Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
What are the profound socio-cultural changes currently taking place and are people-centred designers well equipped to help companies and institutions address this new context? The current economic recession is turning out to be very severe (The Guardian evokes the spectre…
Lately posting has become a lot more complicated. Putting People First (PPF) started out some years ago as a dumping ground for all kinds of articles and readings that I found interesting and worthwhile sharing. It gradually became a much…
Jonathan Donner of Microsoft Research India and Camilo Andres Tellez of the London School of Economics and Political Science have together written a paper on mobile banking and economic development that just got published in the December issue of the…
At the beginning of last year, we at Experientia worked with a Belgian regional authority on developing the concept for a new design centre, called the Transformation Factory (read more about it in this paper). Now also Business Week’s Bruce…
Computerworld columnist Mike Elgan argues that most gadget and software makers don’t understand what users want most: control. Both users and product designers alike talk about user interface (UI) consistency, usability and simplicity, and system attributes like performance and stability.…
John Maeda, the new president of RISD, wrote some smart words in Esquire (where he was profiled as one of 75 most influential people): “Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of “I can” than “I should,”…
The January-February 2009 issue of Interactions Magazine has just been launched, which in itself is a celebration of the fantastic transformation of the magazine under the careful stewardship of Jon Kolko and Richard Anderson, now one year ago. This transformation…
Tuning up your focus on customer needs is more crucial than ever, writes business and innovation strategist Idris Mootee. Customers always have problems to solve, even more so in a downturn. This downturn itself is creating a permanent impact on…
Last week, the World Bank’s CGAP hosted a roundtable and webinar on the important topic of how mobile phone banking can deliver a range of financial services to poor people and change lives for the better (see also this blog…
Increasingly our personal records and social lives are being privatised, with normal people having very little recourse when these private services are being cancelled or the companies themselves disappear (as most companies eventually do). Currently the country where I live…
The first European conference of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA), which was dedicated to Usability and Design, is more than a week away but the high quality of the event still lingers. The conference, which took place in Turin, Italy,…
A Pew/Internet survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture…
Context-Based Research Group and Carton Donofrio Partners have conducted a joint study on the future of consumerism in a changing economy and conclude that a new “grounded consumer” is emerging from the ashes of the economic meltdown. Press release Context-Based…
In a BBC background article on how Microsoft is missing the boat (again) on the latest technology development, Tim Weber points out usability as Microsoft’s main weakness: “The real Achilles heel of Microsoft’s devices was their abysmal user interface –…
Our friends of the UK service design consultancy Live|Work have posted some must read background articles on their website: The case for Service Design by Lavrans Løvlie Most organisations agree that their services should be oriented towards the customer. Why…
The UK Design Council has just launched a new programme called Public Services by Design. The success of public services is increasingly measured by their ability to provide personalised responses to an ever advancing set of challenges – while operating…
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded UC Irvine a $1.7 million grant to create a new research institute focused on the growing use of mobile technology in providing banking and financial services to people in developing countries. The…
Bruce Sterling looked at the KashKlash questionnaire results and condensed it all into four narrative future scenarios. An excerpt from the last one: But then his son — who had gone into “cloud design,†God help him — started referring…
MIT’s Technology Review reports on how touch interaction on small and large displays could be the next big thing. “Thanks to the popularity of the iPhone, the touch screen has gained recognition as a practical interface for computers. In the…
I am currently watching a live webcast from the World Bank in Washington on mobile banking in emerging markets. If you are near a computer, you might want to check in too (there is 2.3 hours to go at the…