Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Receiver is Vodafone’s magazine for future thinkers. It is conceived as a neutral space, where thinkers discuss future-oriented aspects of communications technologies. Started four years ago as a platform for exchange about how innovations in this sector affect societies worldwide, Vodafone states that receiver is…
The Sony Ericsson website now contains an “Experiences” section with small visual scenarios of how mobile phone functionalities can provide added value to our lives. Or in their own marketing language: “It’s all about combining your emotions with our technology to create something unique.” Unfortunately,…
Whether it is wafting lavender or citrus scents to calm drivers and keep them awake, or vibrating seat belts to get them to slow down, smart cars in the future could help reduce road accidents. Dr Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at England’s University of…
The August issue of Siemens Journal introduces Horizons2020, a Siemens foresight study on European life in 2020. Rather than attempting to predict the future, Siemens hopes that Horizons2020 will intensify public discussions and invite people to think about changes that we will face. How do…
“Smart Internet 2010” was an 18-month project conducted by Australia’s technology research consortium, the Smart Internet Technology CRC, to examine what the internet might evolve into by 2010 and the implications for end-users. The report was spearheaded by leading Australian scholar Trevor Barr, Alex…
As it becomes ever more difficult to gain consumers’ attention in an increasingly cluttered environment, more and more companies are looking to fragrance to help distinguish their brands from the competition. Read full story
Service problems, a botched rollout of its third-generation phone network and a skimpy lineup of new handsets have driven away Japanese Vodafone customers in droves. The company admits that its biggest misstep was a decision to focus its lineup in Japan on what it calls…
The latest MORI research into consumer technology, commissioned by European technology public relations consultancy Hotwire, has concluded that consumer technologies will not reach their full market potential until vendors can successfully engage with women and the over 45s. According to an expert panel made up…
Technology firms are pushing a futuristic vision of home entertainment not because consumers are desperate for it but because they themselves are. Whether or not computer, software, consumer-electronics, telecoms, cable and internet companies are in fact out of touch with consumers may be the biggest…
Martin Leith has created a website that lists and explains every idea generation method he has encountered during the past 15 years. The methods have been drawn not just from the worlds of creative problem solving and innovation, but also from other worlds such…
“Designing for Experience” is a 128-page presentation with two extraordinarily detailed experience design case studies (Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and VasSol CANVAS) that feature many diagrams and prototypes. The presentation was developed by Marc Rettig, principal of Fit Associates, and Aradhana Goel, senior information designer…
UPA 2006: usability through storytelling The annual conference of the UPA, the Usability Professionals’ Association, will take place on 12-16 June 2006 at the Omni Interlocken in Broomfield, Colorado, USA, located just outside Boulder and Denver. As usability professionals, we weave stories that have been…
Big corporations today can be viewed as decision factories — but where’s the elegant design approach that’s applied to products? Great design is characterised by deep user understanding, visualisation of creative resolution of tensions, collaborative prototyping to enhance solutions, and continuous modification and enhancement after…
India will face a shortage of managerial and marketing skills while dealing with Western customers, creating a significant opportunity for European and American workers. A recent report from researchers Evalueserve estimates that 120,000 continental European workers will be needed in India over the next five…
The European Commission has published a new plan, called i2010 for ‘the completion of a Single European Information Space’. The Commission proposes an 80% increase in funding for ICT research focused on areas where Europe has recognised strengths: nano-electronics, embedded systems, communications, and ’emerging areas…
Survey results released from ACE*COMM indicate most North American parents aren’t supervising the mobile phone use of their teenaged children. Seventy-one percent of teenagers surveyed admit they enjoy unrestricted use of their mobile phones. The Itracks survey also found that many teenagers are abusing their…
The Qualitative Research Consultants Association is a not-for profit organisation that promotes excellence in all aspects of qualitative research. QRCA brings together nearly 1000 qualitative research consultants throughout the world. They include focus group moderators, facilitators, interviewers and planners with expertise in focus groups, individual…
Ambidextrous Magazine is the design journal of the nascent Stanford d.school. It is a magazine for the wider design community, which includes engineers and ethnographers, psychologists and philosophers. Rather than focusing on promoting product, Ambidextrous exposes the people and processes involved in design. Ambidextrous is…
The Fused Space design competition was inspired by the question: can artists and designers do a better job than the marketing industry in creating new application for ITC in public space? The 300+ entries satisfied juror John Thackara that the answer is yes. On…
Companies tailor new offerings to preteens and their parents. With an estimated 80 percent of adults between 18 and 65 owning a cell phone, the potential for growth in the cell phone market is slowing. By contrast, only 10 percent of preteens have a cell…
The narrow, cobbled streets of Cordoba in southern Spain are no place for a car, but Alfredo Romeo, a Spanish entrepreneur wanted to change that and set up a business with “blobjectsâ€, electric hire cars that are proving popular with tourists. Romeo has been taken…
The communications and public relations landscape is changing rapidly. Are press releases dead? Will blogs soon replace them? For dialogue and debate on this and more, check out the New PR/Wiki, set up as an in-depth resource for executives, PR professionals, and anyone else who…
Cellphones are already used for music downloads, text messaging, and video games. But here in South Africa, they are beginning to perform another function: personal piggy bank. With the new technology, a grandmother in rural area can receive money from her son, working hundreds of…
The global future forum, which originated within Unisys, is an independent partnership of futurists, academics and businesspeople, committed to helping organisations extend their strategic planning horizons, and better prepare for the future. It offers business a single point of access to the world’s leading future-thinkers,…
My Experientia business partner Jan-Christoph Zoels alerted me to a series of New York Times articles on the isolated, frightening, overwhelming and often dehumanising experiences many patients have in hospitals, and what social, cultural and demographic changes are playing a factor in this. Awash in…
The increasing ubiquity and popularity of mass SMS-enabled but temporary political affiliation may actually end up bringing its demise. These are not true bottom-up, spontaneous, grass-roots expressions of networked solidarity, nor even representations of groups willing to follow up on their stated convictions; they are…
John Thackara reports: Five threats are identified in a report from a powerful European consortium: Surveillance of users; spamming; identity theft; malicious attacks (on AmI systems); and a cultural condition they describe as ‘digital divide’. The research consortium – whose members include the Fraunhofer…
“La Signora dei Blog!” is the title of Lele Dainesi‘s introduction to his interview with Régine Debatty, author of the cult blog we-make-money-not-art.com (which has been a favourite link on this blog pretty much from its beginning and was recently listed by Feedster as one…
Mark Vanderbeeken, the author of the experience design blog Putting People First and a senior partner of the experience design company Experientia, has been interviewed by Lele Dainesi, who is in charge of the Mash-ups in Italy blog and the more corporate Key4Biz podcasts. The…
Developed by LeapFrog Enterprises, a maker of educational toys, the amazingly clever Fly “pentop” computer is just what it sounds like: a talking computer hidden within a pen the size of an electric toothbrush. The gadget, which contains an actual ink pen, can “see” what…
Slower is better. That’s just one of many unconventional ideas about creativity that are taking shape inside the restored yellow mansion, on Atlanta’s Peachtree Road, that BrightHouse calls home. The 17-person company, founded in 1995, works with only one client at a time. It charges…
Africa is the world’s fastest-growing cellphone market, a boom that has taken the industry by surprise. From 1999 through 2004, the number of mobile subscribers in Africa jumped to 76.8 million, from 7.5 million, an average annual increase of 58 percent. South Africa, the continent’s…
Rem Koolhaas, Founder and Director, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and John Thackara, Director, Doors of Perception, will be the keynote speakers at the 2005 Global Design Critical Debate on design and globalisation at London’s V&A Museum on Friday 14 October 2005. In the 21st…
What would happen if the best moments of your life happened at the office? That would be “flow,” and thanks to a guy with an unpronounceable name, more and more businesses want to know about it. Read full story
Lego released a new version of Lego Factory, a recently launched brand that combines Digital Designer — free software that lets children create their own 3D models — with the ability to let customers to share their personal designs as well as order the bricks…
In this publication the Danish Government* presents initiatives within five new strategic target areas designed to create favourable frameworks capable of reinforcing development and growth potential in the culture and experience economy. The five target areas include the sports industry, design, architecture, interaction between cultural…
For all its rough spots and blog pretensions, Current is for-profit public-access television, an attempt to add grass-roots diversity to a television universe that is ever more controlled by a few media conglomerates. Current is easily mocked, but it is at least one youth-oriented cable…
The following CPH127 post features an analysis about innovation strategies in Denmark, but the implications of this reasoning are relevant for many other European countries. “During the last year there has been a lot of discussion in Denmark around how to cope with the globalisation…
[A number of] museums are busily implementing a variety of forms of ubiquitous (a.k.a. pervasive) computing to assist customers. […] What the museums learn about things such as delivering personalised multimedia content to mobile users, luring visitors to lesser-known exhibits and identifying how people react…
Paul Graham is at it again. Just one random quote, when he is arguing that bloggers working at home are often much more productive than the so-called “professionals”: “The atmosphere of the average workplace is to productivity what flames painted on the side of a…