Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
In arguing that digital technologies enable embodied experiences that reshape the very ways in which we conceptualize our everyday life, Nishant Shah, founder and Director of Research for the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, tells us a story from…
In a long article, designer Avi Itzkovitch explains how, when connecting applications across smart devices, UX designers can create product ecosystems that dynamically respond to user contexts and thus provide enhanced experiences. The author reviews various theories on the multiscreen…
Would George Orwell have been amused or disturbed by the development that Big Brother now knows exactly how long it takes readers to finish his novel, which parts they might have highlighted, and what they went on to pick up…
Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth announced in a memo that the paper has named Laura Evans, who has spent most of her nine years at the Post as chief researcher, to the newly created position of VP, Chief Experience Officer…
A team of engineers, anthropologists and psychologists at Intel’s Oregon lab is busy developing ways of integrating human emotion and technology in ways that will, it hopes, lead the two to positively influence each other one day. “Intel is playing…
In 2009, the chief executives and a few staff from a handful of UK non-governmental organisations (including WWF and RSPB) came together to discuss the inadequacy of current responses to challenges like climate change, global poverty and biodiversity loss. This…
The Helsinki Low2No project team just released a smart services and informatics workbook that was developed by ARUP and Experientia. Low2No is a broad project, initiated in collaboration with the Finnish innovation fund Sitra, aimed at the development of a…
What is the right to be forgotten? How could it work – if it could work? Is it something to be supported or something to be feared? Why is it such a bone of contention? An article by Dr Paul…
In her final piece on ethnographic research in a world of big data (see earlier posts), Jenna Burrell, sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, seeks to answer a few remaining questions: 1. How might big…
UC Irvine will anchor a new $12.5 million, Intel-funded research center that applies social science and humanities to the design and analysis of digital information. “Technology is profoundly entangled with our everyday lives. As researchers, we can’t get a handle…
Design and AnthropologyEdited by Wendy Gunn, University of Southern Denmark and Jared Donovan, Queensland University of Technology, AustraliaAshgate, 2012Hardcover and ebook Design and Anthropology challenges conventional thinking regarding the nature of design and creativity, in a way that acknowledges the…
Nir Eyal, lecturer in marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, believes secrets about human behavior, which provide insights into the way people act even though they can’t tell you why, are levers for creating user habits and competitive…
Dan Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics and psychology at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, and The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic, both New York…
As a grad student in anthropology, Gabriella Coleman was warned that studying the culture of computer hackers would make it hard to get a job teaching in a university. She went ahead anyway, becoming one of the first academics to…
People create profiles on social network sites and Twitter accounts against the background of an audience. This paper by Alice Marwick argues that closely examining content created by others and looking at one’s own content through other people’s eyes, a…
When communicating, context is king. A breakthrough in modelling context in human communication could make computers better conversationalists, according to cognitive scientists at Stanford University. “[Michael] Frank, [head of Stanford University’s Language and Cognition Lab] and colleague Noah Goodman, also…
Nathan Shedroff (bio), the pioneer in Experience Design, Interaction Design and Information Design, and the chair of the MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA, is looking back on 10 years of…
Spanish institutions are in no shape to help struggling Spaniards, so they’re turning to alternative banks and ways of exchanging goods to get by, reports Andrés Cala in the Christian Science Monitor. “The quest for economic alternatives has picked up…
Deep inside the company, a team of social scientists is hunting for unprecedented insights about human behaviour, reports Tom Simonite, Technology Review’s senior IT editor. What they find could give Facebook new ways to cash in on our data—and remake…
Windows 8 and the art of UX compromise by Ryan Bell, user interface software team lead at EffectiveUI Microsoft is cleverly promoting Windows 8 with the tagline “no compromises.†The idea is that you get both a desktop/laptop operating system…