Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
A Unilever sponsored sustainability supplement to The Guardian contains a short articles by Dan Lockton that is worth exploring. Design for sustainability: making green behaviour easy describes how design can enable sustainable behaviour by understanding everyday needs rather than treating…
A History of Future Cities by Daniel Brook W. W. Norton & Company 2013 – 480 pages [Amazon link] The new book A History of Future Cities looks at the attempts of places like Dubai, Shanghai, and Mumbai to create…
Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff Current Hardcover March 2013, 216 pages [Amazon] Abstract This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, explains award-winning media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, but we don’t seem to have any time in…
(As if it hasn’t already). In developing countries, where smartphones and dependable cellular networks are still scarce, it’s been difficult to gauge the real impact of the mobile education movement. But with the combination of different factors — the advent…
Jonathan Rowson @Jonathan_Rowson, who leads the RSA Social Brain Centre, recently gave a 15 minute presentation on the Social Brain Centre’s emerging ideas relating to behaviour change in the context of Climate Change. The title was: “What kind of behaviour…
Opening up the Stories to Action edition of Ethnography Matters is Panthea Lee’s @panthealee moving story about a human trafficking outreach campaign that her company, Reboot, designed for Safe Horizon. In David Brook’s recent NYT column, What Data Can’t Do,…
To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov Public Affairs Book, 2013 432 pages [Amazon] Abstract In the very near future, “smart†technologies and “big data†will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions…
The Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities – a cooperation between University College London (UCL), Imperial College London and Intel – was launched in May 2012, which a focus on how to enable future cities to be more…
Hyper-connectivity – where people are constantly connected to social networks and streams of information – will have a transforming effect on how we see ourselves and others in the next decade, according to a new report published by the UK…
(Wow, it covers Turin!) Beyond Smart Cities: How Cities Network, Learn and Innovate Tim Campbell Routledge, 2012 The promise of competitiveness and economic growth in so-called smart cities emphasizes highly educated talent, high tech industries and pervasive electronic connections. But…
How do we design a resilient socio-technical system, asks Ezio Manzini in Design Observer. “Let’s look to natural systems; their tolerance of breakdowns and their adaptation capacity (that is, their capability of sustaining over time) may give us direction. As…
Although I don’t agree with the implicit meaning of this Fast Company title (i.e. that public services currently do not help people – whereas the real issue is the degree of impact), I am always excited to hear the latest…
For more than two decades Ezio Manzini has been working in the field of design for sustainability. Recently, he focused his interests on social innovation –he started, and currently coordinates, DESIS, an international network on design for social innovation and…
Dan Hill (of CityofSound, ARUP, Sitra and now Fabrica fame) is not only extremely prolific, but his writing is also very much to the point. His latest Smart City (or better “Smart Citizen”) manifesto is a case in point. Weighing…
Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork Richard E. Ocejo (Editor) Routledge, 2012, 272 pages (Amazon link) The only collection of its kind on the market, this reader gathers the work of some of the most esteemed urban…
Videos showcasing two sustainability-related projects are now on Experientia’s YouTube channel. The videos, showing the Ecofamilies and Stories projects respectively, both focus on monitoring domestic energy consumption in different areas of Europe. The Ecofamilies video (in French with our English…
Marco Steinberg, who directs the strategic design efforts of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, announced last week that Sitra’s Helsinki Design Lab will close in June 2013. Helsinki Design Lab is an initiative by Sitra to advance strategic design as…
A Sustainable Building Promotes Pro-Environmental Behavior: An Observational Study on Food Disposal by Wu DW, DiGiacomo A, Kingstone A PLoS ONE 8(1): e53856. doi:10.1371 – January 2013 In order to develop a more sustainable society, the wider public will need…
From the press release: Intel Corporation released a groundbreaking report on “Women and the Web,” unveiling concrete data on the enormous Internet gender gap in the developing world and the social and economic benefits of securing Internet access for women.…
Gianfranco Zaccai is co-founder and president of the global design and innovation consultancy Continuum. And he doesn’t like focus groups very much (and neither do we): Why Focus Groups Kill Innovation, From The Designer Behind Swiffer 18 October 2012 The…