Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Aging the technoscape Do technologies like chairs and walkers have a place in our imagination of the technoscape? How might this image help us to think differently about Mauss’s concept of “techniques of the body” from the perspective of the…
Research for Designers A Guide to Methods and Practice By Gjoko Muratovski – Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand and Tongji University, China SAGE Publications Ltd, January 2016 280 pages Abstract Design is everywhere: it influences how we live, what…
What happens when robot cars meet complex social interaction, like head nods, horn honks, or even road rage? Dr. Melissa Cefkin “is here to teach autonomous cars how to behave”. A design anthropologist based at the Nissan Technical Center in…
On the occasion of the U.S. launch of his new book, How to Thrive in the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today, John Thackara sat down with Core77’s Allan Chochinov to talk about the book, changing attitudes about the future,…
Guardian writer Samuel Gibbs writes that the second edition of the Blackphone by security and privacy company Silent Circle is a step up in usability and is surprisingly easy to set up and use, even for privacy novices. “The Blackphone…
In September, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that directs federal agencies to incorporate insights from behavioral science into their programs, in order to help them achieve their policy goals. According to Dave Nussbaum, adjunct associate professor of behavioral…
Digital technologies such as analytics, mobility, social networks, cloud computing and the Internet of Things are making old ways of working redundant and forcing companies to transform. According to Raman Sapra, global head of Dell’s digital business services, the best…
The Quantified Self By Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus MIT Press, 264 pp. April 2016 Oops, that is confusing: two books by sociologists on the quantified self movement, both entitled “The Quantified Self” and both appearing in April 2016. The…
The Rolls-Royce Unified Bridge Design has won this year’s Ergonomics Design Award, presented by the UK Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors. The award recognises industrial design which puts the customer at the heart of the process using their…
Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice By Sarah Pink, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth, Tania Lewis and Jo Tacchi (RMIT University) SAGE Publications October 2015, 216 pages Abstract This sharp, innovative book champions the rising significance of ethnographic research on…
Who Benefits From Civic Technology? Demographic and public attitudes research into the users of civic technologies Rebecca Rumbul, Head of Research, mySociety October 2015 mySociety, 31 pages mySociety’s longterm mission is to understand the impacts of civic technologies. But before…
Sociologist Brooke Harrington realized that if she were ever going to understand global inequality she would have to become one of the people who helps create it. So she trained to become a wealth manager to the ultra-rich. Although she…
On August 31st Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova from the Near Future Laboratory organised a full day design fiction workshop in Sweden focused on the consumer-oriented Internet of Things. The goal for the day was to create a catalogue in…
Watching Closely: A Guide to Ethnographic Observation by Christena Nippert-Eng Oxford University Press, October 2015 296 pages Ethnographers rely on three related activities to conduct research in the field: observation, conversation, and participation. Observing others in their environments and using…
The White House’s Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST), a cross-agency effort to bring behavioral science research into the policy making process, has just published its first annual report, which covers just 15 proof-of-concept projects in this first year. Politico’s…
The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s new national centre for data science, will focus on “drawing value out of the data”, writes Emily Cadman in the Financial Times. According to the Institute’s website, the mission is to “undertake data science…
Design for Ageing Gracefully Rethinking Health and Wellness for the Elderly: Public Services Asian Insights & Design Innovation, DesignSingapore Council October 2015
Applying Design Approaches to Policy Making: Discovering Policy Lab Written by Lucy Kimbell Illustrated by Holly Macdonald Published by the University of Brighton September 2015 This report reviews what design-based approaches bring to policy making. It results from an academic…
Research on Digital Identity Ecosystems by Francesca Bria, Gemma Galdon Clavell, Javier Ruiz, José Mara Zavala, Laura Fitchner, Harry Halpin D-CENT (Decentralised Citizens ENgagement Technologies) 30 June 2015 D-CENT (a European research project on “Decentralised Citizens ENgagement Technologies”) has published…
MIT Professor Sherry Turkle has been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five, I’ve had a special focus: What has happened to face-to-face conversation in a world where so many people say…