Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
In arguing that digital technologies enable embodied experiences that reshape the very ways in which we conceptualize our everyday life, Nishant Shah, founder and Director of Research for the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, tells us a story from the village of Banni in…
In a long article, designer Avi Itzkovitch explains how, when connecting applications across smart devices, UX designers can create product ecosystems that dynamically respond to user contexts and thus provide enhanced experiences. The author reviews various theories on the multiscreen ecosystem, including this one from…
Would George Orwell have been amused or disturbed by the development that Big Brother now knows exactly how long it takes readers to finish his novel, which parts they might have highlighted, and what they went on to pick up next? Publishers are thrilled with…
Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth announced in a memo that the paper has named Laura Evans, who has spent most of her nine years at the Post as chief researcher, to the newly created position of VP, Chief Experience Officer (CXO). “As you know, one…
A team of engineers, anthropologists and psychologists at Intel’s Oregon lab is busy developing ways of integrating human emotion and technology in ways that will, it hopes, lead the two to positively influence each other one day. “Intel is playing around with some pretty impressive…
In 2009, the chief executives and a few staff from a handful of UK non-governmental organisations (including WWF and RSPB) came together to discuss the inadequacy of current responses to challenges like climate change, global poverty and biodiversity loss. This led to the Common Cause…
The Helsinki Low2No project team just released a smart services and informatics workbook that was developed by ARUP and Experientia. Low2No is a broad project, initiated in collaboration with the Finnish innovation fund Sitra, aimed at the development of a Helsinki mixed-use city block called…
What is the right to be forgotten? How could it work – if it could work? Is it something to be supported or something to be feared? Why is it such a bone of contention? An article by Dr Paul Bernal, a lecturer in IT,…
In her final piece on ethnographic research in a world of big data (see earlier posts), Jenna Burrell, sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, seeks to answer a few remaining questions: 1. How might big data be part of projects…
UC Irvine will anchor a new $12.5 million, Intel-funded research center that applies social science and humanities to the design and analysis of digital information. “Technology is profoundly entangled with our everyday lives. As researchers, we can’t get a handle on what’s going on by…
Design and AnthropologyEdited by Wendy Gunn, University of Southern Denmark and Jared Donovan, Queensland University of Technology, AustraliaAshgate, 2012Hardcover and ebook Design and Anthropology challenges conventional thinking regarding the nature of design and creativity, in a way that acknowledges the improvisatory skills and perceptual acuity…
Nir Eyal, lecturer in marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, believes secrets about human behavior, which provide insights into the way people act even though they can’t tell you why, are levers for creating user habits and competitive advantage. These kinds of secrets…
Dan Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics and psychology at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, and The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic, both New York Times bestsellers. Ariely’s new book,…
As a grad student in anthropology, Gabriella Coleman was warned that studying the culture of computer hackers would make it hard to get a job teaching in a university. She went ahead anyway, becoming one of the first academics to explore the meaning and implications…
People create profiles on social network sites and Twitter accounts against the background of an audience. This paper by Alice Marwick argues that closely examining content created by others and looking at one’s own content through other people’s eyes, a common part of social media…
When communicating, context is king. A breakthrough in modelling context in human communication could make computers better conversationalists, according to cognitive scientists at Stanford University. “[Michael] Frank, [head of Stanford University’s Language and Cognition Lab] and colleague Noah Goodman, also a cognitive scientist from Stanford,…
Nathan Shedroff (bio), the pioneer in Experience Design, Interaction Design and Information Design, and the chair of the MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA, is looking back on 10 years of experience design. “Let’s have more…
Spanish institutions are in no shape to help struggling Spaniards, so they’re turning to alternative banks and ways of exchanging goods to get by, reports Andrés Cala in the Christian Science Monitor. “The quest for economic alternatives has picked up in recent months. Neighbors are…
Deep inside the company, a team of social scientists is hunting for unprecedented insights about human behaviour, reports Tom Simonite, Technology Review’s senior IT editor. What they find could give Facebook new ways to cash in on our data—and remake our view of society. “Heading…
Windows 8 and the art of UX compromise by Ryan Bell, user interface software team lead at EffectiveUI Microsoft is cleverly promoting Windows 8 with the tagline “no compromises.†The idea is that you get both a desktop/laptop operating system (OS) and a tablet OS…
As a people-centred design company, Experientia frequently uses participatory design methods in its projects. We believe that people are usually the best experts on their own lives, and participatory methods help us to tap into that expertise, to create an outcome that really matters to…
Connected Health: How mobile phones, cloud, and big data will reinvent healthcare by Jody Ranck, DrPH GigaOm Books, June 2012 170 pages [Amazon Kindle edition] Abstract Our current healthcare system is in need of a radical reinvention. Traditional approaches have not brought the rapid change…
Method principal Reuben Steiger argues that companies need to start thinking about the holistic relationship between their brands, products, and services. “Crafting an experience requires design that considers these 3 elements of brand, product, and service in order to generate successful results. Any company can…
As visual analytics architect in SAP’s User Experience team, John Armitage is responsible for creating designs and design concepts for SAP’s analytics products. In this article he talks about new and creative ways of displaying information. “To demonstrate how current technological and market opportunities can…
Model and actress Lily Cole’s social network, Impossible, has been designed for users to meet and help each other. Users post requests (say, “I wish to have a haircut”), and anyone in their local network can offer to help. The emphasis is on giving, rather…
So how are we doing to augment our senses through digital technologies? Here are some of the products currently on the market that allow people to augment their sensing (and sense-making) through external sensors, with result summaries visualised on smartphones and the web: – Health…
Immediately a second post on writing done by Charles Leadbeater. Here he asks if we were to think of the future consumers of the developing world (whose income is rising from around $2 a day to between $5 and $7 a day) as parents and…
Guimarães (Portugal), European Capital of Culture 2012, is commissioning a number of thought leadership pieces and artistic interventions to explore the concept of “Openness†as it relates to all aspects of City development – from personal to political, infrastructure to innovation. The first one is…
The people of the Interaction-Design.org Foundation have given us (and you) preview access to “Socio-Technical Systems Design”, the 24th chapter of the “Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction” A socio-technical system (STS) is a social system operating on a technical base, e.g. email, chat, bulletin boards, blogs,…
Following up on her earlier piece on ethnographic research in a world of big data, Jenna Burrell, sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, continues her argument against the idea that big data might usher in a new era of automatic…
The Mobile Frontier – A Guide for Designing Mobile Experiences By Rachel Hinman Rosenfeld Media June 2012 Publisher’s page | Amazon page Mobile user experience is a new frontier. Untethered from a keyboard and mouse, this rich design space is lush with opportunity to invent…
Barcelona Media, an interdisciplinary center of research and innovation, hosted Lear Center director Marty Kaplan to speak at its 10th anniversary celebration on March 6, 2012. His talk was titled “From Attention to Engagement: The Transformation of the Content Industry.” Digital technology has increased competition…
This morning I got an invite in the mail to attend a London design symposium at Brunel University next week (16 June) that will debate the core themes of a new design manifesto, strangely called “Big Potatoes” Although I cannot attend the debates at such…
“Dark Matter and Trojan Horses – A Strategic Design Vocabulary” is a short e-book by designer and urbanist Dan Hill in which he argues that in an age of wicked problems, conventional solutions are failing, and a new culture of decision-making is called for. “Strategic…
Social scientist Genevieve Bell – who is also the interaction and experience research director at Intel Labs – gave a major talk on what the future of technology looks like, and why middle-aged women may determine that future. The talk, entitled “Telling the Stories of…
Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken wrote an article on the dominance of the English language in the discourse of innovation and the bias that this creates. This dominance of English language in the discourse of innovation carries with it an accompanying perspective of Europe, both in…
Drew Skau, a visualization architect of Visual.ly, explores what will change in data visualisation in the future: – Data visualization will become ubiquitous – The variety of commonly used chart types will increase – Everyone will be able to create or develop visualizations – Data…
Kit Eaton explores the coming of age of the emotion-recognition industry. “Because the smartphones we all carry contain sophisticated computing power, cloud computing connections and, increasingly, a front-facing webcam, it’s easy to see that the next generation of advertising will determine how you’re feeling and…
“The Computational User Experiences (CUE) group [at Microsoft Research] creates technologies that augment our personal and professional digital lives to enhance individual and collaborative pursuits. We apply expertise in machine learning, visualization, mobile computing, sensors and devices, and quantitative and qualitative evaluation techniques to improve…
The Wall Street Journal published the umpteenth article on design thinking education. What I keep on missing in these pieces is some reflection on what understanding people actually means: ethnographic and anthropological observation and fast prototyping, combined with some creativity, will not by themselves create…