The user experience of most web-based applications begins well below the interface, all the way down to fields in a database. Examining how systems and users experience time prove this point dramatically. Think about how messy time can be—time zones, leap years, recurring events. As the creators of educational technology, our team learned the hard […]

Over the last 6 months, Fabien Girardin has been working in a rather unique position at BBVA Data & Analytics, a center of excellence in financial data analysis. My job is to make the design of user experiences reach a new frontier with the emergence of machine learning techniques. My responsibility — among other things — is to bring […]

Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm by Christian Madsbjerg Hachette Books March 2017, 256 pages Inspired by his work with companies like Ford and Coca-Cola, Madsbjerg’s Sensemaking is a provocative stand against the “tyranny” of big data and an impassioned argument that human intelligence, informed by the study of […]

Psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Susan Weinschenk explains how her science informs UX design. Weinschenk takes research and knowledge about the brain, the visual system, memory, and motivation and extrapolates ten UX design principles from that: 1. People don’t want to work or think more than they have to 2. People have limitations 3. People […]

Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams By Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner Publisher: O’Reilly Media August 2016, 198 pages Design has become the key link between users and today’s complex and rapidly evolving digital experiences, and designers are starting to be included in strategic conversations about the products and services […]

Aggressive drivers are looking forward to sharing the road with autonomous cars as they believe they can cut in front of them easily. This is how Peter Campbell summarised in the Financial Times one of the key conclusions of a wide reaching research project by the London School of Economics and Goodyear that investigated how […]

European Commission There is growing recognition that behavioural insights (BIs) – by shedding light on how people actually make choices – help deliver more effective policies and complement traditional forms of intervention. The Behavioural Insights Applied to Policy (BIAP) 2016 report (February 22, 2016) draws on information collected via desk research, a survey and personal […]

Can we design a decision aid that gives us health information we need and counters our biases so that we end up more knowledgeable and confident in our preference? This is the challenge that Artefact, together with Group Health Research Institute, sought to address with project SIMBA. To explore how to overcome bias and deal […]

Cognitive biases are tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment. Buster Benson has tried to arrange the rather exhaustive lists of cognitive biases (e.g. those mentioned on Wikipedia) into a simpler, clearer organizing structure that groups them by the general mental problem […]

Eldar Shafir, professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University and coauthor, with Sendhil Mullainathan, of the book Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives (Picador, 2013), talks to Metropolis Magazine’s Avinash Rajagopal on how scarcity and abundance affect our actions as individuals and communities and what that […]

Designer Erin Lynch recently interviewed Amélie Lamont, a NYC-based design anthropologist, and the result is quite stimulating, particularly also on the topic gender and racial gaps in the design industry. According to Amélie, “design anthropology focuses on better understanding human value systems. As designers, when you understand human value systems, then you can begin creating […]

For those of us who are puzzled about what exactly the difference is between UX and CX, Toby Bottorf, principal at continuum, situates the difference as one of scale: “The difference is one of scale. You’re not designing a thing. You’re trying to design what happens as a result of many things you directly designed, […]

The sum of our clickstreams is not an objective measure of who we are, but a personal portrait of our hopes and desires, argues Rebecca Lemov, associate professor of the history of science at Harvard University. When trying to understand the ramifications of the big-data trajectory, she argues, it is necessary to bear in mind […]

Anthropologist and UX professional Natalie Hanson attended the Enterprise UX conference in San Antonio, Texas this week. The conference is dedicated to delivering useful, delightful, and humane experiences to people who work for and in enterprises, and Natalie did a terrific job at doing a write up on the various talks: – When everyone is […]

The 3M Health Care Business Group follows a strict UX design process that allows for complexity—but isn’t overly complex. Jerry Cao and Eileen Conway report on the UX approach at 3M in Fast Company, and explain how 3M Design follows a disciplined UX process rooted in co-design and customer validation.

User Experience and Usability in Complex Systems Final Report 1/2015 FIMECC (Finnish Metals and Engineering Competence Cluster) November 2015, 225 pages Five years ago, some of Finland’s metals and engineering industry companies were looking for new ways to tackle challenges and concerns. With the shared vision, that industrial design and end users are key to […]