it is.

… my parents. Because of you, all this was made possible. You always believe in me and encourage me to find my own path through life, and support me along the path.

Contributor: @segelstrom

Source: Segelström, F (2010) Visualisations in Service Design Licentiate of Philosophy – Linköping University