Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Not just industrial jobs are under threat from China, India and other emerging economies, but also jobs in knowledge-based industries as these countries combine growth in low-skill, low-wage manufacturing with an expanding presence in innovative, hi-tech sectors. This was the warning in two EU reports…
This week’s column by Joanna Glasner of Wired News includes input from an assortment of experts who share their views on top contenders to be the technologies of tomorrow. Interestingly, Ian Pearson, futurist at British Telecommunications, focuses on simplicity and mobile socialisation as major…
This week WestPoint Home presented smart bedding and other interactive furnishings to store buyers at its showroom in New York. One new product will be available next month: a Cinderella-theme coverlet that lights up like Broadway and makes the sound of a fairy godmother’s wand…
The New York Times reports that Illy, the Italian coffee, has opened a new Galleria Illy in SoHo. It’s a coffee themeland in this temporary experience featuring an art gallery, library, classrooms and espresso bar. Visitors can thumb through hundreds of volumes about coffee, turn…
“The burgeoning field of strategic design is splitting up into an artful and a scientific design approach. Hard, explicit skills give the scientific agencies the upper hand in becoming innovation partners for global business. That is why design agencies need to…Show it and Tell it.”…
“Perspectives on Design and Strategy: Points of view from the 2005 Institute of Design Strategy Conference”, published by the Institute of Design, IIT offers interviews with several contributors on the subject of how design in starting to appear in general business strategy and what that…
A dramatic transformation is occurring within the design industry. Front runners among strategic design agencies are working in increasingly complex projects and are starting to redefine their role and services in relation to corporate clients. This development is taking place along with an increased demand…
It’s not for people, but is definitely is “experience design”: Farmers have teamed up with scientists to create a farm where the cows choose when they want to be milked using automated booths. The parlour, developed in Holland, is already in use in more than…
Can China move 400 million people to its cities without wreaking environmental havoc? Eco-urban designer William McDonough says yes—and Beijing is listening. Beijing is now orchestrating an industrial revolution, hoping to telescope into a few decades what it took Western countries a century or two…
The Workshop on Digital Inclusion and Participation in Brussels on 23 September 2005 aimed at setting the scene for the EU’s i2010 ambitions: an inclusive information society that provides high quality public services and promotes quality of life. It involved representatives from civil society, industry,…
The upgraded digital divide: are we developing new technologies faster than consumers can use them? TiVos and Treos and BlackBerrys. Wi-Fi and HDTV and plasma screens. Picture phones, digital cameras, iPods and now iPod cell phones. Complexity among consumer technology products has never been greater…
Can anyone find a way to make your constantly beeping and dinging computer leave you alone and let you work? A long story in the New York Times Magazine explores HCI, the study of office work and the nascent field of interruption science. Read full…
Today we launched the website of Experientia, the new experience design company founded by business specialist Pierpaolo Perotto, usability expert Michele Visciola, user experience strategist Jan-Christoph Zoels and communication strategist Mark Vanderbeeken. The site contains plenty of information on who we are, our approach and…
The October 2006 issue of “new value by One Design”, the quarterly magazine of Philips Design, looks at design leadership, design as a tool for visualising the future, and senior management visions on the future of design at Philips. Read web edition of the magazine
“Strange that Inform.com, the latest online newsreader, didn’t include its own much-promoted launch in today’s inaugural Lead Story headlines. It didn’t make its own business or tech sections either. Not even entertainment. Remarkable editorial restraint, I’d say, for a startup that touts itself as the…
Dave Iverson of San Francisco public radio station KQED interviews Tom Kelley, the general manager of IDEO, about his new book The Ten Faces of Innovation. The 45 minute interview focuses on how to encourage and recognise daily innovation and creativity, assessing what tools, talents,…
“The experience economy: the evaluation of emerging market opportunities for growing your business” is the title of an e-book presentation by e-Strategic Research, inc, the California based market research consultancy. The e-report offers a synthesis of theory and practice as it relates to marketing strategy…
As companies seek a better understanding of their customers, designers explore more user-centred methods and educators introduce social issues into the curriculum, the time is right for inclusive design. That was the encouraging message to emerge from the third Include conference held at the Royal…
By affecting how people think and act and by connecting an organisation to its constituents’ values, design can enhance performance. In this article for the Design Management Journal, Roger Sametz and Andrew Maydoney of Sametz Blackstone Associates (a strategic communications practice) present a model…
In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is finalising a contract to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on all 5,500 miles of major roads. It’s just one of…
Cell phones made up 74.6 percent of all African phone subscriptions last year, says the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union. Cell phone subscriptions jumped 67 percent south of the Sahara in 2004, compared with 10 percent in cell-phone-saturated Western Europe, according to Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese…
Voices in Your Hand is a humanitarian project, sponsored by Philips Electronics, to create a simple, voice-email handset and cheap audio services to help urban shantytowns and isolated rural areas in the developing world, overcoming illiteracy or minority languages. The project is now in a…
From strategy, brand and innovation to product, service and experience Businesses fifteen years ago referred to everything as product, and the focus was on how to make those products robust. A new life insurance policy was referred to as a product, as was software and…
The theme of this doctoral dissertation, entitled “Making Sense – Design for Well-being” is the design of IT artefacts for increased well-being in the home. The goal of this publication, written by Sara Ilstedt Hjelm at KTH, Sweden, was to provide a better understanding of…
The growing role of wireless communication in international economic development was the focus of a major research workshop organised by the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication. The October 7-8, 2005 gathering of the world’s leading global communication researchers included participants from India, Kenya, Indonesia,…
Experientia takes part in an international creativity workshop on “toys for children’s rehabilitation” in Yerevan, Armenia. The symposium, workshop and exhibition, which will take place from 20 November to 3 December, is a joined organisation of Studio-College of the National Aesthetics Center, the Soros Foundation’s…
The Isreali Design Center, Israel’s first museum dedicated to design will open in Holon by 2008. A series of conferences exploring the role of design in society and raising awareness for the forthcoming museum have been planned. The first conference, organised by Prof. Erzi Tarazi…
According to an IBM UX fact sheet, the user experience designer creates a design that satisfies the business, market and user requirements received from market planning and user experience research, while at the same time incorporating the feedback received from user experience evaluation. IBM then…
Two recent Australian reports investigate how children and teens relate to internet and mobile devices. kidsonline@home – Internet use in Australian homes [April 2005] NetAlert and the Australian Broadcasting Authority recognised a need to capture behaviours and attitudes associated with Internet use in the home,…
Edged on by our friends at CPH127, I explored the social calendar tool Upcoming.org (now part of Yahoo!) and create a shared experience design calendar with events and conferences related to experience design and user experience issues. UPDATE: The experience design calendar is now…
When we talk about redefining the mobile user experience, we are talking about changing this linear approach and encouraging everyone in the industry – whether they are a chipset manufacturer several stages removed from the end consumer or an MVNO seeking direct customer relationships…
The European Commission presented a plan Wednesday to catch up with the United States and Japan in spending on research and development and to keep at bay rising powers like China and India. The plan, which still needs the backing of European Union governments,…
USE-ME.GOV (usability-driven open platform for mobile government) is an EU-sponsored research and development project designed to support and encourage access to new e-government services anytime and anywhere through the use of mobile communications and internet technologies. The main goal of the project is to create…
Jakob Nielsen is still very popular outside the usability community. Amongst his colleagues however, his popularity has been eroding steadily. Why? There are a couple of reasons for this. It’s an older story, but nevertheless still relevant. Read full story
Ezio Manzini, who is a professor at the Milan Polytechnic and one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable design, recently talked about his ideas at the British Design Council. A background paper entitled Enabling solutions, social innovation and design for sustainability (Word document, 64…
RED is a unit at the (British) Design Council that wants to challenge accepted thinking on current social and economic problems by exploring new solutions through innovative design practice. The unit takes a proactive approach to solving problems and developing new concepts and processes for…
Nick Finck of Blue Flavor ponders the question one has to ask oneself as a business owner: what kind of experience do you want your customers to receive before, during, and after they have purchased your product or service? Read full post
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has been presenting audiences with a prediction and a challenge about the free culture movement: Ten Things that Will be Free. Jimmy’s list is inspried by David Hilbert’s address to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris, 1900, where he…
Science and technology website Red Nova just published a long interview with Donald Norman on his meanwhile very well known book Emotional Design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. (via Usernomics)
Companies are embracing the potential of networked computing to let workers share their knowledge more efficiently as they nurture new ideas, new products and new ways to digitally automate all sorts of tasks. [They] are drawing on collaborative models that first blossomed in nonbusiness settings,…