Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
The ubiquitous presence of cell phones in emerging economies has brought about a wide range of cell phone-based services for low-income groups. Often times, the success of such technologies highly depends on its adaptation to the needs and habits of each social group. In an…
Over the past few years there’s been a lot of discussion around whether an experience can be designed. But it seems, writes Jordan Julien in UX Magazine, like everyone’s just getting hung up on semantics; an experience can be designed, but the user will always…
Exploring mobile-only Internet use: results of a training study in urban South Africa Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study by Jonathan Donner (Microsoft Research India) and Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden (University of Cape Town) explores the challenges, practices, and emergent framings of…
By 2020, Chinese consumers will join the ranks of the world’s choosiest and most sophisticated consumers. In the March 2012 report “Meet the 2020 Chinese Consumer” Yuval Atsmon, Max Magni, Lihua Li and Wenkan Liao of McKinsey China contemplate the profile of the Chinese consumer…
“Anthropology, Development and ICTs: Slums, Youth and the Mobile Internet in Urban India” is the title of a research paper by Nimmi Rangaswamy and Edward Cutrell of Microsoft Research India. Abstract In this paper we present results from an anthropological study of everyday mobile internet…
In November last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published the short (free) report “The consumerization of IT- The next-generation CIO“. The “consumerization of ITâ€â€”defined as the use of technologies that can easily be provisioned by non-technologists—is a hot topic among CIOs these days. Today’s consumerization of IT…
A report, recently published by UNDP, on mobile technologies and human development, “Mobile Technologies and Empowerment: Enhancing Human Development through Participation and Innovationâ€, does a good job of summarizing the many ways in which mobile technologies are being used successfully as tools for stimulating development.…
This report by Hani Eskandar (ITU), Barbara- Chiara Ubaldi (OECD) and Vyacheslav Cherkasov (UN-DESA) highlights the critical potential of mobile technologies for improved public governance, as well as for economic and social progress in achieving the internationally agreed development goals including the Millennium Development Goals…
The argument of this pamphlet, written by Charles Leadbeater for IPPR (the Institute for Public Policy Research, the UK’s leading progressive thinktank) is that we should jettison the assumption that humans are selfish, first and foremost. Instead, we should start from the assumption that most…
Facebook Timeline is an exemplary bit of interaction design that does little to advance the timeline formally. Yet it might alter the nature of human memory itself. A Domus Magazine design report from Palo Alto by Dan Hill. “It’s a simple design, with a deftness…
On International Women’s Day, the GSMA mWomen Programme released a study called “Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid,” reports MobileActive.org. Drawn from 2,500 interviews with women (aged 16-64 in both rural and urban areas) living on…
When it comes to health, consumers’ complex and contradictory behaviour makes observational research highly valuable, says Ipsos Mori director Oliver Sweet. “Observation allows researchers to look at healthy behaviours that are often hard to articulate, such as the emotion attached to food, or when we…
The Design Yearbook 2011 of ARUP — the global firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists that Experientia collaborated with on the Low2No project in Helsinki — is a gorgeous overview of the power of (sustainable) design in the firm’s recent work. Pages…
Nir Eyal continues his article series on Techcrunch (see also “Habits are the new viral“) with a short essay on manufacturing desire. “Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create. But as some companies are…
The Transition Companion: making your community more resilient in uncertain times by Rob Hopkins Chelsea Green Pub Co, November 2011 320 pages Abstract In 2008, the bestselling The Transition Handbook suggested a model for a community-led response to peak oil and climate change. Since then,…
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg Random House, February 2012 400 pages Abstract In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific…
The Life 2.0 project is a EU funded project that aims at supporting elderly people’s independent life through a platform of geographical positioning and social networking services. The project, which involves 13 core partners in 5 European member states, started in November 2010 and is…
Trying out Windows 8 on the desktop gives a strange feeling, writes Matthew Baxter-Reynolds on The Guardian’s Technology Blog. There’s a solid update to Windows 7, and then there’s a strange interface which jumps context. Plus you can’t join a device to a domain? Whose…
MobileActive has posted an in-depth new case study that focuses on evaluating mobile health interventions. Written by Kate Otto, the case study looks at testing the efficacy of using mobile phones in health care in Ethiopia. A team of researchers from The World Bank and…
Austin Center for Design today published a new book focused on the role of design in social entrepreneurship. Titled Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving, the book is presented as a handbook for teaching, learning, and doing meaningful disruptive design work. The book includes an introduction…
Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong describe the current state of UX design in Asia: “As businesses in Asia in various domains look to how they can mature, differentiate and compete globally in their respective products and services, User Experience (UX) is gaining significant momentum. Management…
Together with a committed group of colleagues and partners, cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito has been engaged in the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative to address the challenge of how new media can support highly engaged, geeked out, and self-directed forms of learning, but…
The divide between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” is vast, and a new study of Internet use in the land of Gutenberg finds that twice the number previously believed barely go online at all. “According to the study, so-called “Digital Natives” – mainly the young…
Designers are beginning to understand how irrational thinking plays into the decisions people make, writes Rob Girling of Artefact. That knowledge can be used to openly influence consumers to make responsible choices. “Recent advances in neuroscience and behavioral economics, cognitive psychology and anthropology are helping…
The French think tank Fing (who was also behind the LIFT France event last year) collaborated last year with VIA, Promotelec, Renault Group, La Poste, Minatec Laboratory (CEA), CNR Santà, ESIR Engineering school on a research project called “Connected homes for connected people” (Habitants Connect’s)…
The economic value of web businesses increasingly depends on the strength of the habitual behavior of their users, argues Nir Eyal on Techcrunch. These habits ultimately will be a deciding factor in what separates startup winners and losers. “Increasingly, companies will become experts at designing…
After her much talked about piece “Does corporate ethnography suck?” – which presented a cultural analysis of academics critiques of industry ethnography as a second rate or illegitimate forms of ethnography – Sam Ladner followed up with two more posts on corporate ethnography: Is rapid…
Sierra Wireless’ new USB cellular modems show how user-centred design can help differentiate products in a commoditised market. Matt Plested of Alloy, the agency which helped Sierra design the products, explained to Mex how they explored user environments for USB modems to better understand customer…
[Guest post by Jan-Christoph Zoels, senior-partner of Experientia] Avoiding one of the shortcomings of Oscar ceremonies, the international jury of the first Interaction design awards, selected a diverse range of winners from all over the world – from Ford’s smart speed gauge to a Dutch…
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University published a substantial new report from the Youth and Media project: “Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality” by Urs Gasser, Sandra Cortesi, Momin Malik, & Ashley Lee. Building upon a process- and…
As technology has advanced, the importance of how humans interact with systems, machines, and each other, have also advanced into a fusion of disciplines, coalescing under the banner of “user experience.” And though “experience” is a vast and abstract notion that is highly contingent on…
All web designers use perceptual persuasion in their designs, but without knowing they do. Interaction designer Wouter Middendorf delves into the matter: “Persuasive design is hot. Especially on the web as designers found out that the internet perfectly lends itself for persuasion. The combination of…
Television is breaking free of old paradigms and constraints. Consumers have no shortage of places to look for the content they want — online, on-demand, broadcast. But with added choice comes added complexity. As television becomes decentralized, holistic user interfaces can make sense of the…
Adrian Chan, social media expert and social interaction theorist at Gravity7, has written a long essay to collect his thoughts on social interaction design. “Imperfect and unfinished as any project on contemporary products will be, my Principles of Social Interaction Design is now available for…
With Apple, Inc. having the largest market capitalization of any company in the world, and an endless stream of CEOs and pundits talking about the importance of user experience, Peter Merholz suspects the phrase “user experience design†is no longer necessary, and could even be…
UX matters posted yesterday four new articles: The world of services user experience By Baruch Sachs In a services organization, you are not only the UX expert, you are also expected to be a thought leader in areas that go far beyond UX. How will…
The most popular content strategy tools borrow from the discipline of information architecture, but there is one invaluable tool that is imperative to the process of strategy and implementation of tactics that we can thank our user experience cousins for: personas. “Content strategy is more…
World IA Day 2012 is about bringing the Information Architecture community together, and the first ever World IA Day, which took place on 11 February, featured keynote presentations by Peter Morville, Lou Rosenfeld and Jorge Arango. – Peter Morville: Cross-training for ubiquitous information architecture –…
A pair of remarkable projects created by Ben Fry (co-developer of Processing) and his company Fathom may seem like simple marketing, but one day soon could enterprise software look like this? “The point is, as the data we produce continues to grow–a trend many people…
User experience is a priority that should, in some way, find a home within the design of any new-media strategy, writes Brian Solis. “The reality is that the relationship businesses hope to have with customers through these new devices, applications, or networks and their true…