Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
UCL (which is the abbreviation for “University College London” although you have to look at the site‘s footer to find out) is starting a new MA in Digital Anthropology. And it seems serious stuff. Digital technologies have become ubiquitous. From…
Last month I announced that the next LIFT conference would take place in Marseilles, France on 18-20 June this year. Entrepreneurs, researchers, artists, designers, and activists who are inventing radically new ways to innovate, design, produce, trade, exchange and manage,…
An EU-wide study of emerging technologies led by Leicester’s De Montfort University aims to alert policy makers to any potential social and ethical problems New technology is changing the way we live and work so quickly that it is easy…
Microsoft just published a rather thorough report on the future developments of the internet across Europe. In the report, Microsoft analyses the differences in broadband penetration levels across Europe, examines the causes fuelling the growth of Internet adoption, assesses the…
Religious technology may seem like an oxymoron, but as more people obtain mobile phones, iPhones and other devices to help them manage their lives, it’s only natural that many of them will be using their gadgets to help them enrich…
Two new interviews on Nokia’s IdeasProject: Social media may have unforeseen limits John Jordan, a pathbreaking tech consultant and academic, measures social technologies in terms of the notion of ‘network externalities,’ which posits that the value of a technology improves…
Grand Old Man of HCI, Jack Carroll, explains the history of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and how the field gave birth to User Experience and Interaction Design. Few people know the history of fields like UX, IxD, Usability and Human-Centered Design…
Richard Heeks reflects in the latest edition of “Communications of the ACM” on how information technology can be best applied to address problems and provide opportunities for inhabitants of the world’s poorest countries. “In terms of IT, the three key…
Information Technologies and International Development, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICT) with economic and social development, is a gem. And the entire contents are available for free online. Here are some…
If you ever need a solid case on why ethnographic research can provide strategic value to companies, yesterday’s announcement of the $250 million Intel/GE healthcare alliance provides you with a great one. Intel has for years heavily invested in on-the-ground…
The Wall Street Journal reports on work done by Intel’s Digital Home Group on people’s tendency to lie online and what the implications of lying are on the design of new technologies. “[Ethnographer Francoise] Bourdonnec, for example, works for Intel’s…
Two new interviews on Nokia’s IdeasProject: Cheap sensors are transformative Monitor Networks CEO Chris Meyer sees tremendous possibilities in the observation and data gathering capabilities of cheap sensors. The universal and consistent nature of the feedback that is possible on…
The website of Microsoft Research seemed to have been redesigned recently and contains some nice interviews: Buxton putting design into MIX Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, who delivered a keynote address in Las Vegas on March 18 during MIX09, the…
Jack Schofield of The Guardian has published a nice short story about the user experience of interacting with the Microsoft surface: “Microsoft was using a shallow pool as the “attract mode”, and the screen image looks and behaves like water,…
Gabriel White, interaction design director at Punchcut in San Francisco, affirmed context as king in the design of mobile and location-aware computing at Australia’s 4 day Web Directions South conference in September last year. I came across the presentation only…
The March issue of Metropolis is focused on products with the theme of Good Design. Several articles are fitting quite well with the topic of this blog: What is good design? By Peter Hall The 20th-century definition of “good design 
In a Q&A, user experience director Irene Au explains to Business Week how Google can manage design and consistency in its traditionally bottoms-up culture “As Google products proliferate beyond search, design decisions become more critical if the company wants a…
Julian Bleecker of Nokia calls it a “short essay”, but “Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction” is really a 97 page book. “Extending this idea that science fiction is implicated in the production of things…
Darren Waters, technology editor at the BBC, reports from Austin, Texas on the future of touch: “The success of the iPhone has given rise to a new grammar of touch control while the advent of multi-touch in Windows 7 will…
During the Agile 2008 conference, Amr Elssamadisy interviewed Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic and supporter of interaction design. He talked about his contact with the Agile movement and the similarities discovered between Agile programmers and interaction designers. Alan…