Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Backpackers in Australia often wish to organise group activities, but have few collaboration methods available and only a trickle of communication is possible between them as they move. They regularly explore unfamiliar locations quickly, but have only basic resources to…
A challenge to the traditional view that new technology will widen inequality in the future comes from the UK Government’s Social Exclusion Unit. The new report shows how technology is already improving life chances and public service delivery, and is…
In recent years, there has been a big increase in new electronic media products for very young children, including those as young as one month old. A driving force behind this new market is the advertising and package labeling that…
From information design to experience design: smart artefacts and the disappearing computer The rate at which computers disappear will be matched by the rate at which information technology will increasingly permeate our environment and determine our lives. This notion of…
Mobile Community Design is a frequently updated blog that provides research and design information on mobile communities. It is maintained by Jeff Axup, a Ph.D. student in Information Environments at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and contains some…
The Apple website has, perhaps a bit surprisingly, a rather extensive feature on the design consultancy IDEO on its website. A first article entitled “Bigger than a breadbox design” describes how IDEO uses innovative design methodologies and applies them to…
Teenagers are using more technology at a younger age to connect with more people than ever before, according to a study of young consumers prepared by Forrester Research, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based market research company. The report, based on a…
China Daily has an extensive English language report on the Beijing design and innovation meeting “Next Generation Design, Innovation and Creativity for China” (30 November 2005), co-hosted by China Daily and the Illinois Institute of Technology, and apparently a prelude…
A couple of months ago I posted about a very exciting experience design case study by Marc Rettig and MAYA Design on work done for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Maya Design has meanwhile posted a case study synthesis of…
Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for millions of young Americans across the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone,…
Exasperation with focus groups, while not universal, is growing as companies look for better ways to get inside consumers’ heads, often assisted by new technology and the Internet. Perhaps the most common complaint about focus groups is that consumers…
The latest issue of trendwatching.com talks about virtual anthropology. “As consumers around the world pro-actively post, stream if not lead parts of their lives online, you (or your trend team) can now vicariously ‘live’ amongst them, at home, at work,…
Future Perfect is the blog of Jan Chipchase, who works in the User Experience Group at Nokia Research. He defines it as a blog “about the collision of people, society and technology, drawing on issues related to the user research…
Ken Friedman works at the intersection of three fields: design, management and art. At Denmark’s Design School, he works with theory construction and comparative research methodology for design and as Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design at the Norwegian School…
Abstracts and posters of the first Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC, that took place on 14-15 November in Redmond, WA, are already online. The conference proceedings are also downloadable (pdf, 1.9 mb, 198 pages), be it for a limited…
The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) just published the inaugural issue of the Journal of Usability Studies, a UPA peer-reviewed, on-line journal dedicated to “promoting and enhancing the practice, research, ethics and education of usability engineering”. A great positive is…
MIT Technology Review discusses the blossoming field of corporate ethnography as a way to study how people actually use technology and reports on the first-ever Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC), organised by ethnographers at Intel and Microsoft and held…
UC Berkeley and Yahoo! recently established a joint research laboratory, headed by Prof. Marc Davis, to explore and invent social media and mobile media technology and applications that will enable people to create, describe, find, share, and remix media on…
We clearly have a love-hate relationship with digital technology, a new study confirms. We love how easily it allows us – through e-mail, sending photos and exchanging news and information – to communicate with friends and family, but we…
In this long feature, Rick Robinson, global director of GFK NOP‘s Observational & Ethnographic Practice, discusses ethnography and branding, and argues in much detail how ethnography can help companies gain a true understanding of their customers — including their interactions,…