Most web users only visit six sites
Web users now have almost 76 million sites to choose from, yet most only visit six on a regular basis, it was revealed today. The research, published today by Directgov, points to a new era in the use of the…
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Methods
Complexity causes 50% of product returns [Reuters]
Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday. Product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design,…
Half of American children obese by 2010, 38% of European ones [AP]
Associated Press reports that according to a study published in the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, rates of childhood obesity are expected to skyrocket in the coming years, with half of the children in North and South America obese by…
Sun making user interaction intuitive through SPOT sensors [San Jose Mercury News]
What if you could transfer the address book from your old cell phone to a new one by tilting the old phone like a pitcher and wirelessly pouring hundreds of numbers into the new phone — instead of punching in…
Media Lab director on confronting social problems and user-driven innovation [Christian Science Monitor]
A long article in the Christian Science Monitor reflects on the new directions for the MIT Media Lab, including how it will relate with its sponsors. Director Frank Moss also speaks about confronting social problems and user-driven innovation. Moss wants…
The art of building a robot to love [The New York Times]
If robots can act in lots of ways, how do people want them to act, happy or sad, bubbly or cranky? Reporting on the recent conference on human-robot interaction in Salt Lake City, Henry Fountain of the New York Times…
CeBIT Usability Award 2006
For the first time in 2006, Deutsche Messe AG will select a project from the iF digital media category to receive a CeBIT usability award. This special prize goes to the most usable and user-friendly project, with the emphasis on…
Upcoming conferences on intelligent environments
Two upcoming conferences are exploring some of the implications that widely distributed technologies in our living environments (also called ambient intelligence, intelligent environments or ubiquitous computing) might have for people and the way we live. International Symposium on Intelligent…
Donald Norman awarded Benjamin Franklin medal for his work on user-centred design
Donald A. Norman of Northwestern University and the Nielsen Norman Group will be awarded the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science “for the development of the field of user-centered design, which utilizes our understanding of how people…
The importance of context in assessing the user experience of mobile devices
In her blog gotomobile design ethnographer Kelly Goto reflects extensively on the importance of context assessment and the challenges of usability testing when assessing the user experience of mobile devices, as opposed to other electronic devices. “Surrounding the entire mobile…
Tomorrow’s world: testing the ultimate high tech house [Financial Times]
The Financial Times reports on Project:LIFE, a unique research project by David Wilson Homes and the University of Nottingham’s School of the Built Environment, to understand how the design of the home affects how we live together and to enable…
E-revolution forces Danes online [BBC]
Denmark was the first country in the world to make public services available online and is now going a step further – forcing its citizens online. Since the beginning of February, for instance, companies dealing with state institutions must submit…
User-led innovation projects at BBC
In her Outside Innovation blog, best-selling author and management consultant Patty Seybold engages MIT professor Eric von Hippel (author of Democratizing Innovation) in a lively debate about lead users and lead customers. In a response Matt Locke, Head of Creative…
Better Connected 2006, a UK survey of local authority websites, shows mixed results [eGov Monitor]
Local authority internet services in the UK are showing signs of improvement, though the overall level of progress is slowing, a major survey reveals. The eighth annual Socitm Insight survey of local authority websites – Better Connected 2006 – also…
It’s design, not technology [EE Times]
It seems engineers and programmers are discovering the importance of user experience and understanding the “invisibility” of technology: “It appears as though the cold, soulless world of submicron silicon geometrics and robotic place and route iterations are giving way…
Ethnographic study on shopping in Paris airports
Aeroports de Paris presents the first ethnographic study about men’s buying behaviour in an airport. This unprecedented survey was carried out in January 2006. In an airport environment, a man travelling on his own becomes a true shopper: He is…
Interview with head of Yahoo! Research [Tech Confidential]
In a long interview with The Deal’s Tech Confidential, Prabhakar Raghavan, head of technology research at Yahoo! Inc., says Yahoo!’s goal is to let Internet users retrieve precisely the information they’re seeking on the Web without having to search for…
Interviews with Don Norman and Patrick Baudisch in Stanford d.school magazine
The second issue of Ambidextrous Magazine, a project of the Stanford d.school, features interviews with Don Norman and Patrick Baudisch. In a long interview with Bjoern Hartmann, Don Norman reveals that he is working on a new book with the…
Grocery checkout, Italian style
DIY checkout or self-scanning has long been called the next big thing in supermarkets, but perhaps because of the hellish line situation, Inferno-familiar Italians were quick to adopt them. Unicoop Firenze was the first Italian retailer to introduce self-scanning in…
Interview with Adaptive Path founder Peter Merholz
NextD, the journal for “ReRethinking Design”, just published a very long interview with Peter Merholz, founding partner of Adaptive Path and the mind behind Peterme.com. The interview by GK VanPatter, founding partner of NextD, Humantific and UnderstandingLab, covers such issues…