Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Innovation is overrated, writes Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe. It’s time to appreciate the power of the copycat. “Invaluable though innovation may be, our relentless focus on it may be obscuring the value of its much-maligned relative, imitation. Imitation…
The latest issue of Design and Culture contains an article by Louise Crewe, Nicky Gregson and Alan Metcalfe on “homemakingâ€. Entitled The Screen and the Drum: on Form, Function, Fit and Failure in Contemporary Home Consumption, it describes the complex…
The Economist explores the topic of consumer research in emerging markets: “Emerging markets are far more varied and volatile than mature ones. There is little money around: the average income per person in China is around $3,500 and in India…
The latest issue of Interactions Magazine is about a new intellectualism of design, write co-editors Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko: one that embraces discourse, dialogue, systems thinking, and the larger role of designers in shaping culture. Here are the articles…
To launch Twist, a new men’s fragrance in its global Axe brand, Unilever turned to a preapproved crowd of eager young amateurs for help. Venessa Wong reports in Business Week. “In July 2008, Unilever executives convened 16 regular young men…
This project of the Nordic Innovation Center aimed to draw attention to user driven innovation in the health care sector, and to develop and test methods for user driven innovation in the context of health care. “The report consists of…
The World Bank in partnership with mobile handset maker Nokia is set to fund the establishment of mobile applications laboratories in Africa in a move to boost innovation in the field. “The mobile laboratories will help assist mobile applications entrepreneurs…
Qualitative, and especially observational or ethnographic, research enables us to delve much more deeply into the relationship between our firm and its product/service and the customer, argues Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of…
Although design and design thinking are having a positive impact on management practice and education, Youngjin Yoo, an associate professor at Temple University , doesn’t think that the current wave of design thinking will address the fundamental crisis that contemporary…
From the Nordic Innovation website: User driven innovation is emerging as one of the successful ways of creating breakthrough innovations for companies and organisations. In this project called “Create concept innovation with users“, a Nordic and Baltic consortium lead by…
Brands are starting to catch on to lifelogging – a technique that uses a tiny digital camera to capture every moment of a consumer’s day and take insight gathering to a higher level. Lifelogging involves consumers wearing a small digital…
Sir George Cox was the closing speaker at The Big Rethink, a ‘Redesigning Business Summit’ organised by The Economist, in association with the Design Council, that aims to develop some fresh ideas on how design thinking can be used to…
The Guardian, one of the leading UK newspapers, has publish an eight-page supplement on service design (pdf) – subtitled “Design innovation in the public and private sector – in association with the Service Design Network (that Experientia is a member…
UK Government innovation policy should be refocused to reflect the crucial role played by customers in stimulating and funding the development of new hi-tech companies, claims a major new report on the Cambridge hi-tech cluster. For many years, the “Cambridge…
(From a Darden press release) On March 19 the Darden School of Business [Charlottesville, VA, USA] and the Batten Institute [an academic research center of the business school] will launch Darden’s new innovation laboratory, or i.Lab, a state-of-the-art learning environment…
Content strategy is more or less on the same trajectory as social media was three years ago, argues Kristina Halvorson (of Brain Traffic). “I think it’s because the reality of social media initiatives—that they’re internal commitments, not advertising campaigns—has derailed…
Focusing on improving and innovating services is a smart way to foster economic growth. Jeneanne Rae reports from the Netherlands. “Recognizing the need to steer the typical conversation about innovation away from technology and products toward services, Minister of Economic…
The growing use of branchless banking channels over the coming years is inevitable in most countries. But it’s far less certain whether large numbers of the unbanked poor will use these alternative channels for financial services beyond payments, such as…
Ethnographer Tricia Wang wrote an excellent and long comment on why Google is having troubles in China: While unfortunate that Google.CN may be shutting down, my ethnographic work in China revealed five things that aren’t being told in the current…
The latest Intel Technology Journal (Volume 13, Issue 30 reports the research and development activities of the Intel Digital Health Group and its colleagues. One article, entitled “From people to prototypes and products: ethnographic liquidity and the Intel Global Aging…