Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Usability
Peter Morville presentation on ambient findabilility at SXSW
Gadgets and the consequences of their design
Design Studies journal has user focus
Improving usability to drive customers to self-service
In the fourth quarter of 2005, Forrester Research conducted a survey of more than 100 companies with annual revenues of $200 million or more. According to Nate Root, the author of the resulting study, one trend became crystal clear: Respondents…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Gain, the relaunched AIGA journal of business and design
AIGA, the professional association for design, has just relaunched its Gain journal, dedicated to stimulating thinking at the intersection of design and business. The launch issue contains a huge amount of material (no less than 30 articles) organised in such…
Vision through sound [Toronto Star]
Researcher Bill Buxton started his career as a musician in Toronto, but found his true calling mixing computer science with his passions for music and design. Now at Microsoft Research, the human-computer interaction and computer graphics pioneer will collaborate with…
The Persona Lifecycle: a field guide for interaction designers
The Persona Lifecycle, First Edition : Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design The Persona Lifecycle (Amazon – Elsevier) addresses the “how” of creating effective personas and using those personas to design products that people love. It doesn’t just describe…
10 rules for experience-based technology [eWeek.com]
Features don’t matter any more. Welcome to the Age of User Experience. As computing and digital devices move more and more into the consumer space, features and functionalities will increasingly take the back seat as motivators for technology adoption: As…
UPA publishes second issue of Journal of Usability Studies
The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) just published the second issue of its Journal of Usability Studies, a peer-reviewed, international, online publication dedicated to promote and enhance the practice, research, and education of usability engineering. THE IMPLICATIONS OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES The…
Design for Democracy: increasing participation in the civic experience
Design for Democracy increases civic participation by making the experience clearer, more understandable, easier to accomplish and more trustworthy. Design and social research professionals collaborate to enable compelling, efficient and trust-building experiences between government and the governed. On a nonprofit…
Design and usability for emerging telephony
During the recent O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference (January 24-26, San Francisco), Roberto Tagliabue, digital experience creative director of Nike TechLab , B.J. Fogg, a researcher at Stanford University and author of the book “Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What…
Ambient discoverability on a design shopping site
Karl Long of Customer Experience Strategy reviews shopcomposition.com, a shopping site that sells an extremely eclectic mix of products, it seems like a stylish, urban outfitters for grown ups. The web site is a flash extraviganza that puts boo.com to…