Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
The privatization of human rights: illusions of consent, automation and neutrality by Emily Taylor Published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chatham House 2016 The Internet enables the free flow of information on an unprecedented scale but to an increasing extent the management…
When people think of quantitative analytics, big data, and statistics, they rarely picture an anthropologist. The truth is that although anthropology is well known for gathering qualitative data, anthropologists are trained to understand all kinds of data. In many graduate anthropology programs, the required research…
It’s easy to design for the idealized user, someone who’s smart, calm, and informed. It’s less easy, and thus more important, to design for a more realistic user: still smart, but harried and uncertain. The best designs handle both with care. But how many designs…
Every Thing We Touch: A 24-Hour Inventory of Our Lives [Tumblr page] by Paula Zuccotti Viking Books, November 2015 256 pages What’s the first thing we touch when we wake up? How do our favourite things reveal our hopes and fears? Can objects tell the…
Financial times journalist/anthropologist Gillian Tett deconstructs the idea that the internet hands power to the people. In fact, she writes, in most countries power remains firmly in the hands of the elite. The bitter — and dangerous — irony of our modern age is that…
In a new report the McGraw Hill Financial Global Institute (MHFI) argues that we need a new thinking about how to create “age-friendly cities.” Adapting to the challenges of an aging urban population, they write, requires a fundamental change in the mindset of policymakers and…
Anthropologist Michael Thompson believes in the power of creativity from below in solving some of the smaller and bigger problems of our time. “People generally are very creative and innovative. Many anthropological case studies have shown that. If development happens, it does not happen just…
For going on four years now, IBM has been working to reinvent itself as a design-led business. In 2012, the computing behemoth employed just one designer for every 80 coders. Today, that ratio stands at 1:20. By the end of 2016, the company hopes to…
Target CEO Brian Cornell’s quest to understand shoppers takes him inside customers’ homes, looking in their cupboards and closets during pre-arranged visits. The Target Corporation is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. It is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and operates 1,801…
In June 2015, Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how prepared mobile marketers are to deliver to consumers during quick mobile “moments” – i.e. — instances when they reflexively turn to their devices to act on a need to learn, discover, find, or buy something.…
Validating Product Ideas Through Lean User Research by Tomer Sharon Rosenfeld Media, January 2016 344 pages Want to know what your users are thinking? If you’re a product manager or developer, this book will help you learn the techniques for finding the answers to your…
Digital publishing, seeming perpetually up against terrible economics that prize quantity over quality, has reached a point where navigating it is akin to “walking across a sticky cinema store,†according to Barbarian Group executive director of media and distribution Colin Nagy. That’s because media companies…
Experientia is pleased to announce that we’ve started 2016 with a brand new website. Experientia’s now officially 10 years old, and we decided that the best way to celebrate is by building a new website that showcases our growth – with new projects, new people…
Apple Watch usage is dropping off as the novelty factors fades away, according to a qualitative study by MBLM, a “brand intimacy agencyâ€, reports Luke Dormehl in Cult of Mac. While Apple’s wearable has found a place in many owners’ gadget ecosystems, the device is…
Recently, Intel UX Innovation Manager Dr. Daria Loi and her team conducted a study to determine how technology users around the world feel about their computing devices. The study, titled Current Usages: A Global Perspective, explored which devices are people’s favorites, which they use most…
The radical Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, known for his pioneering social housing projects in Latin America, has been named as the winner of the 2016 Pritzker prize, the highest accolade in architecture. The 48-year-old, who is also the curator of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale,…
The Hackable City: A Research Manifesto and Design Toolkit Authors – Cristina Ampatzidou (University of Amsterdam / University of Groningen) – Matthijs Bouw (One Architecture) – Froukje van de Klundert (University of Amsterdam) – Michiel de Lange (Utrecht University) – Martijn de Waal (Amsterdam University…
Fabien Girardin of the Near Future Laboratory today launched Humans, an app “that offers a way to rationally manage too many social media contacts and slows down the consumption of status updates, tweets, selfies, and photos of all kinds.”. Girardin explains: “Its design inspires from…
This short reflection on Eataly by Sergio Gutierrez, Ankur Johar, Christian Lillo, Anjali Singh and and Sofia Sourtzis positions it as a “third place”. Ray Oldenburg introduced the concept of the third place in 1989 in his book The Great Good Place. He characterizes third…
With patients increasingly treating themselves at home, often using specialist equipment, the chance of use errors increases, and the ensuing results can be deadly. User Interfaces (UI) have a key role to play in reducing the risk of use errors in a patient-used device, writes…
Sebastian Berger, Assistant Professor of Organization at the University of Bern, writes in the Scientific American how the default option, a simple change based on psychology, will increase use of renewable energy. In a recent paper, Berger together with Felix Ebeling of the University of…
Service Design for Business: A Practical Guide to Optimizing the Customer Experience Ben Reason, Lavrans Løvlie, Melvin Brand Flu Wiley Publishers December 2015, 208 pages Abstract Service Design for Business helps you transform your customer’s experience and keep them engaged through the art of intentional…
Accenture just launched (press release) the results of its Igniting Growth in Consumer Technology survey where it polled 28,000 consumers in 28 countries on their use of consumer technology. Matt Rosoff of the Business Insider summarizes the results as follows: People are getting bored with…
Shaping the Library to the Life of the User: Adapting, Empowering, Partnering, Engaging by Merrilee Proffitt, James Michalko and Melissa Renspie OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. December 2015, 15 pages This report provides a recap of the October 2015 Library in the Life of…
The goal of self-service sites is to help users find answers themselves, forestalling the need to contact a real person. When such a site is done right, it leads you straight from symptoms to diagnosis to cure. However, if self-service sites are done poorly, they’re…
Holistic Retail Design – Reshaping Shopping for the Digital Era By Prof. Philipp Teufel and Prof. Rainer Zimmermann (Peter Behrens School of Arts, University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf) Frame Publishers September 2015 – 400 pages Abstract (from Dexigner) Written by two leading professors in the…
Uday Dandavate, co-founder and CEO of design research company SonicRim, is appalled about Facebook pushing its Free Basics program in India, which he think is driven by “an attitude that represents stupidity wrapped in ignorance”. He just posted this reflection on the newsgroup “anthrodesign“, which…
Easier Said Than Done: Why we struggle with healthy behaviours and what to do about it By Nathalie Spencer RSA, December 2015 Many of us know what we should be doing to live healthily, yet many of us struggle to actually actively manage our health.…
The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age By Astra Taylor Picador, 288 pages April 2015 The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? In a…
Joel Achenbach reports in the Washington Post on how digital dissenters say human needs are getting lost in the digital revolution and start to fight the tech establishment. Taylor is a 21st-century digital dissenter. She’s one of the many technophiles unhappy about the way the…
Data & Society is a NYC-based research institute focused on the social and cultural issues arising from data-centric technological development. The institute that was founded by danah boyd, principal researcher and Microsoft Research and frequently featured on this blog, looks like a fantastic place to…
‘Nudging’ behaviours in healthcare: insights from behavioural economics Benjamin G. Voyer, London School of Economics Article (Accepted version) (2015) British Journal of Healthcare Management, 21 (3). pp. 130-135 Since the creation of the Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) in 2010, the word “nudge” has become a…
By taking into account psychological drivers, the health-care industry can create products and services that will help individuals improve the way they manage their health and well-being, writes Becky Slack in an article in the New Statesman (published in association with Philips). ” Does this…
For several years, Shareable has followed, and reported on, Sharing City Seoul, a pioneering project, created by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. With its government-sponsored sharing economy initiatives and community projects, Seoul has become a global leader in the sharing cities movement. Recently, Shareable connected with…
Public Service Design: A guide for the application of service design in public organisations Authors: Annelies Thoelen (Co-Editor), Steven Cleeren (Co-Editor), Alain Denis, Koen Peters, Kristel Van Ael and Helga Willems Published by The Spider Project, 2015 This guide aims to help employees in public…
On Friday, 27 November 2015, Ljubljana (Slovenia) hosted the third international symposium ‘Why the world needs anthropologists‘. The theme of this year’s event was ‘Burning issues of our hot planet’. The main purpose of the symposium, which was attended by 450 participants from 25 countries,…
While patient-centricity is at the top of the agenda of most Life Science organizations, there is an urgent need for commercial teams to evolve their market research practices to cultivate a richer understanding of patients. But how do we cultivate this depth of insight, asks…
The transition to AVs is very much a human evolution grounded in designing a complex and nuanced relationship between the machine and us—regardless of how good the machine may be. For automakers, writes Artefact’s John Rousseau, this means adopting a more rigorous human-centered design process…
Swedish Design, An Ethnography By Keith M. Murphy Cornell University Press April 2015, 264 pages Swedish designers are noted for producing distinctive and elegant forms; their furniture and household goods have an especially loyal following around the world. Design in Sweden has more than just…