Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
The [just published] Cox Review of Creativity in Business has been eagerly awaited by the design industry. Many creatives in the UK (as in other industrialised countries) fondly believe that while manufacturing and call centres may emigrate to cheaper countries,…
New McKinsey research reveals how the shift from transactional to tacit interactions requires companies to think differently about how to improve performance—and about their technology investments. Moreover, the rise of tacit occupations opens up the possibility that companies can…
Teenagers are using more technology at a younger age to connect with more people than ever before, according to a study of young consumers prepared by Forrester Research, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based market research company. The report, based on a…
Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for millions of young Americans across the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone,…
The UK Design Council launched today Design of the time (DOTT, in short), a £50 million, ten-year initiative to re-design the UK that begins in North East England in 2007. DOTT, which is lead by John Thackara, gives the UK…
A very insightful story by Geraldine Bedell in today’s Observer explores the latest thinking on the role of design as a means to develop solutions to services, business models and social issues, and the controversy this has generated in…
Can computers help fight obesity? Can technology motivate you to waste less energy? Can communication devices help overcome racial prejudice? Can a virtual agent persuade you to break your smoking habit? Can a mobile phone help you study? Can a…
This Christmas, tech-peddlers are turning their gaze toward kids, with new lines of grown-up gadgets built for tiny hands. “There’s a shift in need in terms of what a child finds fun and entertaining,” says Jim Silver, editor of the…
In a half hour audio interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Neil Gershenfeld of MIT says a revolution is on the horizon for manufacturing — that existing technologies and tools can bring capabilities once only held by huge factories…
We clearly have a love-hate relationship with digital technology, a new study confirms. We love how easily it allows us – through e-mail, sending photos and exchanging news and information – to communicate with friends and family, but we…
Plugged into it all From Japanese girls texting their friends to the BlackBerry-armed executive, it’s now who you are connected to, not who you know. But does this mean greater freedom or loss of control? Failed to fly Why do…
Men keep their texts short and snappy while women have seized on the mobile as a new way of expressing support and affection, according to sociologists at Sheffield Hallam University. But the researchers [also] found that women also used the…
Business Week just published an interview by Liz Danzico (AIGA) with author Peter Morville on his new book Ambient Findability and on what it means to be able to find anything from anywhere at anytime, thanks to ubiquitous computing and…
Being sent to your bedroom used to be a punishment: now it’s a teen dream. Through personal computers, mobile phones and gaming consoles, teenagers are spurning antisocial angst for a culture of “connected cocooning”. It’s a phrase coined by…
A few months ago I wrote about the Gel and euroGel conferences in 2006. Mark Hurst just posted a partial line-up of speakers. The euroGel 2006 conference which will take place on 1 September 2006 in Copenhagen, Denmark, features: Han…
Ms. Ito says older generations have a lot to learn from how the rising generation is taking up these new technologies — sometimes adults don’t recognize that young people are developing innovative uses for technologies. “I see my work as…
Can China move 400 million people to its cities without wreaking environmental havoc? Eco-urban designer William McDonough says yes—and Beijing is listening. Beijing is now orchestrating an industrial revolution, hoping to telescope into a few decades what it took Western…
The upgraded digital divide: are we developing new technologies faster than consumers can use them? TiVos and Treos and BlackBerrys. Wi-Fi and HDTV and plasma screens. Picture phones, digital cameras, iPods and now iPod cell phones. Complexity among consumer technology…
Cell phones made up 74.6 percent of all African phone subscriptions last year, says the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union. Cell phone subscriptions jumped 67 percent south of the Sahara in 2004, compared with 10 percent in cell-phone-saturated Western Europe, according…
The growing role of wireless communication in international economic development was the focus of a major research workshop organised by the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication. The October 7-8, 2005 gathering of the world’s leading global communication researchers included…