Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
As trained observers of how people in a society live, ethnographers can help companies figure out what people need and then work with designers to meet those needs with new (or more often tweaked) products and services. CNN reports. “Microsoft…
Yesterday TalkTalk, the UK broadband division of Carphone Warehouse, launched the Digital Anthropology Report – a comprehensive insight into how British people use the internet. “We spoke to over 2,000 people around the country and looked at their attitudes to…
Femme Den is a small internal cadre of designers of Smart Design — the company that was responsible for the OXO Good Grips kitchen tools and the Flip Mini Digital Camcorder — that is devoted to thinking about the differences…
The world’s biggest chip maker predicts that by 2015 there will be 12 billion devices capable of connecting to 500 billion hours of TV and video content. The audience heard from a number of speakers on what promises to be…
The Mercury News reports on how Yahoo believes it can build its search audience by focusing on the user “experience,” rather than viewing search as a raw data query. “‘What’s notable about many of the stable of researchers at Yahoo…
One of the projects of AppLab, the application laboratory of the Grameen Foundation, is focused on mobile technology for community health (MoTeCH) in Ghana: “Grameen Foundation has launched an initiative to determine how best to use mobile phones to increase…
In a two-part podcast Genevieve Bell, Intel Fellow and Director of the User Experience Group, discusses the intersection of technology and society, with a special focus on the social media explosion and worldwide technology adoption. Listen to podcast: part 1…
Jonathan Donner, a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India, has submitted a paper — together with Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden — on first-time mobile internet use in South Africa to the upcoming (3rd)…
Don Hammonds of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on the use of market research and ethnographic observations by car manufacturers: “The tool that most people associate with automotive market research is the focus group but another tool has become more popular…
CGAP has published a brief entitled “Poor People Using Mobile Financial Services: Observations on Customer Usage and Impact from M-PESA”. “Despite growing agreement on the potential of technology to expand access to finance, or branchless banking, there is surprisingly little…
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…
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.…
Last week Google announced a suite of SMS services in Uganda. In a follow-up post on the main google blog, the company explains that it is the result of more than a year of true user-centred research and design. “We…
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…
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…
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…
Malaysian newspaper The Star devotes plenty of space to user-centred design in three stories that feature the work of Genevieve Bell, Intel’s user experience director. “Marrying†anthropology and science “I still write and publish my work in academic journals. To…