Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Luke Fernandez, Manager of Program and Technology Development at Weber State University, has published a review of Evgeny Morozov’s To Save Everything Click Here that explores the intersection between UX and political theory. “As a political theorist and software developer I particularly appreciate Morozov’s attempt…
Can wearable devices augment our activities without distracting us from the real world, asks Don Norman in an article just published in the MIT Technology Review. “In the end, wearable technologies will either be able to augment our experiences, and focus our attention on the…
Brunel University London has posted the Ph.D dissertation of Daniel Lockton, entitled “Design with Intent – A design pattern toolkit for environmental & social behaviour change” (download link). “This thesis describes a systematic research enquiry into influencing more sustainable behaviour through design, which has produced…
The Design Manual of Gov.uk, the UK Government services and information portal, has a section on user-centred design, whereas the service manual home page describes in more detail how designers can build a gov.uk service: from discovery, to alpha, beta, live and retirement. “People come…
Recent SAP application forays include everything from a My Runway fashion shopping application to wellness applications that involve wearable sensors to Big Data analytic applications for the National Basketball Association (NBA). According to Sam Yen, global head of design and user experience at SAP, the…
Anthropologist Natalie Hanson has written a series of blog posts regarding Agile methods and the implications for user experience work. Recognizing Agile List of the top ways to know you’re working in an Agile environment A brief overview of Agile Background on what Agile is…
Recently Steve Whittaker, professor of human-computer interaction at the University of California at Santa Cruz, sat on a national committee to evaluate HCI research funding. “As part of that process, we discussed past successes and current challenges for HCI. It’s a good time to be…
A year ago, in July 2012, Business Innovation Factory (BIF) began a partnership with Children’s Medical Center in Dallas to find “new models of careâ€, and better serve five counties of children and their families in North Texas. In this community, families struggle to make…
Three different categories of device – for the ears, eyes and wrists, and each with its own set of uses – will soon become prevalent, predicts new Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich. What the killer apps of these will be, however, is still anyone’s guess.…
In 2013, the Technology Horizons Program of the Institute for the Future commissioned six leading science fiction writers — Cory Doctorow, Rudy Rucker, Warren Ellis, Madeline Ashby, Ramez Naam, and Bruce Sterling — and artist Daniel Martin Diaz to create short stories tied to our…
The emerging experience economy offers a possibility – yet only a possibility – for rethinking and designing new frameworks for social interaction and new forms of behavior more conducive to mindfulness, conviviality, good sociability, and civility. But such designing, or judgment of design in our…
“Too many well-intentioned products fail because they feel like ‘haftas,’ things people are obligated to do, as opposed to things they ‘wanna’ do,” writes Nir Eyal on Techcrunch. “When faced with ‘haftas,’ our brains register them as punishments so we take shortcuts, cheat, skip-out, or…
So who else is putting people first? Microsoft‘s new smart cities initiative! “Cities play a vital role in our lives – both now and in the future. Microsoft’s CityNext initiative puts people first and builds on this new era of collaborative technology to engage citizens,…
How do you buy or sell something so abstract as an “experienceâ€? And what is it worth? That’s not an idle question for companies in the sharing economy. The experience of staying in an Airbnb apartment–with all its quirks, blemishes and unique qualities–is the differentiator…
Interaction 14 just announced its first keynote speakers: Saskia Sassen is someone to look forward to. A sociology professor at Columbia University, she is known for her critical and thought provoking thinking on a wide variety of themes that are very strongly related to the…
“The most important thing in the room is not the furniture — it’s the people.” Almost 50 years after the Action Office, Herman Miller embarks on the next big rethinking of the workplace: the Living Office. It is the ultimate twenty-first-century work-in-progress. “Though in places…
In the second of two columns exploring the impact of digital culture on design, Sam Jacob looks at how Google Maps is reshaping cities while Apple, Facebook and Amazon are reshaping the natural landscape by building their own headquarters as self-contained ecosystems. “Over the last…
In this first of two columns about the impact of digital culture on design, Sam Jacob asks what America’s Prism surveillance program tells us about design thinking. “Prism tells us something about design in the twenty-first century. […] It tells us that design is increasingly…
On 20 September 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Government disclosed its plan for promoting the “Sharing City, Seoul†project, which includes 20 sharing programs and policies for generating or diffusing “sharing city†infrastructure after declaring the “Seoul as a Sharing City†vision. The Metropolitan Government regards…
The social innovation book Legible Practices aims at codifying the practises of stewardship, as exhibited by innovators who are consciously rethinking institutions to better meet the challenges of today. It is the last book by Helsinki Design Lab, the recently closed strategic design lab of…
Museums visitors are no longer as satisfied with rows of objects on display. They want the objects to tell a story. They want to understand the main message of the exhibit without reading a single block of text. Mary Oakland, User Experience Designer at The…
Intel and its team of futurologists and anthropologists have a vision of a world where the technology is not an adjunct (as the mobile phone or the tablet is now) but embedded in our lives, generating and mining data in a way that’s functional and…
Malcolm McCullough is one the key thinkers and writers about the intersection of the network, digital media, and the urban and architectural. Dan Hill (who will speak here in Torino on Thursday) was asked to provide a testimonial for the back of McCullough’s latest book,…
By 2050 there will be five billion urbanites but, with pressure on resources and climate disruption, how will cities cope? New technology and conceptual design will be vital, says Emma Stewart, head of sustainability solutions at Autodesk. “If we play our cards right, the 2050…
The report “State of the City: 5 Trends Impacting US Cities,” issued by Living Cities, not only provides guidance about what issues are trending but also how cities need to act so they can successfully adapt to these trends. Ben Hecht (CEO of Living Cities)…
The producer-consumer model is so ingrained in our society that we tend to treat everything like a product—a one-and-done offering that can be pushed to the market and forgotten. Yet, writes interaction and service design consultant Andy Polaine, online experiences are rarely so simple. “Dividing…
Many agree that a combination of factors – a demand for better user experience, the rise of ubiquitous technologies and more readily accessible datasets – present the conditions necessary for a more enjoyable life as a citizen of our country. But necessity is just the…
What are people’s philosophy and attitudes toward loans and debt? And how financial marketers can respond to their basic emotional needs in the lending process? Americans have a complicated relationship with debt, one that defies easy analysis. That’s why a pair of researchers from Filene,…
Large-scale surveys are useful but if we are serious about changing behaviours, we must use every tool to understand human complexity, writes Steven Johnson in the Sustainable Business section of The Guardian. Ethnographic approaches allow us to observe consumer behaviour as it happens naturally, rather…
We are pleased to invite you to the second in the “Talking Design” lecture series with Dan Hill, CEO of Fabrica. On Thursday July 4th, designer and urbanist Dan Hill will speak about smart citizens, in his talk “The not-so-smart city”. Talking Design lecture series…
Having worked on Apple’s User Interface Technologies and introducing the term “user experience†to company execs in the early 90s, Mitch Stein knows a thing or two about how humans interact with computers. “The term ‘user experience’ is more than just aesthetics to me,†Stein…
Intel’s resident futurist reflects on how the steampunk culture offers clues to building a better tomorrow. “Steampunk reveals three relationships that people want with their technology. First, they want their technology to have a sense of humor. Humor and jokes give us a way to…
Robert Hoekman Jr. provides his list of 13 beliefs on the value of user experience strategy, design, and designers, “one for every year [he has] been in the web industry”.
Trust is a Choice – Prolegomena of Anthropology of Trust(s) by Stephanie A. Krawinkler 189 pages, 2013 Carl-Auer Verlag (Publisher) [Amazon link] [Extract] Trust is a universal but culture-bound phenomenon and a critical success factor in corporate life. The author provides a compilation of anthropological…
The physical environment in which a service plays out has a significant influence on the experience of a service. So it’s not uncommon for service design projects to take the physical environment into account. In a recent project focused on the physical environment of the…
A new Ericsson ConsumerLab report, Unlocking Consumer Value, identifies the needs of today’s smartphone and mobile internet users. “The rapid uptake of smartphones and other connected devices has transformed the mobile broadband landscape – shaping and broadening the way users work, play and communicate. When…
In a second article in a four-part series on the use of tablets in educational settings, Justin Reich of MindShift examines the topic of curation. “As technologies have developed, the tools and objects of curation have become increasingly accessible. For decades, teachers have arranged collections…
“In reality, we’re all kind of on ‘Big Brother’ — on a reality show,” says Syracuse University’s Anthony Rotolo, a professor who runs the Starship NEXIS lab, focusing on social networking and new technologies. “Whenever I give a talk, whenever you give a talk, there’s…
An enormous study of how consumers around the world interact with brands finds that only the companies that make life better for consumers create impactful connections. For its second annual Meaningful Brands Index, Havas Media talked with more than 134,000 people in 23 countries about…
Participatory Design in Healthcare: Patients and doctors can bridge critical information gaps is the title of a UX Magazine article by Andrii Glushko, a UX designer at SoftServe Inc. “What we now call participatory design went through a number of changes, and can be seen…