Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Yesterday Brussels saw the launch of the English version of the Service Design Toolkit, which Design Flanders developed together with Belgian consultancies Yellow Window and Namahn. The launch took place at the international SEE conference on integrating design into regional and national policies, that took…
Vesa-Matti Lahti, senior lead of the Energy Programme at Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, describes why much more is needed than just correct information if we want people to pull together to mitigate climate change. “Behavioural scientists who have studied energy consumption have nevertheless estimated…
LiveMint.com, the Indian online partner publication of the Wall Street Journal, reports on India’s first Design!publiC conclave “on design thinking and the challenge of government innovation,” which took place in New Delhi on 18 March. The event — which was organised by the Center for…
Think Quarterly is a 64 page magazine published by Google UK “that brings together some of the world’s leading minds to discuss the big issues facing businesses today.” Here are some of the articles I picked out: Executive Insight Guy Laurence, CEO of Vodafone UK,…
David Malouf, Professor of Interaction Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, is in constant pursuit of the “clay†of interaction design (IxD) – the “something” that interaction designers are manipulating. He thinks that one possible property of said “clay†may be motion…
A recent Knight Foundation/Pew Research study shows how important, demonstrating that if citizens believe their city governments behave in a transparent manner and make information easily accessible, they tend to think more highly about their town and its civic institutions. The study, “How the Public…
Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken has been invited to be a member of the technical committee for the EDF Sustainable Design Challenge: Changing energy together for better living. The technical committee will analyse the submitted projects from a technical point of view and give recommendations to…
Seattle Times technology reporter Sharon Pian Chan profiles Bill Buxton, principal researcher at Microsoft Research. “Bill Buxton is multiplatform the way Leonardo da Vinci was multiplatform. The Microsoft researcher is a technologist, a designer, a musician, an author, outdoorsman and a nationally ranked equestrian. He…
Experientia intern Gina Taha has just been announced a winner in the GORE-TEX Experience Tour project “Design your very own trekking boots” with the GORE-TEX brand and La Sportiva. Gina’s design (graphic) was chosen from a short-list of ten, and will now be produced at…
Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research: An Introduction Paperback, 376 pages AltaMira Press; Second edition 2010 [Amazon link] The Ethnographer’s Toolkit series begins with this primer, which introduces novice and expert practitioners alike to the process of ethnographic research, including answers to questions like: who should…
The European Union is planning to enshrine in law the right to be forgotten on the internet, but we can’t live outside society, argues investigative journalist and filmmaker Tessa Mayes in The Guardian. “Being forgotten might sound appealing for some, but making a right out…
“Companies should lead their users, not the other way around.” So say Jens Skibsted and Rasmus Hansen in their recent post, User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs, on Fast Company’s Co.Design blog. “They’re exactly right, but for all the wrong reasons,” reacts Lawrence Kitson of ustwo…
The New York Times has published no less than eight articles at once on the topic of social media, internet, technology and museums. Note the article about the Arduino! Speaking digitally about exhibits Museums around the world now use social media for marketing and development…
In December Experientia signed a five-year research and education collaboration agreement with the Design and Human Engineering School (DHE) of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) – Korea’s new top university – in a quest to change the way that design is…
Helge Fredheim wrote a smart article in Smashing Magazine to clarify why UX cannot be designed. “Several models of UX have been suggested, some of which are based on Hassenzahl’s model. This model assumes that each user assigns some attributes to a product or service…
David Sherwin reflects on the frog design blog about the SXSW conference, starting from the questions raised in the contribution by Genevieve Bell (director of Intel’s Interactions and Experience Research Lab) there entitled “Our devices: how smart is too smart?“. “Our current devices are terrible…
Misha W. Vaughan, architect of applications user experience at Oracle USA, reflects in this interesting, small article for the February 2011 issue of the Journal of Usability Studies on the challenges explaining the value of user experience to the Oracle sales organisation. Read article
Experientia intern, Ane Eguiguren, together with her team partner François Verez, has been announced the winner of the INDEX: Design Challenge 2010. The UNICEF challenge encouraged young designers to envision solutions to education in developing countries. UNICEF in collaboration with the Danish not-for-profit organization INDEX…
Qualitative researchers in the commercial sphere often feel they can only do ‘ethnography light’. Isabella Simpson, senior research executive at Kantar Media, urges them to have more confidence, and challenges some of the myths surrounding the ethnographic approach. “Commercial ethnography, if conducted rigorously, doesn’t need…
Two weeks ago, Core77 published my review of the LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland. In the interest of completeness, I also publish it here: All images by Ivo Näpflin, courtesy of LIFT Conference – Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic A few weeks ago I was,…
Controversial British columnist Andrew Orlowski published a long investigating article on Nokia’s failure to build its own smartphone platform. “When Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced that Nokia was abandoning its development of its own smartphone platforms and APIs, and betting the farm on somebody else’s,…
DPPI 11, the 5th conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, will take place in Milan, Italy this year and Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken is part of the scientific committee. The DPPI conference originally began through the desire to move away from talking purely about…
Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken will be one of 15 international Jury Captains for the inaugural year of the Core77 Design Awards. The Core77 Design Awards which have just been launched is positioned as “a global design award aimed at recognizing and celebrating design excellence, enterprise…
Last week Experientia participated in Ecobuild 2011 (London, UK) to showcase its work in user-centred sustainable design for the built environment, and in particular its experience of Low2No, a major low-to-no carbon impact development in Helsinki Harbour, Finland. The Low2No project is run by Sitra,…
Understanding Society is a major £15.5 million research study designed to provide valuable new evidence about the people of the UK, their lives, experiences, behaviours and beliefs. Understanding Society follows 100,000 people in 40,000 households year by year and asks them questions about a wide…
Videos are now available for all seven Interaction11 keynote presentations. Interaction is a yearly conference organised by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). The 2011 conference took place on February 9-12 in Boulder, Colorado. – Bill Verplank (opening keynote) [1:02:38] – Brenda Laurel [47:45] – Bruce…
Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken will be giving a talk tomorrow at 6 pm, as a part of the Digital Anthropology MSc course at University College London (UCL). The “Anthropology in the Professional World†section of the course features talks from well-known practitioners in the field.…
A few weeks ago, I went to the LIFT conference in Geneva, Switzerland. It took me a some time to write up all my (personal) thoughts on the presentations, but now the writing is done and the result is online on Core77. Thank you Laurent,…
Two articles in UX Magazine describe upcoming UX revolutions: data and the user interface. The UX of data By Scott Jenson / February 17th 2011 Data storage in the cloud enables user experiences that would be impossible with only local storage, and creates a new…
Experientia will be taking part at Ecobuild 2011, March 1-3, in London, UK. Ecobuild is the world’s largest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment, and with more than 600 speakers, 1300 exhibitors, one of the most influential conferences in the sector. Experientia,…
Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction A book in progress by Nathan Shedroff & Chris Noessel Publisher: Rosenfeld Media Anticipated publication date: 2012 Science fiction has remained a pastime for designers, instead of a valuable source of insight and learning until now.…
The World Economic Forum just came out with a report, “Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class,” that surely is going to raise some controversy, as it explores what it means to commercialise personal data and make good money doing so. Personal Data:…
Last year I wrote about the book “Innovating with people – The business of Inclusive Design†by the Norwegian Design Council. It provides an introduction as to how Inclusive Design can be used as a strategy for better business and as an opportunity for profitable…
Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell MIT Press, April 2011, 264 pages ISBN 978-0-262-01555-4 264 pages Amazon page | MIT Press page Ubiquitous computing (or “ubicomp”) is the label for a “third wave” of computing technologies.…
The upcoming documentary Programma 101 – Memory of the Future by Alessandro Bernard and Paolo Ceretto, celebrates Olivetti’s invention of the first personal desktop computer, back in 1965, and the wide implications it has had since. Video reflections by Bruce Sterling, Massimo Banzi (of the…
Female Interaction is a 2.5 year, DKK 4.7 mio (630,000 euro / 850,000 usd) multidisciplinary research project focusing on female interaction design for advanced electronic products, in particular on how to make these products attractive and convenient to use for females – and for the…
Experientia will present its expertise in service design next week, at a conference specially dedicated to raising the profile of service design as a discipline. In an example of the vital role that services play in our economies, this year the prestigious Design Index prize…
New research suggests the traditional division of labor between innovators and customers is breaking down as more individual consumers invent and improve products on their own. Patricia Cohen reports in The New York Times: “Tinkering is challenging a deeply entrenched tenet of economic theory: that…
A team of international and Finnish designers, including Experientia, announced the current status and latest developments of the Low2No project today, at a sustainable urban development conference organised by Sitra, the Finnish innovation fund. In particular, the block’s innovative retail strategy and new district heating…
A consortium made up of Arup, EFFEKT, Experientia, and consultants from NCC Management Group, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (KA), Conceptura, and Ars Electronica Linz GmbH (AEC),* has been announced as one of four finalists in the FredericiaC competition, to design a new…