Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
“The material world is a world of social potential. Social scientists should be better equipped to engage with materials and objects through ethnographic, critical, analytical, presentational and collaborative skills. Designers, artists, engineers, architects and curators should be better equipped to…
Marco Steinberg, who directs the strategic design efforts of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, announced last week that Sitra’s Helsinki Design Lab will close in June 2013. Helsinki Design Lab is an initiative by Sitra to advance strategic design as…
Zach Hyman is based in Chongqing, China on a year long ethnographic dive into creative practices of vehicular design among resource-constrained users. After four months in the field, Zach shares with Ethnography Matters his first field update. His observations on…
Longtime political operative Joe Trippi advocates a bottom-up, people-centered politics, and cheers the innovations of Obama 2012, saying they restored the primacy of the individual voter. “New technologies can manipulate, empower, or do both. There will be plenty of actors…
Recent reports from McKinsey’s iConsumer Global Research Initiative: Moving from “mobile first†to “touch first†December 2012 (published on the EconomistGroup site) Already, more than a third of the time people spend web browsing, using social networking sites, and using…
Samsung is doubling down on technology investments in Apple’s backyard, including two new R&D buildings in Silicon Valley that will house 2,000 staff and a recently announced startup accelerator. Leading this effort is Young Sohn, who started at Samsung in…
The full service design agency Pars Pro Toto in Ghent, Belgium built the “Wereld van Nestor” [Nestor’s World], a social design tool meant to help local governments in Flanders create a better world for their elderly citizens. The tool is…
The series of research projects on tablet use in schools (see here, here and here) now also has an Android study. A small research project by Marie Bjerede and Tzaddi Bondi, equipped a 5th grade class of 27 students in…
As part of ServiceD, a three-year service design project, which researched future educational needs and piloted service design education, Lahti University of Applied Sciences from Finland and The Estonian Institute for Futures Studies from Tallinn University have published two remarkable…
Although there are many tablet deployments in schools worldwide, there is a glaring lack of serious research on what actually happens in the classrooms with these devices. In fact, there is so far no aggregated evidence that tablet technology significantly…
According to Pew Internet research, the teachers who instruct the most advanced American secondary school students render mixed verdicts about students’ research habits and the impact of technology on their studies. More in particular, they say that students’ digital literacy…
In order to understand mobile phone usage at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) in Kenya, iHub Research and Research Solutions Africa conducted a 6-month study, funded by infoDev (World Bank). A total of 796 face-to-face interviews were conducted along…
For the Stanford-educated founders of Emprego Ligado, creating a successful app in Brazil required dismantling every assumption about the target audience. Emprego Ligado, which translates to “connected job,” launched in Sao Paulo this summer with the aim of connecting unskilled…
On Saturday 27 October, the Italian-speaking Swiss city of Lugano will host the 4th edition of the UXconference. The 2012 edition of the conference, which is organised by the Sketchin team, will focus on the relationship between digital services and…
Mind Design, the Design Research Webzine of the Danish Centre for Design Research, contains a wealth of information, all available in English. Here are some highlights: Article Companies: Design Research Works in Practice Design researchers are developing new, applicable knowledge…
Rajeev Suri posted a short interview with Gustav Praekelt of Praekelt Consulting and the Praekelt Foundation, who focuses on creating behaviour change in people – particularly in emerging markets – using mobile technology. In the interview he explains the notions…
In this BBC article, David Edelstein, a leader in the mobile for development space, argues that human networks are the essential ingredient for mobile phones to improve the lives of the poorest. “Focusing on the technology betrays a truth that…
A four step guide from the Milan Expo 2015: Step 1 Ask your main sponsors (in this case Cisco, Enel and Telecom Italia) to indicate the relevant “Smart City” technologies that they already have, are currently working on, or are…
The IxDA Board of Directors just announced that Alok Nandi will be Chair of Interaction14, to be held February, 2014 in Amsterdam in conjunction with Utrecht School of the Arts and Delft University of Technology. Alok, an independent media writer/director…
In a new report from its ConsumerLab, Ericsson maps out the potential of transformation within m-commerce across the region of sub-Saharan Africa. Based on in-depth, extensive interviews with mobile phone users in Ghana, South Africa, and Tanzania, the report has…