Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Matt Yurdana of Intel’s IoT Experiences Group discusses Intel’s insight on passenger experience in the age of autonomous transportation. The intimate nature of autonomous vehicles will most likely lead to a significant rethinking of vehicle interiors, he writes, in particular when it comes to designing…
Every two years the city of Turin hosts the Biennial of Democracy, an event of conversation and debate, that seems to become more timely and necessary as years go by. The current fifth edition will run from 29 March to 2 April, the theme is…
The British consumer cooperative Co-op uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to make decisions about products. While quantitative research is best when you want to understand the scale of something (such as how many users do X or Y, or how much of something is…
The Think Forward Initiative is an open source initiative by ING, CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research), Dell EMC, Microsoft, Dimension Data and Deloitte. Its goal is to gain a deeper understanding of financial decision making and to empower people to make financial decisions that…
“Business as Unusual†was the theme of the ninth annual Service Design Global Conference held in Amsterdam and in its play on words, it recognises that service design is more and more becoming an established way of ‘doing business’, whether in organisations, or in places…
The latest issue of the Cultural Anthropology journal features a new contribution to the journal’s Openings and Retrospectives section: an Openings collection, “Speed,” edited by Vincent Duclos, Tomás Sánchez Criado, and Vinh-Kim Nguyen. In their introductory essay, the editors discuss how they hope to open…
Yesterday, the New York research institute Data & Society released the report How Youth Navigate the News Landscape (download) that explores how young people use mobile devices, messaging apps, and social media to consume breaking news. Co-authors Mary Madden, Amanda Lenhart, and Claire Fontaine find…
Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World OECD, March 2017 408 pages “Behavioural insightsâ€, or insights derived from the behavioural and social sciences, including decision making, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, organisational and group behaviour, are being applied by governments with the aim…
Laura A. McNamara describes what ethnographers can do about the cultural equivalent of the fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias. “It’s a common category error (at least among the Western psych undergrads who volunteer for experimental lab credits) that describes our tendency to…
From a young age, humans love to press buttons that light up and make a noise. The thrill of positive feedback lies at the heart of addiction to gambling, games, and social media, reports Adam Alter for The Guardian. “The sense of creating something that…
Swiss designer, entrepreneur, and sustainability advocate Yves Béhar points out that there are no high-level manifestos or guidelines for designers working with AI, robotics, and connected technology today. Last week, in a talk delivered at the inaugural A/D/O/ Design Festival in Brooklyn, Béhar presented his…
Future Agenda, a non-for-profit UK-based foresight initiative, has just published a new 38-page paper entitled Future of Healthcare Provision: Opportunities for Patient Engagement. Many believe the healthcare sector is ripe for a digital transformation. The escalating challenges it faces are putting increasing stress on the…
The UK’s Government Digital Service has launched a service toolkit that aims to be a one stop shop for service design resources (reports PublicTechnology). The toolkit is a single page on GOV.UK that provides links to all the resources GDS thinks a government service designer…
Use of Behavioural Insights in Consumer Policy OECD 20 Jan 2017 48 pages Over the past decade, behavioural insights have helped make consumer policies more evidence-based and effective. This report examines how behavioural insights have been used by governments and other public policy organisations to…
Anthropology and its methodologies cannot easily be automated. However, both design and engineering based organizations are attempting it. Anthropologist Sally A. Applin argues that this is based in part on historic legacy systems, a misunderstanding of the ethnographic toolkit, and an over-reliance on the principles…
Social science has become increasingly beholden to analysis derived from big data: large numerical sets analysed computationally, write Pamela Prickett and Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University. This, they say, “has brought us much insight into the social world, but it has often come at…
Don Norman is a technological optimist. The author of The Design of Everyday Things and head of UC San Diego’s Design Lab believes that artificial intelligence might only take the worst parts of our jobs, and when it gets smart enough, it will pity us…
The objective of this report, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is to shed light on opportunities to strengthen the effectiveness of policies for sustainable consumption in both developed and developing countries. The publication provides evidence-based insights from behavioural science, detailing five key…
In 2016, the UNDP Innovation Facility collaborated with the newly engaged UN Behavioural Science Advisor to work on behaviorally-informed design with 8 UNDP Country Offices in all 5 regions: Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Ecuador, Jordan, Moldova, Montenegro and Papua New Guinea. This Progress Report highlights the…
During 2016, KPMG conducted an international study on consumer behaviors and preferences related to online shopping. The research was largely based on an online survey of 18,430 consumers living in more than 50 countries. The respondents were between the ages of 15 and 70, each…
It’s rare for a data scientist to be so reflective and critical on the limitations (and therefore the real opportunities) of their discipline, as Katherine Bailey has managed in a short article on Techcrunch. Recent issues around machine learning biases and ethics make it clear…
During the futurist panel at the 2017 Automotive News World Congress, Rachel Nguyen, executive director of Nissan’s Future Lab, said understanding what the consumer wants will help brands define their experience. One method Nissan utilizes: ethnographic studies of consumers. “The more insight you have to…
Following the 2016 Smart Innovation Award at “FIMBACTE Trophées du Cadre de vie”, the CITYOPT project has once again been recognised, this time in the prestigious French design competition: “Observeur du Design 2017”, in the Service Design category. In June 2016, CITYOPT won the first…
Why Venture Capital Needs Ethnographers: Making Meaningful Innovation in the Startup Sphere by Julia Katherine Haines, Google- December 20, 2016 The power of ethnographic methods and ethnographic thinking is not about finding new territory to colonize for startups and for VCs. In imbuing an ethnographic…
As societies face increasingly complex problems, design is emerging as the tool to solve some of Asia’s biggest issues. Through field trips with designers skilled in human-centered design, the team behind Ethnographers’ Field Guide to Innovation, a new series on Singapore’s Channel NewsAsia, see how…
ING DIRECT Australia has published yesterday and at the end of November no less than 10 articles in a paid section of The Guardian on the value of customer experience and human-centred design, entitled “Being human in a digital world“. Readers of this professional blog…
Three innovative PhD dissertations have been published at the Harvard Business School’s Doctoral Program on Organizational Behavior that use ethnography and qualitative research to understand and map organizational culture: Curtis K. Chan Chan’s research (The Double-Edged Sword of Organizational Culture: The Production and Dissolution of…
The Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC), part of RMIT University, focuses on understanding a contemporary world where digital and mobile technologies are increasingly inextricable from the environments and relationships in which everyday life plays out. DERC excels in both academic scholarship and in applied work…
Libby Maurer, UX leader at Widen Enterprise (a content technology company specializing in digital asset management software and content production services), makes a strong case for the value of UX research in a hardcore business environment. She writes that “the unpredictable and unscripted nature of…
Over the last 6 months, Fabien Girardin has been working in a rather unique position at BBVA Data & Analytics, a center of excellence in financial data analysis. My job is to make the design of user experiences reach a new frontier with the emergence…
Last month Putting People First announced the upcoming conference on design & sustainable innovation for smart cities in Nice France. Meanwhile we are pleased to announce the full event agenda (see below). This event will feature professionals from leading research institutes and industry gathering to…
Intel anthropologist Genevieve Bell explains in an interview with The Observer’s Ian Tucker why being scared about AI has more to do with our fear of each other than killer robots. A lot of the work you do examines the intersection between the intended use…
Where’s Wally? In Search of Citizen Perspectives on the Smart City by Vanessa Thomas, Ding Wang and Louise Mullagh of the HighWire Centre for Doctoral Training of Lancaster University and Nick Dunn of ImaginationLancaster Sustainability 2016, 8, 207 Open access – free download This paper…
A professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, Dan Ariely relentlessly examines our assumptions about ourselves—and finds they’re often totally misconstrued. We think, for example, that money is our main motivator in the workplace. But not only are “a sense of connection, meaning,…
Collaborative Ethnography in Business Environments Edited by Maryann McCabe Routledge 2017, 138 pages In a global and rapidly changing commercial environment, businesses increasingly use collaborative ethnographic research to understand what motivates their employees and what their customers value. In this volume, anthropologists, marketing professionals, computer…
Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm by Christian Madsbjerg Hachette Books March 2017, 256 pages Inspired by his work with companies like Ford and Coca-Cola, Madsbjerg’s Sensemaking is a provocative stand against the “tyranny” of big data and an…
A Guide to Service Blueprinting Nick Remis and the Adaptive Path Team at Capital One Adaptive Path November 2016, 52 pages As the focus of customer experience becomes more important, having a good picture of how your service operates in relation to what the customer…
Billions spent on cyber security tech while human error ignored, writes Misha Glenny in the Financial Times. Armies of zombie computers threaten us all. Despite the headlines, the cyber security industry has prioritised the development of expensive tech over teaching people how to protect themselves.…
Forbes Product Member, Alec Pomnichowski, describes the parallels between architecture and product development thinking. He asks product-types to be considerate and thoughtful about the ways in which users experience products and find value in them through time. Good architects will start with the experience of…
Psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Susan Weinschenk explains how her science informs UX design. Weinschenk takes research and knowledge about the brain, the visual system, memory, and motivation and extrapolates ten UX design principles from that: 1. People don’t want to work or think more…