Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Ethnography
Going off the beaten path for new design ideas [The New York Times]
The role of ethnographic research in driving technology innovation – Lessons from Inside Asia
In a story in Pakistan’s Daily Times, Bill Siu (whom I presume to be an Intel Vice-President), shares some of the insights gained from Intel’s ethnographic research in Asia. The Inside Asia project team, led by Dr Genevieve Bell [which…
The importance of context in assessing the user experience of mobile devices
In her blog gotomobile design ethnographer Kelly Goto reflects extensively on the importance of context assessment and the challenges of usability testing when assessing the user experience of mobile devices, as opposed to other electronic devices. “Surrounding the entire mobile…
Tomorrow’s world: testing the ultimate high tech house [Financial Times]
The Financial Times reports on Project:LIFE, a unique research project by David Wilson Homes and the University of Nottingham’s School of the Built Environment, to understand how the design of the home affects how we live together and to enable…
Ethnographic study on shopping in Paris airports
Aeroports de Paris presents the first ethnographic study about men’s buying behaviour in an airport. This unprecedented survey was carried out in January 2006. In an airport environment, a man travelling on his own becomes a true shopper: He is…
Interview with Adaptive Path founder Peter Merholz
NextD, the journal for “ReRethinking Design”, just published a very long interview with Peter Merholz, founding partner of Adaptive Path and the mind behind Peterme.com. The interview by GK VanPatter, founding partner of NextD, Humantific and UnderstandingLab, covers such issues…
Intel hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists [MIT Technology Review]
Why is Intel, the giant chip maker, in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work side by side with its engineers? While the success of this strategy will become clearer over the next…
The rise of ethnography at Intel
The company at the heart of the machine is trying harder to get into the heads of its users. In the latest MRWho, MrWeb’s Michael Kenyon talked to Ken Anderson, Manager of People and Practice Research at Intel and one…
Swisscom ethnologist observes ecology of communication channels
Are people “specialising” their use of different communication channels? Are there different usages for mobile, fix, e-mail, etc in terms of content, partners in the communication or habits? And are new channels affecting how other channels are used? Bruno Giussani…
An anthropologist at an architecture firm
I have always been convinced that the traditional research approach as applied in architectural practices is conceptually closer to user experience research than that found in most other contexts. Peter Merholz just alerted me to MKThink, an architecture firm which…
Ethnography and the iPod
As part of a long and critical post on the design and usability problems of the iPod (entitled “What’s wrong with the iPod), Jeff Axup of Mobile Community Design also looks at the social systems surrounding iPod usage: “We all…
Australian qualitative research results in 35 mobile phone product ideas
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…
Shoot the focus group [Business Week]
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…
Virtual anthropology
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, a user experience blog by a Nokia researcher
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…
Steve Portigal’s reflections on recent UX conferences
Steve Portigal pointed out to me that he just wrote up his own impressions on four user experience related conferences he attended this autumn: – Creative CanUX in Banff in September – About, With, and For (AWF) in Chicago…
Abstracts and proceedings of EPIC 2005 corporate ethnography conference
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…
MIT Technology Review on corporate ethnography
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…
Embedding design into business
“Embedding design into business” is the title of a long article by Roger Martin, dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management in Toronto, Canada, that just appeared in the School’s magazine. “Firms everywhere are realising they can jump-start…