Reading in a digital age
Sven Birkerts wites in the American Scholar on why the novel and the Internet are opposites, and why the latter both undermines the former and makes it more necessary. “My real worry has less to do with the overthrow of…
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Culture
Design driven prison development in Belgium
Flanders InShape, the Flemish/Belgian competence centre for product development and industrial design, is supporting a new research project on the development of a requirements programme for future prison design in Belgium. On 25 March Flanders InShape organised the “Towards a…
Towards a Finnish user needs based service economy
Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund [disclaimer: and Experientia client] has launched a new book, After the Crisis, and a report, Finland: Wellsprings for a Vital Future, that shed light on the fundamental change Finland is going through. “For decades, Finland’s…
A special report on television
This week’s Economist contains a special report on television. The leader article presents television as the great survivor, which has coped well with technological change: “It helps that TV is an inherently lazy form of entertainment. The much-repeated prediction that…
The data-driven life
Gary Wolf reflects in the upcoming New York Times Magazine on what happens when technology can analyze “every quotidian thing that happened to you today.” “Numbers make problems less resonant emotionally but more tractable intellectually. In science, in business and…
The interviews of l’École de design
The bilingual (Fr/En) research journal CADI of the highly respected design school L’École de design Nantes/Atlantique in the French city of Nantes is a worthwhile treat, as each issue contains four in-depth interviews with professional authorities who worked with their…
Guidebook on climate communications and behavioral change
To address global warming there must be a shift in thinking and behavior that motivates people and organizations to engage in emissions reductions and climate preparedness activities and support new policies. Mounting evidence shows that this shift is not only…
Eight interaction design and architecture videos
The disciplines of interaction design and architecture share a number of common traits—such as a focus on solving problems for people and encouraging people to interact with products and environments in new and exciting ways—and each discipline can learn much…
Interactions Magazine May/June 2010 issue
The latest issue of Interactions Magazine is about the spread of design into new areas, write editor Jon Kolko: “The process of design is spreading into new areas of society and business, and as it does, our work gets more…
Dan Ariely on predicting the irrational
Tom H. C. Anderson, founder and managing partner of Anderson Analytics, discuss the book “Predictably Irrational” and the field of market research with behavioural economist Dan Ariely. Dan is also professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University Fuqua School of…
Brains, behaviour and design
Over the past few decades, researchers have codified many of the patterns that describe why people behave irrationally. As researchers, how can we be on the lookout for these patterns of behavior when we go into the field? As designers,…
Toward a read/write urbanism
What might we gain, asks Adam Greenfield, if we begin to conceive of cities, for some limited purposes anyway, as software under active development? What if we imagined that the citizen-responsiveness system we’ve designed lives in a dense mesh of…
Machiavelli 2.0
Alexander Schellong, a senior consultant with CSC’s public sector management practice, and Philipp Mueller, director of the Center for Public Management and Governance at the Salzburg University Business School, write in the Harvard International Review on the fundamentals of network…
Pope Benedict: people at the centre of the web
According to the Repubblica newspaper, the head of the Catholic Church has been arguing today for the centrality of the person on the web. We agree, but are surprised that this man who is in charge of an institution with…
Psychology, climate change and sustainable behaviour
Alexa Spence and Nick Pidgeon of Cardiff University write in Environment Magazine that meeting existing and future climate change targets will require rapid social transformations that economics and technology alone cannot induce. We must, they say, also face up to…
Interactions Magazine – March/April 2010 issue
The latest issue of Interactions Magazine is about a new intellectualism of design, write co-editors Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko: one that embraces discourse, dialogue, systems thinking, and the larger role of designers in shaping culture. Here are the articles…
Your life in 2020
Forbes Magazine, in collaboration with Frog Design, has been looking at what the future in 2020 might look like in a range of areas: computer, choice, classroom, commute, home, job, diet, health and reputation. Some articles are clearly more inspired…
Toolkit for influencing behaviour through design
UK researcher Dan Lockton announces that his new Design with Intent toolkit is ready: Officially titled Design with Intent: 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design, it’s in the form of 101 simple cards, each illustrating a particular ‘gambit‘ for…
A 60m low carbon building project in Helsinki
Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund and development partners, SRV and VVO today announce a 60m investment for a low carbon housing and commercial building complex in Helsinki. Work on the development will begin immediately, with completion scheduled for the end…
The impact of the Internet on institutions in the future
The latest Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project report is out: “The Impact of the Internet on Institutions in the Future” surveys 895 tech experts on the way that technology will change institutions (government, business, nonprofits, schools) in…