Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Demos, the British think tank for everyday democracy and the publisher of The Greenhouse weblog, organises a series of monthly discussions about innovation and future leadership in education and public services, called Open Secrets. Tellingly, the latest discussion, which was…
In re-reading an article on the future of Wi-Fi from last week’s Herald Tribune, I was struck by a comment towards the end: “What doesn’t work is the complexity to get onto a Wi-Fi network. The ability to make wireless…
Mark Hurst of Good Experience contacted me today about the Gel 2006 conference. Gel is a conference and community, exploring good experience in all its forms — in business, art, society, technology, and life. The goal of the conference [which…
In a blog that talks about participatory design and how users can contribute to the design of services, we cannot sidestep the ethical issue. Often people’s creativity and cultural contributions are used against their own interests. In a long and…
The French “buzz marketing” agency Nouveau Jour has been collaborating with the creative team of fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier on a new online section for the designer, conceived as a virtual world to experience and share chance encounters. In addition…
The Economist has just published a survey of higher education (which can be viewed without subscription) and argues in an editorial that the state of Europe’s higher education is a long-term threat to its competitiveness. Europe’s only chance of preserving…
One of the first activities of the newly founded Launch Institute is a conference on empathic market sensing on 20-21 September in Hamburg, Germany. Empathic market sensing builds upon voice-of-the-customer and observational “applied ethnography†techniques to dive deeply into how…
Intel’s People and Practices Research Lab engages the techniques of social science (including anthropology and ethnography) and design in order develop a deep understanding of how people live and work. This knowledge is then translated into insights for guiding corporate…
Accenture Technology Labs, the technology research and development organisation within Accenture, is at the intersection of business and technology, exploring the impact of new and emerging technologies on business in the future. Its research in “workforce performance and user experience”…
The Sony Ericsson website now contains an “Experiences” section with small visual scenarios of how mobile phone functionalities can provide added value to our lives. Or in their own marketing language: “It’s all about combining your emotions with our technology…
“Smart Internet 2010” was an 18-month project conducted by Australia’s technology research consortium, the Smart Internet Technology CRC, to examine what the internet might evolve into by 2010 and the implications for end-users. The report was spearheaded by leading…
As it becomes ever more difficult to gain consumers’ attention in an increasingly cluttered environment, more and more companies are looking to fragrance to help distinguish their brands from the competition. Read full story
Service problems, a botched rollout of its third-generation phone network and a skimpy lineup of new handsets have driven away Japanese Vodafone customers in droves. The company admits that its biggest misstep was a decision to focus its lineup in…
Technology firms are pushing a futuristic vision of home entertainment not because consumers are desperate for it but because they themselves are. Whether or not computer, software, consumer-electronics, telecoms, cable and internet companies are in fact out of touch with…
Big corporations today can be viewed as decision factories — but where’s the elegant design approach that’s applied to products? Great design is characterised by deep user understanding, visualisation of creative resolution of tensions, collaborative prototyping to enhance solutions, and…
The European Commission has published a new plan, called i2010 for ‘the completion of a Single European Information Space’. The Commission proposes an 80% increase in funding for ICT research focused on areas where Europe has recognised strengths: nano-electronics, embedded…
Ambidextrous Magazine is the design journal of the nascent Stanford d.school. It is a magazine for the wider design community, which includes engineers and ethnographers, psychologists and philosophers. Rather than focusing on promoting product, Ambidextrous exposes the people and processes…
The narrow, cobbled streets of Cordoba in southern Spain are no place for a car, but Alfredo Romeo, a Spanish entrepreneur wanted to change that and set up a business with “blobjectsâ€, electric hire cars that are proving popular with…
The global future forum, which originated within Unisys, is an independent partnership of futurists, academics and businesspeople, committed to helping organisations extend their strategic planning horizons, and better prepare for the future. It offers business a single point of access…
My Experientia business partner Jan-Christoph Zoels alerted me to a series of New York Times articles on the isolated, frightening, overwhelming and often dehumanising experiences many patients have in hospitals, and what social, cultural and demographic changes are playing a…