Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
In a truly excellent article, entitled “You can’t innovate like Apple”, Alain Breillatt also discusses Apple’s approach to user research. “While I’m sure Jobs says he doesn’t do research, it’s pretty clear that his team goes out to thoroughly study…
“CS547. Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)” is a course of the Stanford HCI Group, coordinated by Terry Winograd, on topics related to human-computer interaction design. Below is a run-down of the 2008-2009 speakers (all videos are…
Anthropologist Stefana Broadbent says that modern communications aren’t expanding our circle of friends but are strengthening our most important relationships, reports Kevin Anderson on The Guardian’s PDA blog. “Modern communications are not expanding our social circle, but anthropologist Stefana Broadbent…
Both the Guardian newspaper’s PDA blog and TED itself are posting regular updates from the current TEDGlobal conference in Oxford, UK. (TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, and it’s an exclusive conference that brings togethers thinkers and doers from…
While most people see mobile as the answer to so many problems, research from Nielsen Norman Group sees it as another problem on the list. “The key finding showed that users are 35 percent less successful completing Web site tasks…
Human-Computer Interaction: Development Process (Series: Human Factors and Ergonomics) by Andrew Sears and Julie A. Jacko (Editors) CRC Press, March 2, 2009 Hardcover, 356 pages Amazon – Google Books Preview Hailed on first publication as a compendium of foundational principles…
Design ethnography: strategy for visual communications Leslie MacNeil Weber 2009 Graduate Thesis University of Washington Ethnography, a field of anthropological study and a research technique, helps visual communication designers create materials that evoke meaning and inspire action in their audiences.…
In a country where people don’t have electricity, much less Internet access, the Grameen Foundation partners with Google to relay information through mobile phones. Dara Kerr reports from on the ground for CNet: “The research for this project began a…
In an exploration into how games can add value to the innovation process, Philips Design has created ‘Spark’, a board game that stimulates creativity and innovative thinking. To play Spark, the players move counters representing different characters around the board,…
The Nokia Conversations blog reports: Designing gestures to help you interact with your device in intuitive ways is a challenge that Nokia is grabbing with both hands and welcoming with a respectful bow. Younghee Jung is one of Nokia’s explorative…
Today, market research is a $19 billion industry and focus groups are one of the most expensive types of market research. The question is, asks Ravi Sawhney, founder and CEO of RKS, in Fast Company, what role should design play…
Will Evans, principal, experience design for Twin Technologies, writes in a somewhat rambling post about the value of mood maps to document and map the emotional states of a user so that it can guide the creation and communication of…
Celine Perin, design researcher at frog design, describes on Use8 what digital diaries are, and why this a great methodology for interactive, international user research. “Our solution was to conduct a “digital diary study”: a novel hybrid technique that combined…
Vicky Teinaki talked to Alex Wright, Director of User Experience at The New York Times, and author of Glut, a book on the history of information architecture from human evolution to the internet, about how a librarian gets into user…
A few months ago, we wrote with satisfaction how the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) got inspired by the theme of its first European regional conference (Turin, December 2008 – co-chaired by Experientia partner Michele Visciola), and chose for a major…
The July-August issue of Interactions magazine is out and more and more content is publicly available online (thank goodness): Editorial: Interactions: Time, Culture, and Behavior Jon Kolko Over the past 10 issues, interactions has, with a great deal of conscious…
Two interesting articles on recent Steelcase research, and particularly on the challenge of how to best gather relevant insights from qualitative research: How to find insights from your research You did the interviews, got the photos, and compiled the reams…
In a short essay on Core77, Robert Fabricant is not afraid to tackle some big questions: “What role did Design play in contributing to our current global crisis? What role should/will Designers play in leading us out of this mess?”…
Navi Radjou writes on HarvardBusiness.org that he recently visited the Microsoft Research India lab in Bangalore, describes what he learned about their Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) unit, and draws some interesting wider conclusions. “What impressed me most about TEM…
Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter: Reflections on Research in and of Corporations Edited by Melissa Cefkin Berghahn Books, July 2009 262 pages Abstract Businesses and other organizations are increasingly hiring anthropologists and other ethnographically-oriented social scientists as employees, consultants, and…