Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
The Flemish Government (Flanders is one of Belgium’s regions) is choosing for participatory public diplomacy as a promising avenue for foreign policy development. The region, which has some foreign embassy staff but no foreign embassies, is in the process of…
Umpqua Bank has opened an Innovation Lab in Portland, Ore, showcasing emerging and existing technologies that foster community and redefine what consumers can expect from a banking experience. As a testing ground for new initiatives, the Lab will change regularly…
Nicole Ferraro investigates in a long article in Information Week if cell phones and other inexpensive wireless devices can close the digital divide in the world’s poorest countries. “For the developing world, the Internet experience is going to be a…
Ever since I live in Italy, I have always seen the Slow Food movement as one of Italy’s most interesting innovations of the last decades. In late 2006, they started developing a Slow Design concept – that I also interviewed…
“Transformers – how local areas innovate to address changing social needs” is a new report by the UK National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) that explores why some places innovate more effectively than others. Taking a series…
A new study overturns the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – youngsters born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at…
ICT Results reports on an EU-funded research project on “palpable computing” (Palcom), led by the University of Arhus in Denmark. The ideas behind it seem similar to concepts developed by both Genevieve Bell (see here and here) and Adam Greenfield.…
Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase reports on just published research from Microsoft Research India‘s Jonathan Donner that explores the practice of beeping – making intentional missed calls. The paper draws on field research from Rwanda in 2004, categorising three different types…
Nokia announced today that it unveiled two handsets that offer a range of useful features and colours aimed at consumers in emerging markets. Interestingly they have each been designed based on extensive user research. Nokia 2600 classic for personalisation The…
The Usability Professionals’ Association is proud to announce the first European Regional UPA Conference. The conference will take place from December 4th to December 6th 2008 in the beautiful city of Turin, Italy – the 2008 World Design Capital.…
Demos, the UK think tank “for everyday democracy”, has published a new report on “self-directed public services”, entitled “Making It Personal“. Abstract his report advocates a simple yet transformational approach to public services – self-directed services – which allocate people…
About a month ago I announced the conference Changing the Change about the role and results of design research in the transition towards sustainability (see PPF and Core77). The conference will be held in Torino, Italy, 10 to 12 July…
Stephanie Hanes, a correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, reports on how Namibia’s plucky fix-it industry can handle all manner of disaster with your phone. “Cellphones are in the deepest rural areas in Africa,” says Saadhna Panday, of South Africa’s…
Steven Bell of the blog Designing Better Libraries has authored an article for the January-February 2008 issue of American Libraries on how a design thinking approach can help librarians. “As a profession that mediates information from source to user—not unlike…
The Museum 2.0 blog explores the ways that the philosophies of Web 2.0 can be applied in museums to make them more engaging, community-based, vital elements of society. Just like Web 2.0 which is “a definition of web-based applications with…
Last week I visited Eataly again, a fantastic “experiential” supermarket, right here in Torino. Associated with the Slow Food movement, you can dwell in it for hours and feel constantly stimulated, intellectually, sensually and visually. But I had never written…
A few weeks ago, I announced the new direction taken by Interactions Magazine under its new editors-in-chief Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko, and now the first issue is out. The content looks very exciting indeed and the editors-in-chief have done…
Jon Kolko, an interaction design specialist, went from consulting (2000-2002) to academia (Savannah College of Art & Design, 2002-2007) and then back to consulting (frog design, 2007-). So what has he learned from these transitions? Well, not what you’d think.…
For sure Ray Kurzweil (author of The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology) and Bruce Sterling (who coined the term “Biot” – an entity which is both object and person – in his book Shaping Things) will enjoy this:…
Adam Greenfield is self-publishing his next book “The City Is Here For You To Use: Urban form and experience in the age of ubiquitous computing”. “The City Is Here For You To Use takes everything explored in Everyware as a…