Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Tricia Wang of UCSD’s Department of Sociology and Barry Brown of the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Center Stockholm presented the paper “Ethnography of the telephone: Changing uses of communication technology in village life” at MobileHCI 2011. Abstract While mobile HCI…
During the Pop!Tech conference, well known design researcher Jan Chipchase gave a talk about his research work. In the panel session an audience member asked two questions relating to personal motivations of doing this kind of research and whether anyone…
Jan Chipchase thinks that 80 to 90% of current recruiting for design research/ethnographic studies (excluding focus groups) that is currently placed through recruiting agencies could from a skill and work-flow perspective, be carried out in-house through a clever use of…
In its new focus on products for girls, Lego is using quite a lot of ethnographic research: “To develop Lego Friends, Knudstorp relaunched the same extensive field research—more cultural anthropology than focus groups—that the company conducted in 2005 and 2006…
Reboot, a service design firm working in the fields of governance and international development, recently spent time with three marginalized groups in China — the rural poor, ethnic minorities, and migrant workers — to research the impacts of three decades…
Homesense was a research project that looked at how we might design smart homes from the bottom up, in an environment of open innovation. Using open source tools Homesense brings the open collaboration methods of online communities to physical infrastructures…
Recently Dianna Miller had a chance to talk to Genevieve Bell, anthropologist and researcher, and the director of Intel Corporation’s Interaction and Experience Research. Genevieve Bell will be one of the keynote speakers at Interaction 12. Dianna talked with her…
Dirk Knemeyer has published a call to rely on foundational science(s) to better understand users. “The preponderance of research and publications on user studies deal more with principals and practices of the discipline and less with understanding the users themselves,…
Larry Dignan discusses – in a conversation with David Ginsberg, director of insights and market research at Intel, and Tony Salvador, senior principle engineer of the Experience Insight Lab at the company – how Intel is boning up on…
The Danish Alexandra Institute (see also previous post) published in 2009 an anthropological user study of needs, motivations and barriers in relation to energy consumption in the home. It was part of the MCHA project (Minimum Configuration – Home Automation)…
In a long interview, Matias Duarte, Android’s head of user experience, explains how Google conducted deep user ethnographic studies to understand how people were using their smartphones and other devices. What is the soul of the new machine? This isn’t…
When people expect to be able to access information in the future, they tend to have reduced memory for the actual information, but enhanced memory for where to find the information. A feature article on UX Magazine: “Researchers found that…
The market research industry is built for the 20th Century mass production model, which is rapidly disappearing, argues Sam Ladner. The “mass audience†is gone and a fragmented diverse populace has taken its place. This new “audience†defies the easy…
Debbie Millman of DesignObserver.com interviewed design anthropologist Dori Tunstall on the insights that anthropology brings to consumerism and branding, and about the powers of transformation in design and designers. “Dori Tunstall is a Design Anthropologist, meaning she tries to understand…
“Shoes, cars and other love stories: Investigating the experience of love for products is the title of the doctoral dissertation (and a book!) by Beatriz Russo Rodrigues (Brazil) at the Technical University of Delft in The Netherlands. “People often say…
Intel’s corporate anthropologist Genevieve Bell has written an elegant introductory article for the BBC site on the role of anthropology in the corporation – particularly aimed at a lay audience. “Ultimately, my team’s role is about making sure the product…
Hivos (The Netherlands) and the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) have consolidated their three year knowledge inquiry into the field of youth, technology and change in a four book collective “Digital AlterNatives with a cause?â€. This collaboratively produced…
The draft proceedings of EPIC 2011, the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, currently taking place in Boulder, CO, USA, are available for download during the conference. They contain drafts of papers and workshop abstracts, and photos and abstracts from Pecha…
An essential part of any design activity is understanding the context one is working in, particularly the social context. Eventually when proposals are made, these too must be measured by their likely impact on the people who will use and…
Applying Anthropology in the Global Village Christina Wasson (Editor); Mary Odell Butler (Editor); Jacqueline Copeland-Carson (Editor) 288 pp. – Nov, 2011 Left Coast Press Hardback (978-1-61132-085-5) Paperback (978-1-61132-086-2) [Amazon link] Synopsis The realities of the globalized world have revolutionized traditional…