The art of work [Fast Company]
What would happen if the best moments of your life happened at the office? That would be “flow,” and thanks to a guy with an unpronounceable name, more and more businesses want to know about it. Read full story
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Book
How mobile phones conquered Japan [Wired News]
Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life is the title of a new book published by MIT Press that attempts at understanding how mobile technology shapes Japan’s culture — and our own. Co-edited by University of Southern California research…
Insights from “Thoughtless Acts” [Business Week]
Veteran designer Jane Fulton Suri who is the author of the new book Thoughtless Acts, discerns unmet consumer needs via keen observations of ordinary people doing ordinary things.Some industrial designers sketch, some study new material technology, some collect inspiration from…
Making Meaning: The Business of Experience Design
Making Meaning: The Business of Experience Design is a book about how people make meaning in their lives and how companies can use this understanding to create more meaningful and successful products and services. In this book, the authors Steve…
Democratizing Innovation by Eric Von Hippel
Innovation is rapidly becoming democratised. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users — both individuals and firms — often freely share their innovations with others, creating…
“thoughtless acts?”: observations on intuitive design
thoughtless acts? is a book by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO that invites you to notice the subtle and amusing ways that people react to the world around them. These “thoughtless acts” reveal how people how people behave in a…
The world is round [New York Review of Books]
The centrally planned economies that were constructed to embody Marx’s vision of communism have nearly all been swept away, and the mass political movements that Marxism once inspired are no more. Yet Marx’s view of globalisation lives on, and nowhere…
The book on perplexing Italians [International Herald Tribune]
Being Italian, says the columnist Beppe Severgnini, is a full-time job. “We never forget who we are, and we take pleasure in confounding those who observe us,” he notes. As a matter of fact, Italians are so profoundly perplexing that…
How US consumerism changed the face of Europe [Christian Science Monitor]
The Americanisation of Europe by way of mass marketing is not at all a new phenomenon and, despite all of Europe’s umbrage, its participation has been quite voluntary. Read full review
Critisising “The World is Flat”
Thomas Friedman’s influential book The World is Flat has been strongly critisised for its bias, simplicity and sloppiness: – The Daily Telegraph (Robert Hanks) – The Daily Telegraph (Noel Malcolm) – The Economist – The Guardian – The Hindu –…
John Thackara’s “In The Bubble”
We’re filling up the world with technology and devices, but we’ve lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In…
A beginner’s guide to changing the world [Christian Science Monitor]
It helps to be persistently joyful and joyfully persistent. Read full review
From counterculture to computer culture [Red Herring]
John Markoff’s “What the Doormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer” makes the case that the personal computer is intimately bound up with the growth of the counterculture in the 1960s. The personal computer’s origins in the…
For all who have never climbed a tree [Christian Science Monitor]
‘Go out and play’ vs. ‘de-naturing of childhood’ Read full review
Neil Gershenfeld on the coming digital revolution in the world of manufactured physical goods
First we experienced the digital revolution in computation. Then we experienced it in communications. And now, according to Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, the digital revolution is moving into surprising new territory: the world of…
Massive change: now everyone can design solutions [NPQ]
Bruce Mau, the famed designer and collaborator with Frank Gehry, is co-author of Massive Change. His firm, Bruce Mau Design, is based in Toronto. He spoke with NPQ editor Nathan Gardels recently. Read interview
The Brand Gap
Marty Neumeier’s new book is an insightful justification for tighter integration of design and business strategy to enable strong brands. Read more
On this Wiki, everyone’s a critic [Business Week]
Stanford’s Lawrence Lessig, whose next book will be revised by visitors to a collaborative Web site, explains “user-supplied innovation”. Read full story
A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
Lawyers. Accountants. Radiologists. Software engineers. That’s what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind.…
Artful making: what managers need to know about how artists work
Artful Making offers the first proven, research-based framework for engineering ingenuity and innovation. This book is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Harvard Business School professor Robert Austin and leading theatre director and playwright Lee Devin. Together, they demonstrate…