Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Stefan Klocek, principal designer at Cooper, reflects on what it means to design for wonder and delight in the user experience: “Why is Google Maps on a mobile device so amazing and delightful? Why does Word Lens feel so mind-blowing? Why does a Prius feel…
Two new articles have been published on the UX Matters site: Why don’t usability problems get fixed? By Jim Ross Why don’t usability problems get fixed? If we point out obvious usability problems and provide reasonable solutions for them, why doesn’t someone fix them? In…
Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken will be heading to his home country of Belgium in March 2011, to chair the SEE conference on integrating design into regional and national policies. The SEE project has been running since 2008, and has involved a series of workshops with…
From deaf people who previously had little use for mobile phones to grandparents wanting to connect with their grandchildren, video calls are changing our lives. Skype is at the forefront of the revolution, but companies including Apple, Google and Microsoft are all cashing in. Der…
The same Robert Blinn who reviewed Jon Kolko’s new book (see previous post), also wrote a review on Core77 on the latest book by Donald Norman: Living with Complexity (also reviewed on Putting People First in December 2010). “While his book doesn’t exactly provide hard…
Robert Blinn reviewed Jon Kolko’s new book Exposing the Magic of Design (amazon) for Core77: “Kolko’s book is subtitled “A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis,” and this reviewer joked that it sounded like an undergraduate film or semiotics course. Kolko himself…
With so many ways to control our interfaces, from touch to voice, what’s the key to designing for them all? Rob Tannen gives his take on things: “Providing a choice in how to interact with product is not entirely new — for years computer users…
Wired UK has published an article by David Rowan, that was published last month in his tech column in the UK’s Condé Nast magazine, “Now that collaborative spirit is spreading to all sorts of other industries as ubiquitous internet connections bring us together in creative…
The people behind Interaction-Design.org introduced a new type of top-quality and free encyclopedia dealing with Interactive Design, Usability, and User Experience. It has taken the opposite approach of Wikipedia and crowd-sourcing: all entries are written by leading figures who either invented or contributed significantly to…
How does an entrepreneur successfully introduce innovation to a gastronomic tradition that is a cornerstone of French culture and identity? Stéphane Girard, who graduated from the prestigious Bordeaux Wine School in 2004, has launched a modern concept in wine degustation to make understanding viniculture more…
Two articles and one prototype provide diverging viewpoints on the near future of the user interface: Microsoft plans a natural interface future full of gestures, touchscreens and haptics An official Microsoft blog highlights MS’s plans about the future of how we’ll interact with computers. Apparently,…
When Experientia’s four partners decided to start a business back in 2005, one of the important discussions then was about the name. After brainstorming on the philosophy, concepts and strategies that would underlie the business, Experientia president Michele Visciola came up with “Experientia”, with inspiration…
2011 marks the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, and it is fitting that the celebrations are kicking off in Turin, which (in addition to being Experientia’s home base) was the first capital of the unified country. The nine months of exhibitions and events, under the…
Experientia and Accenture are looking at future project opportunities together, after signing a memorandum of understanding this month. The two companies have previously matched their skill sets on a project involving user research, prototyping and usability testing, with the client congratulating the team on the…
On Thursday 3 February, Experientia senior partner in charge of user experience design, Jan-Christoph Zoels, will speak at the TouchHouse. Smart living – Communicating surfaces workshop at the Aedes Network Campus Berlin (ANCB). The opportunity mapping workshop, part of the ANCB Metropolitan Technologies Programme, focuses…
Raquel Recuero (blog) is an associate professor at the Departments of Applied Linguistics and Social Communication in Universidade Católica de Pelotas (UCPel) in Brazil. Her research focuses on Internet social networks, virtual communities and computer mediated-communication in general, trying to understand the impact of the…
Jodie Moule, a psychologist and co-founder & director of Symplicit, an experience design consultancy based in Australia, describes on Johnny Holland what it takes to change someone’s behaviour. “Design has always facilitated change in behaviour, especially in the area of technology, but it seems lately…
Twitter and Facebook don’t connect people – they isolate them from reality, say a rising number of academics. Paul Harris reports in the Guardian: “The way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of…
Marko Ahtisaari, senior vp and head of design strategy at Nokia, was interviewed on the [Nokia] Ideas Project site. In the [short] interview, Ahtisaari states that true mobility means devices that users can operate and interact with on the go, at a glance and even…
Our lives have become bold technological experiments, but we need to think hard before letting the computers and robots take over, says Sherry Turkle, MIT professor of social studies of science and technology, in the New Scientist. “Where once artificial intelligence researchers proposed artefacts that…
The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) has become the premier international forum for bringing together academics, computer scientists, designers, policy makers, social scientists, marketers and other professionals interested in the ongoing development of the field of applied ethnographic research and practice. The call for…
Sherry Turkle, has been an ethnographer of our technological world for three decades, hosted all the while at one of its epicenters: MIT. A professor of the social studies of science and technology there, she also heads up its Initiative on Technology and Self. In…
Harald Felgner alerts us to a presentation by Amir Dotan of LAB49 where he shares his experiences working as a user experience architect in the financial services industry in London. The talk is structured in three parts: 1. The job of a UX professional in…
The BBC reports that the Distance Lab closed down. Distance Lab was a Scottish creative research initiative for digital media technology and design innovation, focused on addressing the many problems and opportunities found in rural and remote areas of the world. “A technology laboratory working…
Jeroen Van Geel of Johnny Holland interviewed Donald Norman about innovation, design research, and emotional design. Earlier this year you wrote that design research doesn’t innovate, technology does. This caused quite a discussion. What were the main counterexamples you got back? No, that’s not what…
Nielsen’s new whitepaper on Mobile Youth Around the World reveals that most young people with mobile phones chose their own device. In fact, across all the countries surveyed, only 16 percent of young people reported that their parents selected their mobile phone. Price was the…
When I was working at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, I met Massimo Banzi who embarked on an open source hardware initiative which eventually became the very successful Arduino project. Now, writes the Arduino blog, Rodrigo Calvo, Raúl DÃez Alaejos, Gustavo Valera, and the people at…
The Internet promises a kind of immortality. What if your last tweet is the one that defines you for all time? Rob Walker reflects in a long article for the New York Times Magazine. “It’s now taken for granted that the things we do online…
At the end of August Adaptive Path held its UX Week 2010 in San Francisco and uploaded videos of all the presentations a little after. I only noticed them now. Some personally selected highlights: Data informed, not data driven by Adam Mosseri, Facebook At Facebook,…
A somewhat older but no less relevant article by Bill Visnic on how automakers are diverging around the question of how to approach the onboard “infotainment” revolution. “For each OEM, the basic decision about infotainment is this: whether to “embed” most of the enabling hardware…
Om Malik, founder of GigaOM Network, argues in a much commented post that Google has a user experience problem: “As it looks at its future, Google needs to realize that it has a “user experience†problem and its simplicity — the elegant search box —…
A rich trove of articles in UX Magazine: The importance of designing an experience culture By Cynthia Thomas / December 20th 2010 The outward focus on developing good experiences for customers often overshadows the need to live that philosophy inside a company’s own walls. A…
Vodafone has launched its new futureagenda website that presents the results of a 12 month insight and foresight programme on the world in 2020. The project, which was presented last week in Istanbul, Turkey (and only got covered, it seems, by the Turkish press), also…
User Experience Management: Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams By Arnie Lund Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (Elsevier) May 2011 ISBN: 978-0-12-385496-4 The role of UX manager is of vital importance — it means leading a productive team, influencing businesses to adopt user-centered design, and delivering…
The European Commission unveiled an ambitious agenda to bring public services online across Europe so that it could “serve an economy which relies on the networks of the future.” By 2015, the Commission wants to have 50% of European Citizens using online public services and…
Steve Baty has published a short interview with Bill Verplank on Johnny Holland. Bill Verplank is – together with Bill Moggridge – at the origin of the term “interaction design” and one of the speakers at Interaction 11. I got to meet Bill many times…
Yeevon Ooi of Webcredible writes in a long article that designing interactive products for children shouldn’t be any different from any user-centred design process, but the methods for carrying out user research, the implementation of different design guidelines and evaluating the products need to cater…
Shareable reports on a new trend of people exchanging experiential gifts – classes, tickets or certificates for new, hands-on experiences. “The notion that experiences, rather than material possessions, increase happiness has grown over the past decade. After basic needs are met, material possessions no longer…
AIGA has uploaded the videos of the 2010 Gain conference. Erica Eden, senior industrial designer at Smart Design, and co-founder at Femme Den, was one of the speakers with her talk “Designing (for) Women: Bridging the Gap Between Assumptions and Realities“. Femme Den, said the…