Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Mike Kuniavsky of ThingM was a speaker at XD Forum, Intuit’s internal user experience design conference, last week. His half-hour talk focused on the relationship between ubicomp devices and services. The talking points and slides can be downloaded from his blog, Orange Cone.
Technology has drawn us into our interconnected webs, in the office, on the street, on the park bench, to the point that we exist virtually everywhere except in the physical world, argues Adrian Higgins in the Washington Post, who writes about us being “digital zombies”…
The latest issue of Anthropology Matters contains an interesting article on the use of mobile phones in Africa: Being cool or being good: researching mobile phones in Mozambique Julie Soleil Archambault Drawing on my fieldwork experience in Inhambane, southern Mozambique, where I conducted research on…
Presentations are now available of last month’s Behavior, Energy & Climate Change Conference, which took place in Washington, DC. The BECC conference focused on understanding the behavior and decision making of individuals and organizations and using that knowledge to accelerate our transition to an energy-efficient…
Strand Consult suggests that iPhone users are suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome–the condition in which the kidnapped begin to show loyalty to their kidnappers. “Apple has launched a beautiful phone with a fantastic user interface that has had a number of technological shortcomings…
Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter Reflections on Research in and of Corporations Edited by Melissa Cefkin Berghahn Books (July 2009) Hardcover, 253 pages Businesses and other organizations are increasingly hiring anthropologists and other ethnographically-oriented social scientists as employees, consultants, and advisors. The nature of such…
Augmented Reality is overhyped and abused, writes Matthew Szymczyk in Advertising Age, and we’re in danger of killing off a rather useful technology. “As web-based augmented-reality applications have exploded, it’s more important than ever to remember AR is a technology based on utility and not…
The UK’s Technology Strategy Board is calling for individuals to take part in a five-day interactive workshop (‘sandpit’) to explore the challenge of reducing the demand for energy in non-domestic buildings, through human factors research and user-centred design. The focus of the sandpit is to…
Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft Research, is quite in the news these days, including a very nice profile in The Guardian: The Guardian – 9 December 2009 Danah Boyd: ‘People looked at me like I was an alien’ Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd…
Donald Norman ‘s recent essay Technology First, Needs Last, in which he argues that “design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs,” has started a big discussion. Steve Portigal started the…
Cennydd Bowles, a user experience designer at Clearleft in Brighton, England, writes about interaction design, behavioural change, and the design of emotions. “If interaction design really is the business of behaviour change I believe this must apply two ways. While it’s true that design can…
Meena Kadri reports on how lunch and laundry delivery in Mumbai – known as the Dabbawalla and Dhobi Ghat services – use sophisticated coding systems to track items within their service chain, in order to ensure accurate delivery. “The Dabbawalla service entails collection of freshly…
There is a group of people that believe the New Zealand health care system could be designed better than it currently is. That group consists of those who have actually used the New Zealand health care system. In fact, it seems redundant and tiresome to…
The 2009 Media Engagement Barometer commissioned by Motorola’s Home & Networks Mobility business has revealed a shift in [US] consumer influence that hasn’t been widely recognized yet: age no longer dictates a consumer’s willingness or ability to use media technology or services. In fact, all…
This contribution is by Camilla Masala, an Experientia collaborator, and is part of our background research for the Low2No project on creating an urban development with no CO2 impact through affecting behavioural change: The energy market liberalization has created new opportunities, also for average citizens,…
There is true dignity in the continuous engagement of Donald Norman, the Nestor of the user experience community, as well as courage is his willingness to question some of his (and our) profound beliefs. In short, Don — in defiance of his age (Don was…
Bill Buxton, Martin Raymond and Anna Kirah were some of the speakers at Imagine09, a conference organised by Microsoft Advertising on 28 October in London. Living in the age of turbulence Anna Kirah, partner, CPH Design (and former senior design anthropologist, Microsoft Corporation) Anna explores…
In a long article, the people in charge of the Intel Reader discuss the entire user-centred process of designing a new device for the blind or visually impaired which is aimed at making printed matter accessible to millions of people who find reading difficult or…
The austere public budgets that will come out of the financial crisis offer, as a silver lining, a renaissance in cooperative citizen engagement in the supply of welfare services, argues Victor Pestoff on Open Economy. “The concept of co-production brings together studies of third sector…
In this video of Make/Think, the recent AIGA Design Conference, Roger Martin, dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, makes the case that businesses can do a better job of innovating if they embrace design thinking. He examines…
Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft Research, and Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, were interviewed for Digital Revolution (working title), an open source documentary, due for transmission on BBC Two in 2010, that will take stock…
The latest issue of UPA’s UX Magazine is devoted to sustainable design, and one of the articles is by Experientia. In their contribution, Experientia collaborators Michele Visciola, Erin O’Loughlin and Irene Cassarino reflect on how smart tools can help reduce our CO2 impact, and illustrate…
If there is a future for designers and marketers in big business, it lies not in brand, nor in “UXâ€, nor in any colorful way of framing total control over a consumer, such as “brand equityâ€, “brand loyaltyâ€, the “end to end customer journeyâ€, or…
In a long article on Boxes and Arrows, Dakota Reese Brown suggests an alternative view of the mobile space based on principles rather than isolated tactics. “Prior to becoming a senior UX designer at Popular Front Interactive, I spent two years as a mobile UX…
The IDEA Conference took place in Toronto on September 15-16, with a focus on social experience design. Boxes and Arrows, in collaboration with the IA Institute, brings recordings of most conference talks. Day one – The impact of social models – Luke Wroblewski – Social…
Two articles in UX Magazine look at ways of improving the retail user experience online: Mind the gap Which types of brands have the greatest opportunity to improve UX? A video-based look at online–offline experience gaps. by Dave Maren Designing superior shopping experiences Online shopping…
Social media could transform the UK National Health Service and other public services in the same way that file-sharing changed the music industry, a conference has heard. “Growing use of tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, offered an opportunity to reinvent services, delegates heard. The…
Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone maker, faces increasing competition from the likes of Apple and Google Android. Identifying emerging trends and building new technologies could be key to cementing its future, reports Claudine Beaumont, technology editor of the Daily Telegraph. “Oskar Korkman, the man…
Nafid Imran Ahmed of the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star was just at “The Way We Live Next 3.0” event in Helsinki and reports on the company’s vision of the future: “Nokia, the world leader in mobility, gave me an opportunity to look into its…
Terry Winograd, the famous human-computer interaction specialist, was interviewed for Digital Revolution (working title), an open source documentary, due for transmission on BBC Two in 2010, that will take stock of 20 years of change brought about by the World Wide Web. Terry Winograd interview…
Nicola Morelli (blog), an associate professor at the School of Architecture and Design at Aalborg University in Denmark, reflects on the two inspirations for a service design discipline: “The contributions to the definition of a disciplinary corpus for service design come from two main directions:…
Mikkel Michelsen discusses the core differences between specialised use contexts and the mainstream use of a mass consumer product, and tries to answer the questions how to design the best possible systems when faced with special contexts, and how to ensure that interactive systems for…
Dozens of home energy monitors are coming to market, but nobody knows whether only hybrid Prius owners will use them. Martin LaMonica reports on CNet News. “The gadgets themselves vary, but the common thread among them is the ability to capture a stream of energy…
Some English language websites, blogs, articles and publications updating on what Denmark is doing on user-driven innovation: Is Denmark a lead user of user driven innovation? You might think so since the world’s first government sponsored user driven innovation program is to be found in…
What will solve climate change? Will it be technology? Policy? A growing number of researchers and activists say it’s what’s behind it all: people. And understanding them is vital to addressing climate change, argues Annie Jia of ClimateWire in The New York Times. “Participants at…
EU press release (link):EU ministers have committed to developing smarter online public services for citizens and businesses by 2015. The Commission has welcomed this step forward in making eGovernment more accessible, interactive and customised. At the fifth Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Malmö (Sweden) today, EU…
Dmitry Fadeyev, founder of the Usability Post blog, wrote an article for Smashing Magazine “to demonstrate the power of social interface design”. he standard approach to interface design is to craft a channel that allows you to easily and efficiently control hardware or software; it’s…
A number of articles illustrate the power of the mobile phone in emerging markets: What next after the Mobile revolution in Kenya? by John Karanja MPESA will be on its own a major driver of the economic expansion of the Kenyan economy and best of…
Lucy Kimbell, who is a Clark Fellow in Design Leadership at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford with a background in interaction design, has posted an extensive and quite critical report on the Service Design Network conference that took place in Madeira, Portugal in October.…
Prototyping A Practitioner’s Guide to Prototyping By Todd Zaki Warfel Rosenfeld Media, November 2009 Available in paperback and digital package (1-933820-21-7), digital (PDF) editions (ISBN 1-933820-22-5) Prototyping is a great way to communicate the intent of a design both clearly and effectively. Prototypes help you…