Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
This week, the ITC-ILO officially launched the Experientia-designed website Compass: the right direction for learning and training. The site is a toolkit comprising 60 methodologies, with the aim of diffusing learning and training knowledge and tools within the ITC-ILO organisation.…
Tablets for Schools, a UK campaign organisation that seeks to “prove the categorical case of tablets in schools”, has just published its second qualitative research report. “The report summarises findings from an evaluation study that is looking at the feasibility…
Intel’s Arduino-compatible open-source Galileo development board was launched today in Italy at Rome’s Maker Faire. Rightfully so, as the initiative has such deep Italian roots. In 2004, a group of programmers, students and teachers at the highly regarded Interaction Design…
More and more, we live our lives according to the unknown auspices of machine codes, writes Frank Swain. “Our lives are influenced by technologies not simply as objects but invisible systems that surround us, and whose architecture shapes the patterns…
“The people using big data don’t presume to peer deeply into people’s souls,” argues David Brooks in the New York Times (in an April 2013 column). “They don’t try to explain why people are doing things. They just want to…
Looking at yet another tweet and another post about the Quantified Self, I started reflecting this morning on the Silicon Valley-driven fascination with the quantification of one’s own activities, body and habits. The Quantified Self movement is portrayed as the…
Sean Young, a behavioral psychologist, a family medicine professor and director of innovation at the center for behavioral and addiction medicine at UCLA, addresses the challenge of technology entrepreneurs on how to engage people and change behaviors. Fortunately, he says,…
Two new articles on Ethnography Matters: Ethnographies from the Future: What can ethnographers learn from science fiction and speculative design? Laura Forlano (@laura4lano) is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Design at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology…
People-Centered Innovation: Becoming a Practitioner in Innovative Research by Pedro Oliveira Biblio Publishing, 2013 194 pages [Amazon] Written with a general audience in mind, People-Centered Innovation focuses on innovation research in corporate settings. Starting with a biographical standpoint, it describes…
Delivering Design: Performance and Materiality in Professional Interaction Design is the title of the PhD dissertation Elizabeth Sarah Goodman defended last year to obtain the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley. It is…
Lauren Pope of Nokia writes that there are three things to think about if you want your devices and your brain to sing in unison: mindfulness, attention and metacognition. The video is cute and well-done, but doesn’t match the three…
Simon Roberts, the highly engaging, smart and easily approachable chair of the EPIC conference last week, was so absorbed with all the logistics that he didn’t find the concentration to speak his mind during the conference. Now that the conference…
While “Big Data†is causing excitement in the IT and business sector, the practice and concept of data analysis is not unfamiliar to those coming from a UX research background, writes Michael Lai in UX Magazine. The intersection of business…
Can information and technology improve the quality of life in cities? That seems a pretty fundamental question for the Smarter Cities movement to address. There is little point in us expending time and money on the application of technology to…
Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the New York Times, argues that too many products use complexity to mask their flaws. “Designing self-explanatory products is even more important — and more challenging — in the digital era, when devices like phones…
While you are browsing online, you could be squandering memories — or losing important information, according to Swedish research. Contrary to common wisdom, an idle brain is in fact doing important work — and in the age of constant information…
This week, business anthropologists from all over the world descended on the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference at London’s Royal Institution, the historic site where Michael Faraday first demonstrated the power of electricity, reports Emma Jacobs in the Financial Times.…
MindLab, a cross-ministerial innovation unit in Denmark, hosted the seminar titled ‘How Public Design?’ for the second time on 2 and 3 September. This event gathered a distinguished group of decision-makers, researchers, experts and consultants of social change. As the…
The future of design is a broad and slippery subject, one examined number of designers and critics at the recent Alvar Aalto Design Seminar in Jyväskylä, Finland. “With a distinct focus on product and furniture design – as befitting to…
The secret to robots with better social skills? Exploiting human nature. Maggie Koerth-Baker, science editor of BoingBoing.net, explores “how [designers can make] robots trick you in loving them” for the New York Times Magazine. “In the future, more robots will…