Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Designers, writes Cennydd Bowles in a Design Council opinion piece, have a central role in safeguarding digital products so they not only empower but also protect users. This responsibility starts with designers’ own output. Design teams should demand high ethical standards from themselves and their…
So, asks consultant Mike Weston, how can marketers cash in without becoming enemies of the people? Weston writes that the law will be too slow to catch up with digital innovations and that businesses in a smart city will need to craft their own policies…
The first ‘science oven’, launched in 1967, was simple to use but then digital interfaces came along and made things worse. The real problem, according to Charles Arthur, is that microwave ovens live too long. “In the end, I think there’s a simple reason why…
On May 18th 2015 the Köln International School of Design (KISD) in Germany hosted the conference “Service Design’ Redefining the Meaning of Design“. Designers, companies and scientists shared insights on theory and practice of Service Design and discuss the changing role of design in our…
A new project funded under the FP7 European Commission framework is getting citizens involved in testing new tools for reducing energy consumption during peak loads, in the hope that its pilot program will set the new state of the art for protecting locations with fragile…
During a Speaker Spotlight Q&A at Forrester’s CXNYC 2015 conference for customer experience professionals, Mark McCormick, Wells Fargo’s Head of Wholesale User Experience, talked about how past customer experiences shape consumer behaviors and how understanding deep emotional values can inform CX models. Even though the…
Drew Bamford is the person responsible for making the ITC’s experience design – how the company’s devices feel and work like ‘HTC phones’ rather than just another Android handset. HTC’s head designer’s purvue is focused on the digital part of the phone – the experience…
Drawing Energy: Exploring perceptions of the invisible Authors: Flora Bowden, Dan Lockton, Rama Gheerawo and Clare Brass. Editor: Rama Gheerawo. Royal College of Art, London, 2015 Free download – Free printed copy Abstract Drawing Energy describes a drawing-based research project undertaken by the Royal College…
Forget about features, design behaviors. Tying strategic behavior design to engagement outcomes will lead to more pratical and digitally relevant solutions, writes behavioral scientist Steph Habif in a conversation piece on the website of Prescribe Design. Companies outside of healthcare, like Opower and HelloWallet, are…
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler W. W. Norton & Company May 2015, 432 pages Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans—predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting,…
Daniel Gomez Seidel and Masuma Henry of Artefact have posted a nice write-up on recent developments and opportunities for wearables in the healthcare space. The post contains various interesting cases and points at some of the human and contextual challenges involved. They conclude: The challenge…
For smart cities to reach their full potential, they need to focus on the citizens living in them, not just technology, write researchers Tom Saunders and Peter Baeck of Nesta, the UK innovation charity Traditionally, smart cities have emphasised hardware – the internet of things,…
Designing Connected Products: UX for the Consumer Internet of Things By Claire Rowland, Elizabeth Goodman, Martin Charlier, Ann Light, Alfred Lui O’Reilly Media, May 2015 726 pages [Amazon link] Abstract Networked thermostats, fitness monitors, and door locks show that the Internet of Things can (and…
There has been a lot of talk about magic lately in critical, cultural and technological spaces; what it does, who it is for, and who are the ones to control or enact it. As a way of unpacking a few elements of this thinking, this…
Alice Rawsthorn asks why the aesthetics of something so pervasive [as digital user interfaces], the design of which is deeply sophisticated in other respects, are often underwhelming. Developing a definitive design aesthetic as Braun once did is fiendishly difficult in any context, but especially so…
Europe’s White Working Class Communities, a research series published by the Open Society Foundations, documents the experiences of “white†communities in six cities across Europe. Each report focuses on a specific district or neighborhood within a city. It provides new groundbreaking research on the experiences…
Today, consumers are prepared to spend significant amounts of time binge watching because they can determine their own viewing schedules, allowing them to watch what they want, when they want, writes Colin Morrison, Vice President of Global Sales Operations for Ericsson’s TV and media business.…
The Next Nature website sets out to radically shift our notion of nature: Our image of nature as static, balanced and harmonic is naive and up for reconsideration. Where technology and nature are traditionally seen as opposed, they now appear to merge or even trade…
Autonomous or driverless cars are based on a technology push strategy. Beyond statements like “freeing up time”, “reducing accidents” and some simple scenarios on “remote parking” or “vehicle sharing”, there is far too little thought on what such vehicles imply for people’s behaviors and possible…
In a short opinion piece in The Guardian, Jenny Judge and Julia Powles state that the Bauhaus movement could be a model for a more human-centered internet of things: “Back in the early 20th century, the Bauhaus movement defined itself with two slogans: first, that…
Design Anthropological Futures conference Organised by the Research Network for Design Anthropology August 13-14, 2015 Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – School of Design in Copenhagen, Denmark The Design Anthropological Futures conference explores future-making from a design anthropological perspective. The concept of futures relates…
In 2009, W Brian Arthur published a remarkable book, The Nature of Technology, in which he formulated a coherent theory of what technology is, how it evolves and how it spurs innovation and industry. Technology, he argued, “builds itself organically from itself†in ways that…
Larry Keeley, co-founder of innovation firm Doblin which is now a unit of Deloitte Consulting LLP, says that too often advocates of “design†regard it as an elixir that can somehow transform conservative companies into creative ones. In the most egregious cases, he says, advocates…
Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman Verso Publishers November 2014 Hardback, 464 pages Abstract Half a dozen years ago, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were…
Making Good our Future: Exploring the New Boundaries of Open & Social Innovation in Manufacturing Policy Paper prepared for the European Commission May 2015, 49 pages As part of the Social Innovation Europe initiative, the European Commission has published a policy paper, ‘Making Good Our…
Social Media + Society is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal deeply committed to advancing the understanding of social media and its impact on societies past, present and future. With a leading editorial team, the journal offers a collaborative, open, and shared space dedicated to…
Big data are often described as being characterised by the ‘3 Vs’: volume, variety, and velocity, sometimes augmented with value, veracity/validity, virality, and viscosity. These characterisations principally come from the worlds of data science and data analytics. From the perspective of critical data researchers, there…
Companies collect an ever-growing amount of information on customers, but forgetting the individuals behind big data is detrimental, not least to business, writes author and speaker John C. Havens. Today’s customers, empowered by mobile technologies and social media, demand to be treated like individuals, he…
In nearly every category Ben Bajarin (Principal Analyst, Creative Strategies) studies, he sees the regionalization of consumer tech, not its globalization. This view of the market is showing how regional technology players in many segments of consumer tech are becoming more entrenched by catering deeply…
A major social debate is going on on the effects of mobile technology and social media, online and off. The Wall Street Journal distills in a juxtaposition of the views of Larry Rosen and Keith N. Hampton. Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California…
Developing patient-centred care: an ethnographic study of patient perceptions and influence on quality improvement By Alicia Renedo and Cicely Marston BMC Health Services Research (2015) 15:122 DOI 10.1186/s12913-015-0770-y Background – Understanding quality improvement from a patient perspective is important for delivering patient-centred care. Yet the…
The Traffic Factories: Metrics at Chartbeat, Gawker Media, and The New York Times A report by Caitlin Petre Tow Center for Digital Journalism Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University Audience metrics have become ubiquitous in news organizations, but there has been little empirical research…
Vivian Graubard describes on WhiteHouse.gov how the U.S. Digital Service is working on modernizing the USA’s still largely paper based immigration service, pairing a better technical base with user-centered design. We traveled to USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Service) operations centers in Kansas City,…
When cities make an effort to accommodate “aging in place,†they typically end up with designs that benefit younger residents too. A new report called “Ageing in Cities,†from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a membership group of 30-plus countries that focuses…
Design 4 Disaster features an engaging illustrated safety manual for ship passengers, a personal project by Experientia designer Dohun YuLuck Jang ìœ ë¡. After the Korean ferry accident last year, Yuluck (who is Korean) wanted to find a way to make safety manuals more interesting to…
People’s reluctance to share data about their energy use is likely to stand in the way of “smart†technology designed to promote energy efficiency, experts say. A study, published online in Nature Climate Change, finds that while more than half of people quizzed would be…
When data can be both individual, and potentially aggregated across many people, who does and does not have a say in what “the data†ultimately means? A thought provoking piece by Dawn Nafus, an anthropologist at Intel Labs. Through [our] work [with the Quantified Self…
Until now, the public dialogue about self-driving cars has centered mostly on technology, writes Michael Nees, Assistant professor, Lafayette College. The public’s been led to believe that engineers will soon remove humans from driving. Researchers in the field of human factors—experts on how people interact…
This year, the research focus of the Institute for the Future (IFTF) is on Human+Machine Futures, the blurring lines between human and machine, natural and artificial. What happens when technology allows us to automate just about anything? What happens when our bodies become the next…
In the 20th Century creating a close partnership between copywriter and art director led to a creative renaissance in advertising. In the 21st century the relationship between designer and researcher will do the same, argues Rob Varney, experience design director of FoolProof. This approach liberates…