Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Mobile services strategist and fellow Belgian Rudy Dewaele asked me to pitch an upcoming innovation conference in Barcelona. Although not directly related to human-centred design, as a major foresight and innovation conference it merits attention: The Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking is a series…
Use8 is a new UK-based society (and non-profit organisation) that aims to bring together students, professionals, academics and industry who are interested in the user experience design discipline. The society establishes a forum and promotes engagement through organising events that bridge the gaps between diverse…
Too often, web users get lost in the cracks between Search, Browse, and Ask. Web analytics will enable designers to create truly integrated finding experiences predicts information architect Lou Rosenfeld in a long article on Adobe Design Center’s Think Tank. “Browsing, searching, and asking may…
As medical devices transition from hospital to home, device manufacturers must create a positive experience for users, argues Matthew Jordan, director of research and interaction design at Insight Product Development, in a long article in Medical Device Link. Certain macrotrends in the healthcare and medical…
The Boston Globe ponders what happens now that women are wielding increasing influence in a high-tech world that has been largely built and engineered by men, and how that changes the technology itself. No one would make the argument that megapixels are masculine or that…
A recent Apple patent application shows mockups of a Mac OS X gesturing control panel with options to configure standard trackpad, basic multitouch, and advanced multitouch settings. The patent application depicts how one could customise advanced gestures for editing operations such as Copy, Cut, Paste,…
Apparently Donald Norman, who is coming to Torino, Italy in less than a month, has made a deal with Interactions Magazine to allow him to publish his contributions online, even before the magazine comes out. His newest delightfully written piece is about the unavoidability of…
Three publications by NESTA (the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) examine the role of the creative industries. Beyond the creative industries maps the state of the creative economy in the United Kingdom, and measures their contribution to economic activity. Creating innovation…
Broadband analyst group Point Topic says that it has identified six main types of users of mobile Internet. With uptake of mobile Internet services growing rapidly, Point Topic believes that six distinct clusters of users are emerging – road warriors, gadget joys, MI lifers, mid-market…
While a blue-ribbon panel of human behavior and technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain agreed that the best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. — the iPhone —…
Just like any other innovative company in Europe, Experientia is sometimes faced with very tough immigration laws. Hiring someone from outside the EU is quite a challenge and sometimes results in us loosing out on the opportunity to attract really good people. So I am…
Rosenfeld Media has just released its first book Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy With Human Behavior by Indi Young. There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users’ reasons for…
Information Week published a long story about location-aware technologies. “Even more difficult than employees’ privacy concerns will be those of consumers, once companies start reaching people based on where they are. For years we’ve heard the notion of a coupon being sent to a cell…
February’s issue of Mechanical Engineering is focused on the role of human factors in design. The lead article, the new point of view, discusses the renewed importance of human factors in product design, with a veritable who’s who of IDSA experts in the subject, including…
Business Week carries a short article about how Humanized co-founder Aza Raskin is carrying on the design legacy of his father, a Macintosh pioneer. “Aza Raskin wants your computer to disappear, but the 24-year-old is no latter-day Luddite. His goal is to make communication with…
This paper by Tamar Sadeh describes a product that was released in May 2007—the Primo system from Ex Libris as an example of a new type of interface for searching and obtaining library materials, an interface designed around user needs and decoupled from, though interoperating…
“Amid the marketing blitz and pumping music of the show floor [of the Mobile World Congress] it is often difficult to pick out the trends which will have a real impact on the user experience,” writes Marek Pawlowski of MEX – the PMN Mobile User…
Several blogs report on the user experience session of the recent LIFT conference. Read what Nicolas Nova, Tom Hume, and Bruno Giussani had to say.
David Malouf, an interaction designer for Motorola Enterprise Mobility, explains the ins and outs of interaction design in a long article aimed at the industrial design community, published on Core77. Malouf thinks “poor attention [is] being paid to bringing interaction design into the fold of…
Most of the presentations of the recent Interaction 08 conference are now online. Here they are in alphabetical order of the speaker’s last name: Cinematic Interaction Design, Sarah Allen, Laszlo Systems (synopsis) Concept Ideation and IxD, Gretchen Anderson, Lunar (synopsis) Experience Design, Convergence + The…
How to design the user experience for professional options traders? This was the challenge faced by Gong Szeto, director of product design of OptionsHouse, an up and coming retail options brokerage, when he had to design their new options trading site. He speaks about his…
UXmatters just published two new articles: Designing ethical experiences: social media and the conflicted future By Joe Lamantia Questions of ethics and conflict can seem far removed from the daily work of user experience (UX) designers who are trying to develop insights into people’s needs,…
Dan Hill, former head of interactive technology and design at the BBC and currently director of web and broadcast at Monocle, has published a long article on the street of the future. Here is his introduction: “I was recently asked to comment on ‘the street…
The Flemish Government (Flanders is one of Belgium’s regions) is choosing for participatory public diplomacy as a promising avenue for foreign policy development. The region, which has some foreign embassy staff but no foreign embassies, is in the process of shifting from “a state-centred hierarchical…
Umpqua Bank has opened an Innovation Lab in Portland, Ore, showcasing emerging and existing technologies that foster community and redefine what consumers can expect from a banking experience. As a testing ground for new initiatives, the Lab will change regularly to feature new technology, products,…
AppTrigger, the telecom application connectivity specialist, released new statistics revealing that more than half (57 per cent) of UK mobile phone owners use their phone for the same things that they did in 2003, despite 74 per cent believing that the services offered have improved.…
The website of the Microsoft Design Center looks like it is set up as a one-stop shop for everything related to design, usability and user experience that this huge company is involved with. Although somewhat shallow in substance and with too much of a marketing…
The LIFT conference started on Wednesday and unfortunately I could not attend due to work pressures (our partner Jan-Christoph Zoels is there though). But there is a solution: fifteen presentations can already be viewed online. Check out Genevieve Bell (Intel), Paul Dourish (UC-Irvine), Bruce Sterling…
Over the last few weeks, I have been watching five documentary series. All of them deeply thought provoking and none of them directly related to the topic of this blog (although three of them deal with psychology and people’s behaviours – the other two focus…
Kiwanja.net is a very interesting initiative, led by anthropologist Ken Banks, helping local, national and international non-profit organisations in developing countries (mostly in Africa) make better use of information and communications technology in their work. The Kiwanja website also has a very good photo section…
Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain WorldAdaptive Path on Design By Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, David Verba First Edition February 2008 (est.) Paperback, 184 pages O’Reilly Media, Inc To achieve success in today’s ever-changing and unpredictable markets, competitive…
Experientia’s blog “Putting People First” has been going for three years now and contains several thousand posts. Lots of things have changed in those three years. The term “experience design” has become mainstream and is sometimes even over-used; industry has become more open to our…
Nicole Ferraro investigates in a long article in Information Week if cell phones and other inexpensive wireless devices can close the digital divide in the world’s poorest countries. “For the developing world, the Internet experience is going to be a wireless experience,” says Susan Schorr,…
In a previous post I wrote how it would be a good idea for the publishers of Interactions Magazine to make the magazine content available online. It just happened. Here is the announcement by Scott Delman, ACM Group Publisher: ACM is pleased to announce a…
Jan Chipchase, the well-known Nokia anthropologist, has just published a blog post, an executive summary, and a paper (ppt, 7 mb, 70 pages) that explores mobile phone sharing in emerging markets and how it works. “Much of the growth in the telecommunications industry is coming from emerging…
Darren Sharp of the Smart Internet (Australia) contacted me about the new research ‘User-led Innovation: A New Framework for Co-creating Business and Social Value,’ that he co-authored with Mandy Salomon. Abstract The sources of innovation are shifting rapidly from the traditional 20th century model of…
Ever since I live in Italy, I have always seen the Slow Food movement as one of Italy’s most interesting innovations of the last decades. In late 2006, they started developing a Slow Design concept – that I also interviewed a Slow Food spokesperson about.…
Marek Pawlowski of MEX thinks that Blyk, the advertising-funded MVNO, is really a user-generated media company: “Blyk is typically described in press reports as ‘an advertising-funded MVNO’, but after spending some time looking at the company’s model and talking to the management, I’m inclined to…
Jean-Marc Manach has written a long story on the school of the future — the School 2.0 — on my favourite French website InternetActu. Manach covers the international developments in this area (mainly USA and Germany) and gives an overview about what is going on…
“Transformers – how local areas innovate to address changing social needs” is a new report by the UK National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) that explores why some places innovate more effectively than others. Taking a series of case studies – drawn…