Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Ten years ago we thought wireless was another word for radio, Peter Mandelson’s career was over – and only birds tweeted. So what will life be like a decade from now? The Independent newspaper provides a glimpse. 2020 vision: Our team of futurologists peers into…
The New York Times reports on “natural” gestural interfaces in an article entitled “Giving Electronic Commands With Body Language”: “In the coming months, the likes of Microsoft, Hitachi and major PC makers will begin selling devices that will allow people to flip channels on the…
Using medical devices and notebook computers, Danish patients can see doctors without leaving home, and have the information automatically logged into electronic records. The New York Times reports. “Several studies, including one to be published later this month by the Commonwealth Fund, conclude that the…
Katrin Verclas of MobileActive.org has published a whitepaper entitled “Scaling Mobile Services for Development: What Will It Take?”. The paper, originially commissioned for the World Economic Forum, discusses the opportunities and critical success factors for scaling m-services – services and products for development delivered over…
Yahoo Labs is beefing up its ranks of social scientists, adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. “In the last year, Yahoo Labs has bolstered its ranks of social scientists, adding highly credentialed…
Microsoft’s Joe Fletcher contributed an intriguing article on software UX in India and China on the ever more interesting Johnny Holland site: “Over roughly the last 10 years, China and India have given way to a huge rise in technology outsourcing. Jobs are outsourced from…
In a two-part series, Korea’s JoongAng Daily newspaper looks at the rise of service design and the notion that modern product designers need to look well beyond the physical form of their projects. For years, the design field focused primarily on developing products that were…
In his new book, “You Are Not A Gadget,” online pioneer Jaron Lanier explains how the Internet has gone off course. In this Wall Street Journal, he summarises the key ideas and it turns out to be a full-blown rant against “digital collectivism”, free software…
A range of other researchers have also published papers on the topic of design for sustainable behaviour. Twenty papers were presented at the CHI 2009 Workshop, “Defining the Role of HCI in the Challenges of Sustainability,” organised by Elaine M. Huang of Motorola Research. Here…
Dan Lockton, a Ph.D. researcher at Brunel University (UK), has together with professors David Harrison and Neville Stanton, recently published a range of papers on the topic of design for sustainable behaviour (the list also contains one blog post): Design for Sustainable Behaviour: investigating design…
A few posts have emerged recently that recapitulate the well-worn arguments of attention scarcity and information overload in the real-time social web, so Stowe Boyd wrote a “short and sweet counter argument from a cognitive science/anthropology angle”. “The framing of the argument includes the unspoken…
Publishing Perspectives reports on a recent panel discussion on the African publishing industry at this year’s African Literature Week (16 – 21 November) in Oslo, Norway. [Muhtar] Bakare launched Kachifo [an independent literary publishing house in Lagos, Nigeria] in 2004, after a successful career in…
Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics provides an evaluation of “the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change.” Here are the scores: 7.3 – Nokia — Remains in first place…
A new pilot programme from InterTradeIreland is aimed at assisting small and medium-sized firms, initially in the civil security sector, to innovate and meet identified but as yet unmet market needs, using ethnographic research and user-centred design approaches. The Irish Times reports. “The Innovation Connections…
The latest issue of Interfaces Magazine, a quarterly magazine published by Interaction, the specialist HCI group of the British Computer Society (BCS), contains a lengthy article on an emerging market research project Experientia conducted for Vodafone Global. Many, many thanks to Anxo Cereijo-Roibas of Vodafone,…
Two articles from today’s La Stampa newspaper (translation by Mark Vanderbeeken, Experientia): Bargains without money Luca Indemni – Fabrizio Vespa “Leave your wallet at home” – that could be the slogan of the Gifts Without Money (“Regali Senza Moneta”) initiative organised by the ManaMana’ association…
Rudy De Waele, co-founder of dotopen, invited a number of mobile experts — including Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Katrin Verclas, Willem Boijens, Fabien Girardin, Timo Arnal and Nicolas Nova — to write down their five most significant trends for the coming decade. Read full story
Since cellphones became widely used in Kenya five years ago, they’ve become the bank card du jour. The Christian Science Monitor reports. “[In Kenya] with a mobile phone, one can pay electricity and water bills, pay for goods at the supermarket, buy airline or bus…
The Design & Society group within the UK’s Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has published a pamphlet by Scott Burnham, entitled “Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking”. In this pamphlet, writer Scott Burnham traces the phenomenon…
The ubiquity of mobile phones and the growth of the internet will converge in the next decade. Luke Allnutt of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty thinks this is good news for the developing world. “While the defining technological shifts of the 2000s were the ubiquity of…
At MIT teams of the Media Lab’s Next Billion Network – our next generation of tech movers and shakers – are exploring new ways to harness the increasingly ubiquitous cellphone to help people in developing nations to raise their incomes, learn to read, get where…
Harald Lamberts, Head of User Experience for Internet Services & Handsets at the Vodafone Group, wrote a thoughtful viewpoint article on DMI on the issue of relevance in design, in an era of technology overkill. “With new social-networking communities popping up continuously, 100,000 apps in…
The Trill Centre is a project by Intel, Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA), and academic partners including Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and the National University of Ireland Galway, focused on technology research for independent living (TRIL). In essence, the centre coordinates research projects…
The January-February edition of Interactions Magazine — exploring the evolving nature of experiences, people and technology — is online and some articles are available without subscription. interactions: information, physicality, co-ownership, and culture Richard Anderson, Jon Kolko From tangible computing, to societal problem solving, to the…
Two years ago, ethnographer danah boyd had the blogosphere abuzz with her look at class-based divisions between teens on MySpace and Facebook, writes Dana Oshiro on ReadWriteWeb. The esteemed Microsoft researcher found that Facebook’s collegiate origins encouraged a group of slightly more educated mainstream community…
How you use your mobile phone has long reflected where you live. But the spirit of the machines may be wiping away cultural differences, claims The Economist. The article, that quotes design researchers Mizuko Ito and Younghee Jung, describes at length the cultural differences in…
Jay Parkinson, MD, MPH, is a doctor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who uses his experience in both clinical and preventive medicine to design consumer experiences and business opportunities that create health. He was trained at Johns Hopkins in preventive medicine and pediatrics. He realized just what…
That new phone or laptop may be giving you a warm glow, but beware a stealth attack on your happiness, warns Yair Amichai-Hamburger in The New Scientist. “Our lifestyles are increasingly driven by technology. Phones, computers and the internet pervade our days. There is a…
The BBC thinks that Augmented reality (AR) “is set to explode” this year. “Futurologist Ian Pearson predicts an explosion of such services next year. “I’m surprised we haven’t got there yet. But it makes a lot of sense if a friend is a street away…
A freelance writer reports for the New York Times on 3M Company’s customer innovation center at its headquarters. “As a company, 3M is at the forefront of a movement that appears to be gaining traction: customer innovation centers, typically located near company research facilities, that…
On December 31st 2009 we finished the process of moving our websites and our mail services to Italy. Since the beginning of our company, we had hosted our websites and mail with Aventure Host, a United Kingdom based webhosting company, that has provided us with…
User experience strategist Steve Baty interviewed Ezio Manzini, Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano and one of the keynote speakers at Interaction 10, about designing for social innovation and his work with the DESIS network. “Social innovation is a process of change where…
The Journal of Information Architecture, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, is now at its second issue — and all the content can be downloaded: Issue 1 (Spring 2009) Editorial: Shall We Dance? – by Dorte Madsen Connecting the Dots of User Experience – by Gianluca Brugnoli…
Nokia user researcher Jan Chipchase reflects on the issue of culture shock, a condition that can even affect professionals whose livelihood depends on being able to travel the globe and decode the nuances of what they experience. “I’ve seen first hand and have on occasion…
David Travis has written a fable that “follows a young man’s journey as he discovers the three secrets of user-centred design”. “Many years ago, I read a book by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson called The One Minute Manager. The book is an allegory about…
Thomas Petersen, co-founder and partner of Danish digital creative agency Hello, reflects on the experience and design implications of the exponential growth of information. “Constantly checking our feeds for new information, we seem to be hoping to discover something of interest, something that we can…
The banking industry is missing out on a huge opportunity to transform itself from a transactional model to an engagement model, writes social media strategist Jay Deragon on AlwaysOn. “Think about what lies within the system of banking: people and businesses. Now, do banks do…
Venessa Miemis, a Master’s degree candidate in Media Studies at the New School in New York City, contributed a user idea to Nokia’s Ideas Project website, anticipating a system whereby collaboration facilitated by social networks will supplant competition as the mode by which society is…
A new discussion paper by NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, argues that the key to reforming public services is to encourage users to design and deliver services in equal partnership with professionals. Co-production as a new way of thinking…
Bonnier R&D, the research unit of Bonnier, the publisher of Popular Science, invited the designers from BERG London on a corporate collaborative research project into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. “The concept aims to capture the essence of magazine reading, which…