Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age by C. Russell Brumfield Quimby Press, Hardcover, June 2008 Secretly, scores of Fortune 500 companies, like Proctor & Gamble, Disney, Bloomingdales, Lexus, Reebok, Sony, Samsung, and Starwood Hotels, have been…
For years I wondered why IDEO was so little present in the online debate. That has now changed with no less than two new blogs by IDEO: IDEO Labs “IDEO Labs is a place where we can share bits of…
Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s informed consent [Wikipedia definition], and we all hate it. But is there something more relevant to say about the user experience of malware? Yes, because the…
Eataly, the very successful “slow” and experiential supermarket in Turin, Italy, is now opening branches in Tokyo and New York. According to the La Repubblica newspaper, Eataly will inaugurate its first foreign branch on 26 September in Tokyo’s Daikanyama neighbourhood.…
Philips’ new sex toy range, in other words. Here some excerpts from today’s press release: Philips launches new category of ‘Relationship Care’ with intimate massagers for couples Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG, AEX:PHI) today announced the launch of a new category…
The Brazilian experience designer Andrë Braz, who is user experience design manager at the Globo Corporation, has published an appealing Experience Design Manifesto. Here is his reasoning behind it: I have always thought that most designers pay little attention to…
The upcoming New York Times Magazine has a long feature on the effects of News Feed, Twitter and other forms of incessant online contact. “Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient…
Nicolas Nova and Bruno Giussani have been blogging two of the LIFT Asia conference sessions that took place in Seoul today. Session: Networked city The new digital layers provided by ICTs are transforming contemporary urban environments. What does that mean…
Mobile Nation: Creating Methodologies for Mobile Platforms by Martha Ladly and Philip Beesley, editors Riverside Architectural Press (August 15, 2008) Hardcover, 272 pages Mobile Nation explores the emerging field of mobile experience design. The papers in this anthology include essays…
Jared Spool recently interviewed Bill Verplank, the extremely gentle man at the origins of the fields of interaction design and experience design, whom I had the pleasure of meeting many times at the meanwhile defunct Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. “Have…
The September-October issue of Interactions Magazine has been published and is now shipping to all members of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI). The rest of us can access some limited content online (three articles in the current…
The HomeLab at the Philips research center is a model home built to test and monitor real-world response to prototype technology. Thirty cameras and microphones record subjects as they use and interact with products for the home; then researches review…
Adam Greenfield has written a truly excellent post — in fact more like a short essay — on the difference between location and context, calling the first one positivist and the second one phenomenological. “But it [the positivist tradition] stands…
In “A Treatment Room With a View”, the Wall Street Journal covers patient-centred efforts in health care. “Submitting to chemotherapy, radiation treatments, MRIs, CT scans and the like can be bad enough. But often, dreary, windowless rooms and corridors only…
Russell Davies is concerned that “we’ll end up blundering into cities plastered with the equivalent of flash banners and microsites.” “Technologists are busying themselves turning buildings into displays, or at least draping them with informatics (whether physically or via various…
Trevor van Gorp explains how psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” can help you design emotional web experiences by cutting through information overload to engage users. Here are some basic website traits that will help to encourage flow. Clear navigation:…
Donald Norman has just posted a few excerpts from his draft book manuscript tentatively entitled “Sociable Design” for comments and reactions. Introduction Whether designing the rooftop of a building or the rear end of a home or business appliance, sociable…
Jonathan Follett writes on how as UX designers or researchers — we’ll be on the forefront of the movement to handle the coming flood of data — and make it not only available, but easy for people to use and…
More Italian news on how communications technologies are penetrating people’s daily lives, and sometimes create frictions: The Italian newspaper La Stampa reports on plans for a virtual cemetery in Turin to commemorate those cremated, apparently developed without public consultation (my…
CNN reports on the cell phone boom in Africa: “In less than a decade, cellphones, once the preserve of the very rich, are now ubiquitous in Africa and parts of Asia. A device that’s sometimes used as a fashion accessory…