Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Technology By Nir Eyal Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Released: December 2013 Pages: 154 [Amazon link] Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there be…
Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics By Stephen Wendel Publisher: O’Reilly Media Released: November 2013 Pages: 400 [Amazon link] A new wave of products is helping people change their behavior and daily routines, whether it’s exercising more (Jawbone Up), taking control of…
Experience Design: A Framework for Integrating Brand, Experience, and Value Patrick Newbery, Kevin Farnham 240 pages October 2013 Wiley [Amazon link] Description Businesses thrive when they can engage customers. And, while many companies understand that design is a powerful tool for engagement, they do not…
Megan Garber of The Atlantic interviews (alternate link) Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and a professor at MIT whose primary academic interest—the relationship between humans and machines—is especially relevant in today’s networked age. Turkle’s most recent book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and…
Formally the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, the D.school has made a global impact by encouraging students to find out what is most useful. Nicole Perlroth reports in The New York Times. “At the heart of the school’s courses is developing what…
The anthropology of an equation. Sieves, spam filters, agentive algorithms, and ontologies of transformation Paul Kockelman This article undertakes the anthropology of an equation that constitutes the essence of an algorithm that underlies a variety of computational technologies — most notably spam filters, but also…
In addressing the insecurities of postmodern thought, Big Data falls prey to some of the same issues of interpretation, writes Michael Pepi in The New Enquirer. More in particular, Pepi points out that “the conditions that generated postmodernism were an intellectual half-step toward the logic…
Mohsin Hamid and Anna Holmes discuss in the New York Times Book Review how technology affects our reading habits. Mohsin Hamid argues that in a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude.…
As part of a European Union-funded study on social media (make sure to check also the UCL site and blog on the same project), the Department of Anthropology at University College London is running nine simultaneous 15-month ethnographic studies in seven countries (small towns in…
Geoff Mulgan, CEO of Nesta (the UK innovation charity), writes that in 2014 the growing movement to take back control of personal data will reach a tipping point. “The next few years will bring a further explosion of data, and data awareness in daily life.…
A new study carried out for Thinkbox by COG Research and designed to help the advertising community understand the context of multi-screening (watching TV and simultaneously using an internet-connected device such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet). Using a combination of research techniques which examined…
Nearly all videos of the recent Service Design Global Conference in Cardiff, Wales (19-20 November 2013) are now online: DAY 1 Making Data Useful The Service Design Imperative [30:37] Nick Leon – Royal College of Art Bio and synopsis The Danger of Big Data [21:45]…
In his latest Dezeen column, Dan Hill examines what services like the Uber taxi app mean for cities and asks whether the designers of public services can learn something from them. “So this [i.e. Uber], as with Amazon (and Starbucks, J Crew and the rest)…
An article with a title like this cannot but intrigue me (being a non-American leading a non-USA company) – and even more so after I found out that it was written by an American working in an American company. In a very frank and thoughtful…
Experientia has been featured in RISD.edu, the website of the Rhode Island School of Design, where Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels received his master’s degree in industrial design. The article offers a brief overview of some of Experientia’s recent work, before going into more depth about…
Smartwatches are the future, but the Samsung Galaxy Gear is only partway there, writes Raluca Budiu, a senior researcher with Nielsen Norman Group, in her detailed and extensive UX review of the Samsung Galaxy Smartwatch. “One big reason to believe in watches is that this…
There’s an ever-growing tide of inactive, dormant, or extinct customer accounts and other online personal data swallowing up the digital landscape, writes Joe Macleo in UX Magazine. As designers, one of our objectives when creating digital services and products should be to incorporate a “closure…
Leading businesses like Google are exploring scalable strategies that make UX relevant to engineers and MBAs across their organizations. Robert Fabricant has posted a quick look at some of the different strategies that they are deploying: 1. Lean UX 2. UX in R&D 3. Baby-Step…
The title of this New York Times article sounds like a Monty Python sketch (intentionally, I guess). But the article is luckily quite a lot more serious, exploring how the British government – inspired by American behavioral economics – is finding new ways to gently…
With its interactive and intuitive interface and its ability to visualize data in a single screen, the information dashboard is becoming a critical tool in the hands of the business user. Moreover, it is also making its way into apps used by laypeople for managing…
In response to the recent explosion in UX, Ford Motor Company has hired folks like Parrish Hanna and Chris Thibodeau — Global Director of Human-Machine Interface and Executive Manager of Global Product Planning for User Interface, Connectivity, and Infotainment respectively — to react and reshape…
A new centre will bring the principles of design into the heart of a leading hospital to create a global research hub for “frugal innovation and high-impact, low-cost designâ€, writes The Times Higher Education. Royal College of Art (press release) and the Institute of Global…
Public service design is about to hit the mainstream. In December the Cabinet Office will launch a new policy lab tasked with using design to “re-invigorate policymaking in the UK civil service”, reports The Guardian. The new lab to be launched in December will work…
Innovative design-based approaches to public service management can rapidly enhance user experience whilst driving effective and efficient policymaking, explains Lucy Kimbell on the site of the Policy Network (the UK’s leading thinktank and international political network based in London). “[The UK Cabinet Office, the Young…
Design Week investigates a new wave of service design proponants who are helping to embed design in big brands. Taking the two-day Service Design Global Conference as a context, the author highlights the radical changes businesses are making by using design to deliver profitable customer-focused…
Design is now firmly on the business agenda. No longer the cherry on the cake for high-end goods and luxury brands, over the past decade it has gained relevance for the way organisations are structured, how they operate and how they think. An increasing number…
Interesting quote from a Wired interview with Melinda Gates and Paul Farmer: WIRED: What innovation do you think is changing the most lives in the developing world? MELINDA GATES: Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account.…
How will work be organized in the Networked Society? Fundamental changes are taking place. Cultural changes and rapid technological development are changing the rules and opening up for new ways of structuring business and changes in the workplace. Ideas and innovation are fueling this move…
Experientia’s innovative ATM interface for UniCredit Bank has started to roll out across ATMs in Italy, and UniCredit has created a video to showcase some of the features. Experientia’s interface design reinvents the ATM interface – making it easier to use, faster, and with more…
Public and Collaborative Exploring the intersection of design, social innovation and public policy Ezio Manzini and Eduardo Staszowski (Editors) New York, September 2013, 181 pages Download [Alternative links 1 – 2] This book edited by Ezio Manzini and Eduardo Staszowski documents and presents some reflections…
Bruce Sterling’s Wired UK article on the value of design fiction is very much worth a read, as it defines the field so well: “A formal definition exists: “Design fiction is the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.” There’s heavy freight…
Professor Alex Stevens of the University of Kent, did quite an unusual ethnographic study – focused on understanding how UK civil servants use evidence in policy making, and in the process comes to some quite political conclusions: “Based on participant observation in a team of…
What will the workplace of the future look like? Will it even exist as a physical space? Ever since networked computers first became widespread the idea of the virtual organisation has been touted, yet most of us still work in conventional workplaces. Recent technological advances…
The ubiquitous nature of smart products and smart systems underscores the fact that the definitions of “service design” and “experience design” are becoming moving targets. Many products are becoming services and experiences are becoming products that differentiate brands. What does this mean for design and…
Chris Allen (CUA – HFI US Sales Director Eastern Region; Global Accounts Director) went to the UX STRAT Conference in Atlanta and came back with one big question: How do we as business leaders leverage the best techniques and outcomes of various research and design…
Two talks on teens in the digital age: The App Generation: identity, intimacy and imagination in the digital era (video – 21:18) Talk at The RSA, London, UK – October 2, 2013 Today’s young people have grown up almost totally immersed in digital media. But…
UX Australia 2013, a 4-day user experience design conference that took place in Melbourne at the end of August, has posted a lot of presentation slides and audio recordings on its site. Here a (small personal) selection: Agile ethnography in New York’s secret public spaces…
Reputation Economics: Why Who You Know Is Worth More Than What You Have by Joshua Klein Palgrave Macmillan Publisher November 2013, 256 pages [Amazon link] Abstract As the internet has increasingly become more social, the value of individual reputations has risen, and a new currency…
Kevin Simler is clearly a highly informed and engaging writer. In this essay, he argues that “UX is etiquette for computers“. “A focus on appearance is just one of the ways UX is like etiquette. Both are the study and practice of optimal interactions. In…
Artefact Group, the Seattle based design company, has posted the first installment of its Behavior Change toolkit. “We’ve curated this selection of cards to give you a sample of principles and strategies that you can apply to your own work, dealing with concepts like how…