Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
In the past few months, companies ranging from giants such as Google to small start-ups have been touting the possibility of interconnecting people and objects – lightbulbs, fridges, cars, buildings – to create an internet of things. Science and technology reporter Katia Moskvitch reports for…
Digital You was an early morning discussion in London, organised by NESTA, that looked at telepresence and the psychology of electronic communications. NESTA is the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts – an independent body with a mission to make the UK…
As much as the car chieftains of Detroit try to fight it, America is slowly but surely turning away from the concept of car ownership. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Americans are choosing to share their cars by the hour and by the day –…
Tim Hyer, the founder of Rentcycle (an online rental marketplace for those looking to share access rather than retain ownership), was hugely inspired by his previous experience at Red Hat, the open source technology company, and reflects on the shared principles between open-source technology and…
DPPI 11, the 5th conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, will take place in Milan at the end of this month, with leading roles for two Experientia partners: Mark Vanderbeeken will act as co-chair of the user-centred design track while Jan-Christoph Zoels will be…
The second global edition of BLINK, a quarterly media industry magazine published by media agency MediaCom, looks into the future of TV. The 48 page magazine contains insights from experts from around the globe on how TV is changing in the digital age. What does…
The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World by Cyrus Farivar Rutgers University Press May 2011 Abstract Through the lens of culture, The Internet of Elsewhere looks at the role of the Internet as a catalyst in transforming communications, politics, and economics.…
In this post, Sabina Idler, information designer at Usabilla (The Netherlands), introduces Piaget’s theory of cognitive growth and explains how it can be useful for usability testing with children. “Children are becoming an increasingly important target group on the web. Good usability and high user…
Donald A. Norman and Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman group argue that today’s gestural user interfaces are a usability nightmare and that we need to come back to some basic HCI realities in the design of gestural user interfaces. “In a recent column for…
Two talks from the 2011 PSFK conference caught my attention:City as a platform (video) In her role as Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York, Rachel Sterne is tasked with strengthening the City’s digital media presence and streamlining internal digital communications. In her…
The number of times that Google has failed at delivering a successful ‘social’ product is in danger of rising to an embarrassing degree. Google Wave is no longer actively developed for use; Buzz has experienced low usage, and seems to most to yield little value;…
With the help of medical technology companies WellDoc, Medtronic and SDI, the motor giant last Wednesday set out to prove that it’s concerned not only with the number of drivers it boasts, but with the health of those drivers, as well (announcement). In a follow-up…
The simplest way to cut down on energy use isn’t to build millions of brand-new LEED-certified buildings; it’s to convince people to make changes themselves. And sometimes, having access to energy consumption data–and a friendly nudge to compete with neighbors–is enough to get people to…
Low2No Camp is a strategic design workshop curated by think tank Demos Helsinki. In Low2No Camp thirty carefully chosen urbanists come together to create groundbreaking projects. The key players of Helsinki’s people-driven urban culture are here to take our thinking on what good life in…
On 15 March 2011 the DeST Research Unit of the INDACO Department of the Milan Politechnic together with the British Consulate General organised Designing Connectivity (pdf), a seminar on building and activating collaborative networks towards sustainability. The seminar discussed projects that work with a variety…
New Media Technologies and User Empowerment Jo Pierson, Enid Mante-Meijer and Eugène Loos (eds.) Peter Lang – International Academic Publishers May 2011 317 pages ISBN 978-3-631-60031-3 Synopsis Recent developments in new media devices and applications have led to the rise of what have become known…
Arup, Effekt and Experientia win second price in parallel urban renewal competition in Fredericia, Denmark The FredriciaC jury announced the results of an ambitious urban renewal project in Fredericia, Denmark, as the city seeks to transform itself from an industrialised port town into a high-quality…
Matthew Marino and his team of User Studio, a French user innovation and design company, have launched designdeservices.org, a great online resource for the francophone service design community – available in French of course. The content is still being created and people are invited to…
Create Your Own 2011 (CYO2011) is a highly recommended event taking place in Berlin on 30-31 May where participants can explore the reality and future behind individualisation, co-creation, and personalisation — mega trends that are shaping the European consumption landscape. The event is co-organized by…
“[Soon] we will no longer possess, in a formal sense, our own stuff,” writes Adam Silver, design strategist at frog. “Not even on our hard drives. Instead, it will have gone fully virtual, kind of like Tron but without the neon suits. Slowly but surely,…
The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is “Googley†– and…
Danah Boyd, researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, wrote a long post on the social factors involved in celebritization. “As information swirls all around us, we have begun to build an attention economy where…
Instead of resembling outmoded PCs, home healthcare technology should look and feel like the other devices that surround us, argues Smart Design’s Dave Cronin in Fast Company. “Nurses, doctors, and other professionals are hugely important to any real improvements to chronic care, but they aren’t…
Mike Kuniavsky was one of the speakers at this week’s Augmented Reality Event and his presentation Somatic Data Perception – Sensing Information Shadows (pdf) is already online. His main point is that “augmented reality is the experience of contextually appropriate data in the environment. And…
This Tuesday Dassault Systèmes, a leading company specializing in 3D and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software, organised Design in Life, a conference/event at Strate College in Paris, where designers joined forces with philosophers, sociologists, researchers, politicians, industrials, academics, designers and architects to discuss what it…
Lessons in innovation that Vodafone learns from its work in sub-Saharan Africa will be applied to its projects around the world. For Vodafone, sub-Saharan Africa is proving to be the testbed for R&D development that will transition to the rest of the world. Vodafone’s emerging…
Power Lines, the latest paper by the UK’s Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), follows on from the RSA’s Connected Communities report, deepening the analysis to look at networks of power and influence, and in particular those who are isolated…
The Compendium for the Civic Economy is the latest publication by NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative). It showcases 25 trailblazing ideas that are transforming local places and…
Benoît Drouillat, president of designers interactifs, France’s leading professional organization for the digital design industry, announced the publication of the article “Interaction design in France: an overview” taken from a speech he gives today at the Cumulus Digital Culture Session at Strate Collège in Paris.…
This might come as a shock, but everything you think is wrong. Much of what you take for granted about day-to-day existence is largely a figment of your imagination. From your senses to your memory, your opinions and beliefs, how you see yourself and others…
Targeting women with mobile phones and mobile-based projects can bring great benefits and opportunities, as MobileActive outlined in Part 1 of its series on women and mobiles [see also this blog post]. But, there is a “darker side†to this world, which includes changes in…
What technologies will have the biggest impact on the next decade? New Scientist peers into the crystal ball and picks the ideas, concepts and gadgets that are set to shake things up. Be nice to the telepresence robot If you’re talking to a colleague on…
Jan-Christoph Zoels, Experientia’s design director, took part in an interesting discussion on socially responsible design for the “Design matters†section of this month’s frieze magazine, a leading magazine on contemporary art and culture. The roundtable discussion was led by Eugenia Bell, design editor of frieze,…
Eli Pariser, executive director of the progressive political action committee MoveOn.org, explains in a CNET interview why he thinks we should beware of the substantial risks inherent in the increasing personalization of the Internet. “Eli Pariser is making noise these days as the author of…
Growing numbers of mobile applications are aimed at keeping patients engaged in their treatment. The Boston Globe reports. “Patient engagement, doctors say, is a crucial factor in health outcomes. Office visits are brief; once you step out into the real world, it’s up to you…
Jeroen van Geel and Vicky Teinaki report on Johnny Holland on UX Lx, the international user experience conference that took place in Lisbon, Portugal, May 11-13. Day One featuring Whitney Quesenbery, Leah Buley, Andrew Watterson, Susan Dybbs, Stuart Cruickshank, Dan Brown, and Anders Ramsay. Day…
My favourite New York Times writer Anand Giridharadas delved into the topic of “making stuff” in this week’s Magazine. “The American romance with making actual things is going through a resurgence. In recent years, a nationwide movement of do-it-yourself aficionados has embraced the self-made object.…
UX designer Tyler Tate explores on Johnny Holland the attitudes, preferences and habitual strategies that determine how people process information. “We pour over analytics, conduct ethnographic studies, and interview users in order to understand the demographics, goals, and tasks of the people using our product.…
Jonathan Donner of Microsoft Research India, together with Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden of the University of Cape Town, have published their ethnographic insights in mobile-only internet use in urban South Africa. “Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study explores the challenges, practices, and…
As mobile penetration increases across the developing world, the entry of mobile phones in the hands of women causes reactions. In many cases, mobile phone ownership empowers women in myriad ways: economic gains, increased access to information, greater autonomy and social empowerment, and a greater…