Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Emotionally aware computer designed to read people’s minds [Business Week]
Measure user experience through engagement, not satisfaction
Report: The next step in brain evolution [Sunday Times]
The future of human-computer interaction [ACM Queue]
Prof. John Canny of the University of California at Berkeley has published a thoughtful and in-depth article on the future of human-computer interaction in the July/August issue of ACM Queue, a publication of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), “the world’s first educational and scientific computing…
Can a crowd really edit our daily paper? [The Guardian]
Consumer generated campaigns
Crowdsourcing: consumers as creators [Business Week]
Negative user experience of World Cup on mobile phones [MEX]
Emphasis on user needs is key in European innovation strategy
Women and consumer technology [CNET News]
Snapshots from the future
The dance of people in public spaces [The New York Times]
Going online for health [International Herald Tribune]
The costs of health care have gradually been passed along to the end user; more and more, the information needed to manage our health is within easy reach as well, on the Internet. The European Union, for instance, last month opened Health-EU Portal, an Internet…
More information on Dott, the UK regional design initiative
Dott is a ten year programme of design innovation, initiated by the Design Council, that will take place every two years in a different region or nation across the UK. The programme encourages the innovative use of design as contribution to economic, cultural and social…
Mature users seek uncluttered mobiles, claims research
Rachel Jones, founder of the UK user-centred design company Instrata, writes in Usability News about new research by her company which “set out to discover what consumers in the UK and other European countries aged 30 and upwards really want” from their mobile phones. “The…
Philips Design magazine on involving users in the beginning of an innovation process
Philips just released the July issue of new value by One Design, its online quarterly design magazine. In ‘Making the future more tangible‘, the magazine explores how, by involving stakeholders in the ‘fuzzy front end’ of innovation, Philips can truly design around them, together creating…
The science and art of user experience at Google
On Google Video you can find a recent 30 minute Google Tech Talk presentation by Jen Fitzpatrick, engineering director at Google and in charge of Google’s user experience team, which is responsible for the user interface design and usability analysis of Google’s many products. “Focus…
Older people ‘missing out’ online [BBC]
Older people are missing out on critical services because they do not use the internet, a report says. Just 28% of people over the age of 65 have home internet access, compared to a UK average of 57% of households. As a result, pensioners cannot…
Slow design, slow lab and slow blog
Slow Design is a UK-based “cultural space to stimulate debate around the concept of ‘slow design’. It is conceived as an ongoing dialogue, an open-ended project”. Slow Design “links with existing design clusters that perceive ‘design’ and ‘slowness’ as a positive influence towards more sustainable…
Studying the museum visitors’ experience at Museolab
Nicolas Nova writes in his blog Pasta and Vinegar about the research structure Museolab [website in French], within Lyon’s future museum Musée des Confluences (architecture by Coop Himmelblau), that “aims at inventing, experimenting and validating technologies and services that would improve museum visitors’ experience (better interacting…
Turning cultures of repair into cultures of innovation
In an effort to understand the total user experience, Jan Chipchase of the Mobile HCI Group at the Nokia Research Center in Tokyo, has taken time out during recent field studies in emerging markets to explore local repair cultures. “The journey has taken me to…
Smart phones could drive new telecom business model
Susana Schwartz describes in a long article in Billing World & OSS Today how tomorrow’s super-smart phones will enable contactless cash payment. Billing World & OSS Today is a magazine covering and analysing the telecommunications Business and Operational Support Systems sector, or in short the…
Design for all Europe
Reflecting the development in its core business since foundation thirteen years ago, the European Institute for Design and Disability, EIDD made the major decision to change its name to “EIDD – Design for All Europe“, with the abbreviations “EIDD” and “European Institute” continuing in use.…
India’s Design for All Institute on anthropology and design
The latest newsletter of the Indian Design for All Institute is devoted to anthropology and design. It features the articles “Cultural dimensions and global user-interface development” by Aaron Marcus, and “Sampling in design research: toward ethnographic segments” by Ken C. Erickson. Design for All Institute…
Article: Ethics of persuasive technology
An interesting article from Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab: “When a doctor tells you your blood pressure is too high, you may modify your lifestyle to compensate: less salt, more exercise, fewer freedom fries. In a sense, the doctor has committed a persuasive act. We…
Our credibility loop
“Why not transfer money and efforts from the end (advertising) to the start (R&D) of a product life cycle”, asks David Carlson, the well-known Swedish design entrepreneur, in the June 2006 issue of the David Report, a new bimonthly newsletter on design trends and the…
Lenovo’s search for the soul of the Chinese customer
Introducing the winners of the 2006 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEAs), Bruce Nussbaum writes in Business Week: “Managers everywhere are turning to rapid ethnography, usability, special materials, and aesthetics—the tools of design—to innovate.” He then goes on to discuss the ethnographic research done by Lenovo:…
Digital living takes off in Asia [BBC]
Asian countries lead the world in creating digital homes, with Taiwan and Korea at the forefront, says a study. The research, carried out by US market research firm Parks Associates, looked at digital living trends in 13 markets in Asia, Europe and North America. The…
Usability makes the world work better
The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) just launched the official website and event registration for the 2006 World Usability Day, a global series of events on November 14, 2006 to promote awareness of the benefits of usability engineering and user-centered design. Activities will be held at…
Cellphones as a link from web to world [International Herald Tribune]
The International Herald Tribune reports on how in Japan mobile phones can provide highly-site specific internet services: “If you stand on a street corner in Tokyo today, you can point a specialized cellphone at a hotel, a restaurant or a historical monument, and with the…
How customers can help develop concepts via comics
Martin Hardee, director of web experience at Sun, writes in his blog about how Mark Wehner, design researcher at Yahoo! presented best practices for using comic book panels in the design process at the Usability Professionals Association annual meeting earlier this month. “Yahoo! has begun…
You are what you use… not what you own [WorldChanging]
WorldChanging, the online publication covering tools, models, and ideas for building a better future, has an interesting article on branding experience instead of stuff: “One of the fundamental insights that’s helping us re-imagine our lives in a brighter, greener cast is that most of the…
Web accessibility soon mandatory in Europe? [CNet News]
The 34 EU member states on Wednesday signed up for the “Internet for all” action plan, designed to ensure that the most Web-disadvantaged groups can get online. The EC has now pledged to increase broadband coverage across the continent to 90 percent by 2010. Rural…
SmartLab in Torino: Social Media Application Research and Tagging Laboratory
The blog of SmartLab, an interesting new lab in Torino devoted to social media, went live yesterday. SmartLab is the acronym of the Social Media Application Research & Tagging Laboratory established in March 2006 by CSP and the IT Department of the University of Torino…