Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade by Adam Minter Bloomsbury Publishing 2013, 304 pages [Amazon link – video] Abstract When you drop your Diet Coke can or yesterday’s newspaper in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably…
Marc Landsberg, CEO of socialdeviant, believes that marketing departments will increasingly invest in social platforms that are committed to users’ needs and interests In his article, Landsberg considers three immutable human truths, and how they connect to what’s happening in…
Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector By Sam Ladner Left Coast Press April 2014, 200 pages [Publisher link – Amazon link] > Download free sample: pdf – kindle Abstract – Ethnography is an increasingly important…
Tricia Wang (see also previous post) just published her interview with Leisa Reichelt, Head of User Research at UK Government Digital Services. Tricia introduced it with a kind reference to me (thank you!): “>We are excited to interview Leisa Reichelt…
Sociologist and ethnographer Tricia Wang has posted the notes of “The Conceit of Oracles: How we ended up in a world in which quantitative data is more valued than qualitative data,” her inspiring and much appreciated opening keynote at the…
Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for a New Utopia by Anthony M. Townsend W. W. Norton & Company October 2013. 400 pages [Amazon link] Abstract An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile,…
Belindar Parmar, CEO of Lady Geek and founder of Little Miss Geek thinks that current wearable devices are “emblematic of a lack of empathy that pervades the technology industries.“ “Empathy is the ability to see the world from somebody else’s…
Designing Customer-Centric Branchless Banking Offerings Claudia McKay, Yanina Seltzer The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) 20 December 2013 pdf, iBook, Kindle Branchless banking services have taken on a significant challenge: developing new channels through which to provide financial…
Design Transitions – Inspiring Stories. Global Viewpoints. How design is changing. By Joyce Yee, Emma Jefferies and Lauren Tan BIS Publishers [Book site – Amazon link – selected pages] Abstract Design Transitions presents 42 unique and insightful stories of how…
Cheryl Heller of CommonWise argues that there’s a new design emerging that works from inside a community and at a systems level, impacting human relationships instead of things. It emerges from the new discipline of design for social innovation, in…
Small devices with embedded intelligence can do more than just measure; they’re showing their potential to change the way we act, writes Sean Madden in Fast Company. “For the first time, we have in essence a kit of parts–sensors, software,…
At the LAUX Meetup Group, Media Contour’s Luke Swenson was able to track down Don Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition and get his thoughts on problem solving, identifying the right problem, and why…
The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think by Douglas T. Kenrick and Vladas Griskevicius Basic Books September 2013 [Amazon link] Abstract Why do three out of four professional football players go bankrupt? How can illiterate jungle…
Empathy on the Edge Scaling and sustaining a human-centered approach in the evolving practice of design Katja Battarbee, Jane Fulton Suri, and Suzanne Gibbs Howard IDEO January 9, 2014 Remarkable things can happen when empathy for others plays a key…
In order for commercial drones like Amazon’s or Australian startup Flirtey’s to become a reality, the drone (or any future-world technology, really) can’t merely do its job—meaning, it can’t randomly drop off deliveries and simply fly away as the drone…
Hiring managers know that design plays, and will continue to play, a critical role in the success of their companies because: What has been seen cannot be unseen., writes Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman of the Unicorn Institute. And what has been…
War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views Douglas P. Fry Oxford University Press April 2013 [Amazon link] Abstract Have humans always waged war? Is warring an ancient evolutionary adaptation or a relatively recent behavior–and what…
To help you build better mobile experiences, UX Archive finds and presents mobile’s most interesting user flows so you can “compare them, build your point of view, and be inspired.†“Documenting user flows is probably something many UX designers already…
In our new dystopian world of pervasive surveillance, most people are at a loss what to do. The tools that allows us to maintain a semblance of privacy are really, really hard to use. Most of us won’t even try…
Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Technology By Nir Eyal Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Released: December 2013 Pages: 154 [Amazon link] Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out…