Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Are some behaviours more contagious than others? This is the question that Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler address in their book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. From a Science + Religion…
In his blog, Dan Lockton, a Ph.D. researcher at Brunel University (UK), describes eleven behavioural change patterns “drawn from games or modelled on more playful forms of influencing behaviour.” “My main interest here is to extract the design techniques as…
If the 20th century was the era of the global institution–the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the multinational corporation—then the 21st century will be the era of the participatory system, argues Participle‘s Hillary Cottam in the Winter 2010 (Vol.XXXI.…
Happiness itself is a commons to which everyone should have equal access. Jay Walljasper, co-editor of OnTheCommons.org, reflects on this statement by Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotà, Colombia, in Shareables. A worthwile read whenever you need some arguments against…
When rational appeals fall short, environmentalists enlist social and economic incentives–and even neuroscience–to get the public in on national efforts to combat climate change. Scientific American reports. Energy efficiency seems to make rational economic sense—the less energy used, the more…
Merging complex systems science and ecology, resilience scientists have broken new ground on understanding—and preserving—natural ecosystems. Now, as more and more people move into urban hubs, they are bringing this novel science to the city. “Resilience theory, first introduced by…
In relentless pursuit of ‘connecting,’ we miss out on each other The Seattle Times argues that while communication and gaming gadgets have convenienced and connected us in ways never before possible, they may also be profoundly hurting our ability to…
“We’ve been looking at privacy and publicity as a black-or-white attribute for content, when really it’s defined by context and the implications of what we’ve chosen to share.” This is the essence of Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd‘s keynote speech at…
The Socio-Digital Systems (SDS) group of Microsoft Research aims to use an understanding of human values to help to change the technological landscape in the 21st century. “Beyond making us all more productive and efficient, we ask how we can…
New insights from science and behaviour change could lead to significantly improved outcomes, and at a lower cost, than the way many conventional policy tools are used, argues the UK Government. MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy was a joint…
Behavioral economics is used to examine how consumers make decisions about everything from their life savings to which brands of jam they select in a supermarket. Hunt Allcott, a behavioral economist with a two-year appointment as the Energy and Society…
Steve Portigal, Julie Norvaisas and Dan Soltzberg of Portigal Consulting were invited by Core77 to discuss what makes their clocks tick: the analogue human and the digital machine. Steve Portigal: “I feel like there’s this tension that goes on in…
The Economist questions whether it is really helpful to talk about a new generation of “digital natives†who have grown up with the internet. “Writing in the British Journal of Education Technology in 2008, a group of academics led by…
Brook Lyndhurst, an independent research and strategy consultancy, based in London, UK, works on projects that are concerned with understanding, promoting and delivering sustainable development. A couple of their research reports are highly recommended reading: The diffusion of environmental behaviours:…
Many videos of the Interaction10 conference are now online. Here are the one of the speakers mentioned in the recent review by Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels. Paola Antonelli – Talk to Me Whether openly and actively, or in subtle, subliminal…
Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft Research, wrote a long piece for UX Magazine on “what it means to be ‘in flow’ in an information landscape defined by networked media”, based on a talk she gave at O’Reilly’s…
Women & Mobile: A Global Opportunity is a study on the mobile phone gender gap in low and middle-income countries. Mobile phone ownership in low and middle-income countries has skyrocketed in the past several years. But a woman is still…
This report on the values, attitudes, behaviors and demographic characteristics of the Millennial generation was prepared by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan “fact tank†that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It…
Luca De Biase, the journalist I translated this morning, continues to add interesting commentary: Excerpts from this post (translated into English): “The Italian sentence on Google says fundamentally that the judges do not consider the [YouTube] platform to be an…