Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Getting around cities is a nerve-wracking experience for too many people, especially those living with sight loss. Too often it feels like public spaces and services – from parks to transport systems – are designed with insufficient consideration for the people they serve. Cities Unlocked…
Barry Brown, Moira McGregor and Donald McMillan of the Mobile Life Centre at Stockholm University audio-video recorded over 100 days of device use from 15 users and just published their results, which they presented in September at the MobileHCI conference in Toronto, Canada. Internet connected…
Apple’s launch this week of Apple Pay, its m-commerce product, could help finally move millions of mainstream consumers toward the promise of mobile payments, according to media reports. Given that Apple Pay will expose user preferences for payments and sharing data, this is a good…
Julie Marie Norvaisas and Jonathan “Yoni” Karpfen of LinkedIn’s User Experience Design (UED) Research Team share how their team discovers and uses “little data” to inform and inspire, in the context of a company driven by “big data”. “LinkedIn’s User Experience Design (UED) Research team…
Gov.uk, the website of the UK Government’s Digital Service that merges the websites of all UK Government Departments and many other agencies and public bodies, has posted a draft guidance document on risk management of cyber security in technology projects. Based on user interviews and…
Dan Lockton just posted an essay on how to enable social and environmental behaviour change by using IoT-type technologies for practical co-creation and constructionist public engagement. It got him immediately some Sunday morning Twitter commentary from Bruce Sterling and John Thackara – to which he…
Anna Bergren Miller provides a short write-up in Shareable on how Joseph Grima and Space Caviar explored changing notions of domesticity at the 2014 Biennale Interieur. “At this year’s Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk, Belgium, British architect Joseph Grima turned the opportunity to curate the show’s…
Every time we return to or sign up for an Internet service (e.g. Facebook, Google, Gmail, YouTube, etc.), writes Hassan Baig on TechCrunch, we rely on what UX experts call a “mental model†for navigating through the choices. “A mental model is essentially a person’s…
The Global Social Media Impact Study based at the UCL Department of Anthropology (London, UK) is dedicated to understanding the implications of social networking sites for global humankind and society, and explaining their significance for the future of the social sciences. Nine simultaneous ethnographies take…
Big Data powers the modern world. What do we gain from Big Data? What do we lose? Al Jazeera America examines the role of technology and the implications of sharing personal information in the network’s first graphic novella, Terms of Service: Understanding Our Role in…
Last year Experientia designed the interface of an ATM of UniCredit, a major Italian bank. The interface is now rolled out across the bank’s ATMs in Italy, to great satisfaction of the bank and the customers alike, since interaction speed is much faster and error…
In September 2014 Experientia gave a presentation on working as UX professionals with financial institutions at the EPIC conference in New York. The paper is now available on the EPIC site in HTML and PDF versions (free registration req’d). Abstract Application of a user-centered approach…
Tim Askew, CEO of Corporate Rain International, explains how technology is increasingly isolating us from each other and stifling creativity and real experiences. “As a frequent business traveler, I have noticed an unhappy change of late: I’m meeting fewer people than I used to. And…
Why are highly successfully companies putting top-notch designers in key leadership roles, ask David Weber and Lisa Leslie Henderson. What are designers bringing to the table that marketers and other c-level players are not? “In today’s business landscape, where customer experience is the primary source…
Mobile healthcare app development poses a set of challenges very different from mainstream apps. Not only is security an area that requires a considerable attention, compliance with regulatory standards is also absolutely crucial. Mithun Sridharan lists nine things app developers should pay close attention to…
MIT News describes how Federico Casalegno of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab designs technology environments that keep human experience at the center of user experience. “The director of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab looks to innovate with technology — but only in support of the…
Underscoring the importance of a great customer experience, Capital One has acquired the San Francisco-based design and user experience firm, Adaptive Path. Is this a testing of the waters by a historically innovative financial institution … or the beginning of an industry trend? Joel Oxman,…
Social Design Futures: HEI Research and the AHRC By Armstrong, Leah, Jocelyn Bailey, Guy Julier, Lucy Kimbell University of Brighton and Victoria and Albert Museum October 2014, 84 pages The UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has just published a report exploring social design…
Experientia president Michele Visciola is one of the keynote speakers at User Friendly 2014, the annual user experience conference of UXPA China, to be held in Wuxi, China, 13 to 16 November. The theme of the 11th conference is the “new era of the experience…
Design for good death Hospitable Hospice, Redesigning Care for Tomorrow An IDEA 2014 Award winner research project Free download: issuu, pdf Existing healthcare systems can make the end-of-life experience more frustrating and undignified. The Lien Foundation and ACM Foundation (Singapore) in collaboration with fuelfor design…
An upcoming event is encouraging anthropologists to “come out of their ivory towers†and work more closely with their colleagues in the field, in order to bridge the gap between “pure†and “applied†anthropology. The international symposium “Why the world needs anthropologists†(Facebook page) will…
The European Commission funds research on a lot of important thematic areas, and in recent years the themes of sustainability and participatory approaches have received a lot of attention. This has made way for companies like Experientia to participate in research projects, as part of…
What Human-Centered Design Means for Financial Inclusion Yanina Seltzer, Claudia McKay 16 October 2014, 126 pages Interactive publication Download pdf CGAP has released today a 126 report entitled “Insights into Action – What Human-Centered Design Means for Financial Inclusion“. The acronym CGAP stands for Consultative…
“Push, pull or nudge” is the title of a 2.5 hour workshop (video here) at the 5th European Conference on Public Communication held today in Brussels. The workshop explored the potential of concepts such as design thinking, choice architecture and nudging in public affairs communication,…
Experientia, the Turin-based User Experience Consultancy, is looking for a native English speaking Communications Officer to work in their Turin, Italy office. The company is specialised in interaction design, ethnographic research and usability testing for an impressive roster of international clients. We often describe this…
And this can have tragic consequences. Like Ebola death tragic. Abigail Zuger, M.D., shares her own experience: “We do not really know whether dysfunctional software contributed to last month’s debacle in a Dallas emergency room, when some medical mind failed to connect the dots between…
This week Toronto-based UX strategist Rami Tabbah and I discussed Capital One’s acquisition of Adaptive Path. We were both a bit surprised by the lack of real reflection on the pros and cons of this development (with a few exceptions), so Rami, who has worked…
Jim Nieters and Pabini Gabriel-Petit have started a series of columns that offers insights on how to help companies progress from delivering mediocre user experiences, as is all too common, to producing truly great experiences that differentiate their products and services in the marketplace. Doing…
Interesting reflection by acclaimed information architect Peter Morville: “As a consultant for two decades, I’ve been a tourist in all sorts of cultures. I’ve worked with startups, Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, Ivy League colleges, and Federal Government agencies in multiple countries. My clients have included…
Abby Margolis, Director of Research at Claro Partners, has become worried that consultants risk becoming a ring of human insight traffickers, rather than the researchers, designers and business problem solvers they strive to be. “They often treat insight like a possession to be bought and…
What is the role of psychology, neuroscience or social behavioral study in real product management? How can it be harnessed to build better products? In this article Janna Bastow of ProdPad and Mind the Product takes a look at three key principles of a more…
With its official, city-wide commitment to the sharing economy, Seoul’s metropolitan government has emerged as a leader in the global sharing movement. Recently, Creative Commons Korea released an ebook detailing many of the Sharing City, Seoul projects, at both the community- and municipal-level, that form…
Bryant, Scott & Wrigley, Cara (2014) The drive towards user-centred engineering in automotive design. In Bohemia, Erik, Rieple, Alison, Liedtka, Jeanne, & Cooper, Rachael (Eds.) Proceedings of 19th DMI : Academic Design Management Conference, London, UK, pp. 741-758. Abstract: Falling sales in Europe and increasing…
By exposing how confusing food stamp applications and other government online services can be, Citizen Onboard hopes to make them better. Anna North reports in the New York Times Op-Talk blog. “One simple way to make government websites better, [Alan] Williams [of the nonprofit Code…
Earlier this year Tracy Brown, a London-based UX designer, had the opportunity to work within an innovation lab called The Digital Innovation group (DIG), created as a collaboration between DigitasLBi and Astrazeneca to allow small, multi-disciplined teams the freedom to rapidly prototype and test new…
OCAD‘s Super Ordinary Lab in Toronto, Canada also just started an unusual social design project that is worth sharing. Domestic Abuse and the Law: Confronting Systemic Impacts is a an ongoing participatory action research project to create positive change, and end tolerance of domestic abuse…
Last week I was at Toronto’s OCADU (Ontario College of Art and Design – University), where Suzanne Stein showed me around in her Super Ordinary lab. One hidden gem was hanging on the wall, but it is luckily also available online: an online tool for…
If you want to be free in a digital age, must you switch off your computer, ask two new books, The End of Absence and The Glass Cage. The End of Absence: Reclaiming what we’ve lost in a world of constant connection by Michael Harris…
Earlier in 2014, two consecutive Mondato Insights examined the role of Human Centered Design (HCD) in enhancing the user experience and closing the gap between registered and active users of Mobile Money. In the six months since then, reports Mondato, the value of the HCD…
Simon Roberts – now of Stripe Partners – was the organizer of last year’s EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference) in London. He did a truly excellent job. This year he was at EPIC in New York, not as an organiser any longer, but as…