Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Reacting to the Wired Magazine article that suggests that “the data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete,†Jenna Burrell, sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, lists some questions that she (and maybe other ‘small data’…
Iota Partners is a new Chicago-based venture of Rick Robinson and John Cain (with whom Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels once worked at Sapient) that deals with user experience research, sensor-based data, and smart modelling. The papers section on their website…
Short report on the first European EPIC meeting by Anna Wojnarowska, UX researcher at Experientia: Last Friday, 11th of May, around 100 members of the ethnographic research community in Europe gathered in Barcelona for the 1st European EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis…
Do people want touch on laptop screens? Daria Loi, user experience manager at Intel, did some research on the matter and the answer is a clear yes: people want a single device with a keyboard that opens, closes and is…
In his book “Wicked problems: Problems worth solving“, author John Kolko (founder and director of Austin Center for Design) argues that involving end users in the entire design process ensures a humane design solution. He now summarises his argument in…
IKEA’s new Uppleva Smart TV-furniture unit was extensively shown at the Milan Design Week (which ends today), and on Core77 I wrote more about the interface design, but here some more about the user research that went into the product.…
Tricia Wang is a cultural sociologist interested in understanding how people use digital tools in their day to day lives. In her talk at the Lift 12 conference, she focuses on a story you may have heard of, concerning a…
When the Pew Internet Project first began writing about the role of the internet in American life in 2000, there were stark differences between those who were using the internet and those who were not.1 Today, differences in internet access…
James Temple of the San Francisco Chronicle profiles Daniel Russell (video), Google’s search scientist (or as he calls it “search anthropologist”). “About four years after forming, Google came to realise it needed human insights to infuse that information with context…
Jan Chipchase, Frog Design’s Executive Creative Director for Global Insights, continues his argumentation on the importance of corporate design research. After a somewhat confusing introduction (it’s very much for insiders), Chipchase focuses on the core issue: a backgrounder on the…
Jim Ross, Principal of Design Research at Electronic Ink, provides a good technical overview on the methods of capturing information during user research.
Donald A. Norman (of the Nielsen Norman Group) and Roberto Verganti (Politecnico di Milano) have jointly published a paper entitled “Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research versus Technology and Meaning Change“, based on a talk presented at the Designing Pleasurable…
Exploring mobile-only Internet use: results of a training study in urban South Africa Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study by Jonathan Donner (Microsoft Research India) and Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden (University of Cape Town) explores the challenges,…
“Anthropology, Development and ICTs: Slums, Youth and the Mobile Internet in Urban India” is the title of a research paper by Nimmi Rangaswamy and Edward Cutrell of Microsoft Research India. Abstract In this paper we present results from an anthropological…
On International Women’s Day, the GSMA mWomen Programme released a study called “Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid,” reports MobileActive.org. Drawn from 2,500 interviews with women (aged 16-64 in both rural…
The Life 2.0 project is a EU funded project that aims at supporting elderly people’s independent life through a platform of geographical positioning and social networking services. The project, which involves 13 core partners in 5 European member states, started…
MobileActive has posted an in-depth new case study that focuses on evaluating mobile health interventions. Written by Kate Otto, the case study looks at testing the efficacy of using mobile phones in health care in Ethiopia. A team of researchers…
The divide between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” is vast, and a new study of Internet use in the land of Gutenberg finds that twice the number previously believed barely go online at all. “According to the study, so-called “Digital…
Sierra Wireless’ new USB cellular modems show how user-centred design can help differentiate products in a commoditised market. Matt Plested of Alloy, the agency which helped Sierra design the products, explained to Mex how they explored user environments for USB…
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University published a substantial new report from the Youth and Media project: “Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality” by Urs Gasser, Sandra Cortesi, Momin Malik, & Ashley Lee.…