Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
In this presentation, Bond Art + Science, a New York based digital services firm focused on strategy and user experience design, explores the state of the art in inviting users to participate in the conversation online. In the past, user…
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Basic Books, 2008 Hardcover, 288 pages This new book, which grew out of the digital natives project at Harvard University’s Berkman Center, investigates “what it…
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…
A few days ago Dori Tunstall, Associated Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois in Chicago, was recently interviewed on the Australian radio programme By Design. What can designers learn from anthropologists? Our guest today believes they can learn…
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…
The International Herald Tribune reports that leading consumer technology companies “are revamping their audio and video equipment for a future centered around the Internet, a world in which televisions, stereos, computers – even kitchen appliances like dishwashers and refrigerators –…
The PICNIC conference website has posted a short but intriguing interview with Adam Greenfield, Nokia’s new head of design direction. An excerpt about the urban experience, technology and solitude: “You know, I believe that cities are all about difficulty. They’re…
Nova Spivack, founder and CEO of Twine, reflects in an smart foresight article on ReadWriteWeb on the future of the desktop, now that everything is moving to “the cloud”. Here are his predictions: The desktop of the future is going…
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…
The New York Times reports on how software designers get hands-on with real world objects to learn to think more creatively and intuitively, featuring examples from Adobe and Mike Kuniavsky’s Sketching in Hardware gatherings. Using computers to model the physical…
Benjamin Dangl of AlterNet reflects on how cell phone use has crept into every aspect of daily life, ironically weakening the basic human communication that is the fabric of any community. As Slate commented in his Adbusters essay, “It seems…
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…
It has been pointed out before [The Economist – San Francisco Chronicle] that immigrant workers are often the most advanced users of communications technology. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica today provided an unusual example of this phenomenon: drug dealers (which…
Coinciding with the introduction of Dell’s new laptops, the company launched a new community site called Digital Nomads (with not much Dell branding to be seen). According to a Dell press release, the site “is designed for individuals who are…
Alan Cooper was asked by the leadership of the Agile 2008 Conference to give the closing keynote address at their annual conference in Toronto. Since the audience at Agile08 consisted of about 1500 programmers, engineers, product managers, and others involved…
Because of limited awareness around Deafness and accessibility in the web community, it seems plausible to many of us that good captioning will fix it all. Lisa Herrod argues on A List Apart that it won’t. “How many times have…