Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Torino, Italy officially opens the World Design Year next week with an extraordinary New Year’s Eve, organised specially to celebrate Torino 2008 World Design Capital. The centre of events for 31 December 2007 is Piazza Castello [the “Castle Square”], the Baroque heart of the city,…
On this University of Washington video broadcast Tapan Parikh describes his experiences developing CAM – a toolkit for mobile phone data collection – in the rural developing world. Designing technologies for an unfamiliar context requires understanding the needs and capabilities of potential users. Drawing from…
The report “User-driven innovation: when the user makes the difference” aims to clarify the awareness and use of user-driven innovation in the Nordic countries. The authors — a group of students from the Norwegian University of Science And Technology (NTNU) — have contacted numerous companies…
‘Experience Design in City Tourism‘ is a study by the Nordic Innovation Centre to gain more insight into what and how visitors want to see and experience during their stay and what the tourist industry can do in the long run to satisfy their needs.…
From Worldchanging: Sightline Institute’s blog The Daily Score recently noted that people always prefer streetcars and other light rail to buses. They aren’t just being subjective, either–history backs them up. In 2001 the Denver Business Journal wrote of new light rail systems being mobbed in…
Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog created to encourage exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences. Here is the blog statement: “Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog headquartered in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University. We hope that it will bring together scholars…
Bruno Giussani posted his running notes of Jeffrey Huang’s inaugural lesson at EPFL, the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne. “Architecture and design, says my friend Jeffrey Huang (photo), are becoming the interface between physical and virtual lives. And that’s his field of study: how…
Dr. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby are faculty members in the Design Interactions department at London’s Royal College of Art and have gained somewhat of a cult following for their provocative and future-scenario-based design work. As authors of Hertzian Tales and Design Noir they are…
From an International Herald Tribune article: Nokia used to be just a cellphone maker. Google used to be just an Internet company. Now Nokia wants to be an Internet company and Google, according to rampant speculation among bloggers and technology analysts, may be about to…
Peter Merholz did an hour-long interview with Donald Norman, who just published a new book: The Design of Future Things. According to the Adaptive Path blog, the interview deals with: “adaptive cruise control, ubiquitous computing, human plus machine, “user experience,” “affordances,” asking the right questions,…
Jonathan Follett argues on UXmatters that playfulness is an often overlooked, under-appreciated, and rarely measured component of user experience, while the digital space is so conducive to play—exploration, imagination, and learning. “Playfulness, like usability, refers to a quality of user experience that can span many…
The McKinsey Quarterly has published an article on eight technology-enabled trends that will help shape businesses and the economy in coming years. The authors James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague have grouped the eight trends – which each come with their…
Rob Walker of the New York Times Magazine asks what so many crochet-hook-wielding, papermaking, silversmithing handicrafters are doing online and tries to prove that the future of shopping — and of work — is all about the past. The article is mostly a profile of…
Prof. Luca Chittaro, who writes for the Italian innovation supplement Nova, recently participated at the Mobile HCI conference in Singapore and was taken by the user experience design talk of Donghoon Chang, vice president of the Mobile User Experience Design Group at Samsung. He reports…
The weekly Nova supplement of Italy’s business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore is by far the most valuable innovation, science and technology forum in this country: serious and thorough, fresh and engaging, up-to-date and challenging. Some of its writers like Luca Chittaro are also particularly…
Richard Titus, acting head of user experience at the BBC announced yesterday the launch of the new BBC homepage beta: “It was a no-brainer to move to a layout that would be cleaner, more open and more easily readable. There was also a desire to…
By 2010, says Gartner, 20% of global Tier 1 retailers will have some kind of marketing presence in online games and virtual worlds. Gartner predicts that by 2010 20% of Tier I retailers will have a marketing presence in virtual worlds. It also predicts that…
NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, well-known for its emphasis on user-led innovation, has published three research reports [blog post] on the attributes of innovative cities and the importance of building effective regional coalitions for innovation. Innovation and the city…
Software giant Microsoft unveiled some of its future technology at its fourth annual Innovation Day in Brussels on December 4, reports CNN. “From virtual family organizers to tabletop touch-screens, their vision of the future sees technology move from the traditional desktop computer to become seamlessly…
Demos, the UK think tank for everyday democracy, is starting a project on co-design and public services. “Co-design has become an important tool in the effort to develop better relationships between people and the public services they need and want. It means putting the needs…
Nicolas Nova, user experience and foresight researcher working at the Media and Design Lab (EPFL) and at the near future laboratory, is currently in Brussels where he gave a talk yesterday at iMal, a brand new center for digital cultures and technology. The presentation entitled…
The UK Times reports on why British adults are more frequent users of social networking sites than any of their European counterparts. British adults are more frequent users of social networking sites than any of their European counterparts, figures from Ofcom, the communications regulator, indicated…
Interactions Magazine seems to be heading into an exciting direction under its new editors-in-chief Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko. The new byline (“experience – people – technology”) is already a mission statement in itself, especially since the magazine is published by ACM, which stands for…
The appeal of online virtual worlds such as Second Life is such that it may trigger an exodus of people seeking to “disappear from reality,” said Edward Castronova, Associate Professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, an expert on large-scale online games. Dr…
All kinds of things apparently, as described by this revealing story on the BBC, commented on by Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week: “Clearly, children love the machine. Most of them had never seen a computer before and the great design of the laptop was compelling.…
It took Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken quite some effort to schedule an interview with Hilary Cottam, UK Designer of the Year 2005 and former director of RED [archive site], the meanwhile closed innovation unit of the UK Design Council, and now one of the founding…
Information Week reports about a new web service that lets users take mobile devices out for a virtual test drive before they buy. Mobile Complete on Monday launched an interactive web service that lets mobile users test-drive popular phone models before buying them. The company’s…
Dan Saffer is the director IxDA, the Interaction Design Association, and conference chair of Interaction 08, the first IxDA conference. He is also experience design director at Adaptive Path and the author of Designing for Interaction. In this interview with Chris Baum of Boxes and…
The “Power of Collaborative Innovation” will be the theme of the World Economic Forum’s Annual meeting in Davos, January 23-27, 2008. Looking to the future, it becomes readily apparent that complexity, competing interests and scarce resources remain the greatest obstacles to progress on the global…
Paul Lamb reflects on the dire state of mobile services in America: In Japan it is not uncommon for people to make everyday purchases using only a cell phones. A variety of secure mobile technologies alowing for easy transfer of money from one’s bank account…
Steven Bell writes about the implications of the user experience approach in library design. One characteristic of delivering good user experiences is that it typically results in return business. Whatever that experience is, it is something the user wants to experience again. The idea of…
From A List Apart: In web design, when we think about flow we usually think about “task flows†or “flow charts†but there’s another type of flow that we should keep in mind. It’s that feeling of complete absorption when you’re engaged in something you…
Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels was profiled last week in “The Marker“, Israel’s number one business and technology newspaper and part of the Haaretz media group. Below is the English translation by Saar Shai. CATS, KIDS AND EXPERIENCE DESIGN by Ora Coren Either a mobile-phone, a…
When it comes to categories of products sold, apparel & accessories is the biggest kid on the Internet retailing block. E-retailers in this category account for 80 of the top 500 retail web sites, according to the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. The category, however,…
Newsweek reports on how mobile banking in India saves the government and banks money and reduces fraud that plagues the public-distribution system. Mobile phones are making life better for people in remote, underserved areas of India. They no longer have to walk kilometers to public…
Richard Titus, acting head of user experience at BBC Future Media and Technology, quotes on his blog an excerpt from an interview Rolling Stone did with William Gibson (author of Neuromancer and Spook Country, and coiner of the term Cyberspace). “Totally ubiquitous computing. One of…
Robert Ellis Smith, publishes of the Privacy Journal, writes in Forbes Magazine: Government and corporate officials responsible for compliance with privacy laws in Canada and Europe are using a whole new language in 2007. Much of the jargon has passed by the American public. So…
The R&D labs of France Telecom and its commercial Orange brand cover a wide range of technological research but at first glance they also seem to be extensively involved in user research and experience design: The UK research centre has a strong focus on user…
The User Innovation Research Initiative is a research program which aims to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon of user innovation and is hosted by the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration. “Nearly three decades of research…