Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Content strategy is becoming a hot topic (and one I am greatly interested in). Last year, Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic published the book Content Strategy. In her own words, it “offers a pretty straightforward approach to planning for content in your web initiatives.” “Content…
A few weeks ago the Communia conference University and Cyberspace took place here in Torino, Italy, with a focus on “reshaping knowledge institutions for the networked age”. Speakers included Massimo Banzi, Joy Ito, David Orban, Bruce Sterling, and many others. The international conference, which is…
“The internet has not become the great leveller that it was once thought it could be,” according to Harvard academic Ethan Zuckerman at the TED Global (Technology Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford. The BBC reports. He said that the web was now contrary to…
PARC, the legendary California-based research centre owned by the Xerox Corporation, is hosting a series of talks on ethnography in industry. The three talks that took place are already available online in video. More talks are scheduled tomorrow and next week. Feral Technologies: An ethnographic…
Philips Design has published a downloadable paper on how it uses qualitative research and design thinking to support development of solutions for the ever-changing healthcare landscape. “Our lifestyles are increasingly out of balance and we are placing our health at risk through unhealthy habits. We…
Experiments like ‘Please Rob Me’ indicate that what people reveal via location-sharing apps could potentially be harmful to them – and survey finds concerns among users. “More than half of people with geolocation-capable mobile devices worry about “loss of privacy” from using their location-sharing features,…
As smartphones increasingly penetrate the market, with nearly a quarter of mobile users owning one, data consumption is becoming more stratified: the heaviest users most frequently use their phones’ advanced features while many people hardly touch them, according to a Nielsen report. Read article
Devices could monitor people’s health and step in when needed to help them get better, experts say. “Within a decade or two, researchers at Silicon Valley companies and elsewhere predict, consumer gadgets will be functioning like hyper-attentive butlers, anticipating and fulfilling people’s needs without…
The smartest “tech” academic according to Fortune Magazine (“The smartest people in tech”) is Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher, Microsoft Research. “She is the reigning expert on how young people use the Internet, and she’s writing a book on the subject. Boyd’s research is the…
Big Think is an online think tank, founded in 2007, that presents video interviews with major intellectuals from a wide range of fields. Recent interviews that caught my attention are with Dan Ariely and Clay Shirky. Dan Ariely [39:14] Professor of Behavioral Economics, Duke University…
Adam Greenfield, Nokia’s head of design direction for service and user-interface design, is the author of this week’s Urban Omnibus feature. In the piece, he uses software design as a base to talk about the ways citizens call out trouble spots in the urban landscape…
Jon Kolko was one of the speakers yesterday at the Design Research Society conference in Montreal, Canada. His presentation addressed Sensemaking – the manner in which we make meaning during the design process, and arrive at insights and new design ideas. – Sensemaking and framing:…
Today I received the catalogue of the Habitar exhibition, organised by LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre, an exhibition centre for art, science, technology and advanced visual industries in Asturias, Spain, and curated by José Luis de Vicente with Fabien Girardin as conceptual advisor. “Utopian…
All presentations from The Web and Beyond (TWAB) can now be viewed online. TWAB is the bi-annual daylong conference organised by Chi Nederland and IOP-MMI for the user experience and interaction design community. Here are some we like: People as content [video | abstract +…
At the Intel Labs’ annual Research at Intel media event, Intel Corporation Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner announced (video) a new research division, called Interaction and Experience Research (IXR), that is focused on defining new user experiences and new computing platforms. The innovations coming out…
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy on Tuesday released results of a survey finding that energy use feedback tools are more important than smart meters in reducing consumers’ energy use. Analyzing 57 residential feedback programs since 1974, the ACEEE concluded that “smart meters†are…
Ever keen to expand the boundaries of their practices, design professionals have been moving in the direction of public policy for some years, writes Lucy Kimbell (blog). But what designers, or multi-disciplinary teams using “design†approaches, can also bring to such projects is a set…
The Spring 2010 issue of the Journal of Information Architecture is now available. In one of the articles “Beyond Findability“, Luigi Spagnolo, Davide Bolchini, Paolo Paolini and Nicoletta Di Blas introduce Search-Enhanced Information Architecture (SEE-IA), a coherent set of information architecture design strategies. This paper…
From cars to designer clothes to children’s toys, there’s a growing trend towards “transumerism†and “collaborative consumption,†which emphasize sharing, renting and experiencing over owning, writes Simon Smith in a blog post that was republished on Shareable. Is it just a fad? Or is this…
This fast approaching era of desktop manufacturing via advanced MakerBots and other 3D printers is in part why ThingM co-founder Mike Kuniavsky runs an annual conference called Sketching in Hardware. The event aims to “bring together a small group of people from technology, education, art…
The Grattan Institute, an Australian independent public policy think-tank, has published a new report, entitled “The Cities We Need“, that aims to set an agenda for thinking about the future of Australia’s cities. It asks how cities meet the individual needs of their residents, both…
“For all of the attention on social networking, there are few social media experiences that match the fun of hanging out together with friends in person,” writes Jon Goldman, CEO of the multiuser content-sharing platform Qlipso, on Mashable. “The old debate about what is more…
At the beginning of May, frog design partnered with the Lift conference in Geneva to conduct design research on the conference itself to understand what was working well and not so well about the conference. The organisers wanted to see if a design research approach…
The relationship between researchers and product designers can be a rocky one. Paul Golden looks at how market research can make sure it promotes creative thinking rather than obstructs it. “When handled properly, [the initial exploratory phase of the research process] allows planners and developers…
The current issue of Interactions Magazine is generally on subtlety and change, writes co-editor-in-chief Jon Kolko: “There are some strange changes under way in our world. We constantly hear the refrain of the massive chaos around us, yet the allure of such a large, looming…
For nearly three years, selected Putting People First posts — 837 to be precise — have also been published on the website of UXnet. Now that UXnet is being disbanded, the site will be archived and these posts will stay on the archive site. You…
COTEN, the collaborative online research project exploring service design for higher education in 2010, features some interesting lecture essays: Small change and re-thinking education (audio) by Nabeel Hamdi 17 May 2010 Our first Special Guest is Nabeel Hamdi who, in this interview with Andy Polaine,…
Two new articles in UX Magazine: Fusing content strategy with design by David Gillis Context maps and content flow diagrams are just two possible ways to integrate content strategy and UX design—which is really the goal. Content strategy needs to develop its own brand of…
The acclaimed Italian journalist Luca De Biase recently interviewed Marko Ahtisaari (blog – wikipedia), Senior Vice President, Design and User Experience of Nokia, for the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Here is what happened these last few weeks: A warning by Nokia on…
Humans around the world wear clothing and accessories to hide their bodies, to emphasise them, even to evoke magic. Indeed, personal ornaments appear to be among the first forms of symbolic communication. US psychologist Nancy Etcoff linked fashion to psychology in the sixth Premsela Lecture:…
Playreport is a global research project on children, families and play, initiated by IKEA. The company conducted 11,000 interviews in 25 countries, and spoke to 8,000 parents and 3,000 children aged 7-12. It is therefore, according to IKEA, the largest global research project ever conducted…
This month Chip Chick, the site that focuses on technology for women, was invited by Intel to its annual Upgrade Your Life Event where the company presented what it is working on. This feature article updates us on how Intel’s healthcare projects aim to transform…
In this post Adrian Chan “teases apart the objective and subjective dimensions of social media, to examine what’s behind the relational economy we now live in, and its particular mode of production.” “All commerce and much personal and social utility implied by use of social…
“The ability to explain complex academic theories in palatable layman’s’ terms is the mark of a good teacher—and Don Norman is certainly that,” writes Ken Grobe in his commentary accompanying the video of the interview. “He is, of course, much more than a professor. Often…
Three new articles have been published on the UX Matters site: Ethnography in UX by Nathanael Boehm, user experience and social interaction designer for the Australian Government, Canberra, Australia “In this article, I want to look at ways in which UX professionals can conduct research,…
Louis Rosenfeld, president of the Board of Directors of UXnet, announced last night that the user experience network is being disbanded: “On behalf of UXnet’s board of directors, I have a bit of difficult news to share: we are disbanding UXnet. UXnet simply is not…
The Domus Academy in Milan is launching a new Masters in Service Design. “Domus Academy’s distinctive approach is to consider the aesthetic of the experience along the parameters of quality and efficacy for a good service performance: such a dimension depends on sensitive and emotional…
In a resolution adopted Tuesday, the European Parliament officially endorsed the development of the Internet of Things, reports Read Write Web. This resolution frankly encourages the development of an Internet of Things in the European Union. It even calls on the European IoT Commission to…
Anand Giridharadas, columnist at the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, is at it again in his usual delightful way. This time he reflects on the nature of human motivation. “Call it, perhaps, the great showdown over the nature of human motivation. One…
Paul Dourish, a researcher frequently written about on this blog (check e.g. Monday’s mentioning of his paper on Postcolonial Computing), has posted a few more papers that are worth exploring: “Resistance is Futileâ€: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Paul Dourish,…