Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
SAP customers are increasingly telling the company that user experience (UX) is the differentiator, not features and functions, starts the introduction to SAP’s new UX strategy. “With [its] large product portfolio, any SAP UX strategy cannot be a “boil the ocean” approach; it has to…
A new NESTA paper, Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, navigates the myths and realities of good and bad futurology, from economic forecasting to science fiction. Since time immemorial, people have tried to predict the future. In the second half of the 20th century, these efforts…
Mozilla’s user experience research and design team has just published the first Mozilla UX Quarterly. Crystal Beasley, Editor and Product Design Strategist, writes: “My hope is that this will be a tool to spread throughout the community of Mozillians the empathy for our users we’ve…
Click on image to view slideshow On Wednesday evening about 20 guests and 30 Experientia staff maxed out our little conference room to attend our very first Talking Design lecture and listen to Intel anthropologist Todd Harple, who spoke about why design and social sciences…
User Experience is the quarterly magazine of the UXPA, the User Experience Professional Association. From now on, each new issue is available online, in a responsive design so that you can read it on the desktop, tablet or handheld device with equal facility. Although a…
We at Experientia have always admired the work of Jake Barton and his company Local Projects, for the way that they have deeply woven people’s narration and storytelling into the design of interactive installations and museums. Now Jake has won the 2013 National Award for…
Ethnography Matters took on a difficult challenge with this interview of Steve Portigal about his new book “Interviewing Users“. EM: In your 18 years in this business, what has been some of the biggest shifts that you have witnessed in the field? SP: When I…
Governments and public officials are rushing to embrace the concept of Open Data, throwing open the vast panoply of publicly collected information for the digitally savvy to mine and exploit, writes Ben Rooney in the Wall Street Journal. However, the use of government data throws…
GE, perhaps more than any other major company, is dedicated to the use of data visualization as a key part of its marketing and communications efforts. Stemming from last month’s Insight Center on visualizing data, Gretchen Gavett of the Harvard Business Review spoke with Linda…
Amanda L. Goodman is the User Experience Librarian at Darien Library in Connecticut. In this article for UX Magazine, she writes about her experience as a librarian in the USA: “Across the country, libraries are providing services and crafting experiences that make patrons’ visits meaningful…
A few weeks ago, I announced Interviewing Users, the new book by Steve Portigal published by Rosenfeld Media. It is now available for purchase, both in print and in digital version. Steve and his publisher provide Putting People First readers with two special offers: Giveaway:…
In the last post of the EthnographyMatters Ethnomining edition (edited by Nicolas Nova), David Ayman Shamma @ayman gives a personal perspective on mixed methods. Based on the example of data produced by people of Egypt who stood up against then Egyptian president and his party…
Although Windows and Macintosh are both showing their age, Michael Mace of Cera Technology thinks there is enormous opportunity for a renaissance in personal computing. In this post he describes the next-generation personal computing opportunity, and what could make it happen. “I call the new…
The UK Design Council and three other members of the SEE Platform (Sharing Experience Europe) – the Danish Design Centre, Design Wales and Aalto University, Finland – on Tuesday published a new report, Design for Public Good, encouraging the European Union and its member states…
The iPad is a multi-user device according to industry reports, writes Frank Spillers. But you wouldn’t know it from picking up even the latest generation iPad, especially if you are a physician or business user handling sensitive data. The design approach of designing for lone…
Michele Visciola, President and Founding Partner of Experientia, gave a talk at iHub in Nairobi, Kenya, last week (see also this earlier post). The aim of the talk was to demonstrate with actual examples how user experience principles are applicable for large and small projects…
We cordially invite you to Experientia’s inaugural “Talking Design†evening. On Wednesday May 8th, at 18.00, we are excited to have Intel’s Todd Harple speaking at the Experientia offices, followed by a light aperitivo. The “Talking Design” guest speaker evenings are part of our drive…
Belching cars made of skin and bones, nuclear-powered trains in the shape of mountains and arrow-like formations of joined recumbent bicycles are just some of the ways we might travel around the country in the future, according to designers Dunne and Raby, whose new exhibition…
The UK’s Behavioural Insights Team – known as the “nudge unit” – will join with a commercial partner and become the first policy unit to be spun out of Whitehall, reports the BBC. It finds ways of “nudging” people to make better choices themselves, rather…
Digital books are software. The more interactive the experience, the more complex that software is to develop – and the greater the risk of creating a digital product that alienates. Taking a user-centered design approach to developing digital products helps to mitigate against that risk.…
Article published in the April 2013 issue of the International Journal of Design By Dan Lockton, David J. Harrison, Rebecca Cain, Neville A. Stanton, & Paul Jennings Design for behaviour change aims to influence user behaviour, through design, for social or environmental benefit. Understanding and…
Mark Busse calls on the design industry to set a higher standard (and as a company which has always paid its interns, we endorse this call): ” Employers, especially visible leaders in our community, are obligated to demonstrate best practices and need to think hard…
People have used books as a reliable tool to transmit and preserve information, ideas, and stories for hundreds of years. E-books have enjoyed wide use for only about six years — counting from when Amazon introduced its Kindle in 2007. Yet e-books have rapidly upended…
Have you heard that Google Glass will let you snap photos by winking? John Pavlus of the MIT Technology Review writes why that’s still going to feel weird. “The assumption driving these kinds of design speculations is that if you embed the interface–the control surface…
Jan-Christoph Zoels, an Experientia founding partner, was one of the panelists at the UNStudio Platform Dialogues during the Milan Design Week and a video of his discussion with Markus Benz (CEO Walter Knoll) and Birgit Lohmann (Associate Editor-in-chief Designboom), is now online. Experientia and UNStudio,…
Interactions Magazine is no longer the influential voice in the interaction design community that it used to be a few years ago. Lots of the reason why has to do with the fact that the bulk of the articles are behind a membership paywall, while…
The people behind the upcoming IxDA Interaction14 conference organized on 6 April a panel discussion in Milan on the “Long View of Interaction Designâ€. 5 panelists debated with Interaction14 chair Alok Nandi on how to design for those interaction design challenges that go beyond the…
The latest contribution to Ethnomining, the April 2013 Ethnographymatters edition on combining qualitative and quantitative data, edited by Nicolas Nova, is by Rachel Shadoan and Alicia Dudek who present an interesting case study, based on visualizations, involving an on-line role-playing game. “We embarked on a…
Dave McColgin of Artefact writes about the relationship of design research to the ultimate outcome-focused research tool: Big Data. “Big Data […] provides us with new resources when determining which people our products should be made for. Its ability to find patterns and correlations allows…
In a decommissioned industrial zone in Turin, a single bright yellow apartment stands out in the shell of an old factory. This is “CasaZeraâ€, a sustainable living housing prototype, which was officially opened on the 18th April 2013 by local officials, and the project partners.…
This study collected and benchmarked information from 31 European countries (EU27, HR, ICE, NO and TR) on the access, use, competence and attitudes of students and teachers regarding ICT in schools. ICT provision and use in European schools is improving but several obstacles remain. First,…
As part of Experientia’s involvement in the award winning Low2No project in Helsinki and in particular its strategy towards demand management and behavioral change, we are proud to announce that Dan Hill (former ARUP and Sitra, now Fabrica) has just reminded us of last year’s…
Common Humanity: Making ‘us vs. them’ history [20:09] Presentation at RSA on 14 March 2013 Sir David Cannadine, one of Britain’s most distinguished historians visits the RSA to provide a new paradigm for historical understanding that emphasises our commonalities, rather than our differences. RSA Tindale…
Sabina Idler, who runs a UX research company in Amsterdam, provides five reasons why kids need special attention when it comes to user research: 1. Kids form their own target group 2. Kids form a diverse target group 3. You have to ask kids what…
Chris Dannen, the editor of Co.Labs at FastCompany, sat down with Facebook UX Researcher Marco De Sa to learn his thoughts on enticing first-time users. The interview is split out in two parts: – Part One: What are you looking for in a first time…
Tilman Ehrbeck, CEO of CGAP (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, affiliated with the Worldbank), writes about how his organization has used human-centered design recently to generate demand-side insights and design innovative products that work better for low-income households. “Half of all working-age adults…
Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow’s Customers by Jan Chipchase Harper Collins Publishers April 2013 256 pages (Amazon link) A global-innovation expert offers a new perspective on how consumers think and how to develop products and services that affect their…
On March 25, the Healthcare Experience Design (HxD) conference took place in Boston. Speakers discussed how human centered design and design thinking can improve the quality of health service delivery and digital interactions, helping all of us achieve better health. Videos of all sessions are…
Michele Visciola, Experientia’s president and user research director, will speak at Kenya’s iHub this week, on Friday 19th April. Michele is currently in Nairobi preparing research, and has been invited to be a guest speaker at iHub, Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community. Michele…
People Powered Health: Health For People, By People and With People by Matthew Horne, Halima Khan and Paul Corrigan April 2013 – 58 pages NESTA, UK This report, and the People Powered Health programme it’s part of, makes the case for changing the ways in…