Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Herkko Hietanen of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology tells his audience at the Berkman Center that “television is really broken,†reports Ethan Zuckerman. The medium isn’t rising to its full potential, isn’t providing consumers with programs when and where they want them. To set…
Katrin Verclas of MobileActive is launching a new series on “deconstructing mobiles for development”. Mobile tech as a tool for social development is making the front pages in 2009. They are hyped as panathea for global issues such as rural health in developing countries, poverty…
The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design is on a roll. After an intensive workshop with Intel (featured in Worldchanging), now they embarked on an exploration with Nokia (featured in Fast Company). And obviously all online. Excellent work and excellent communications. Enjoy. 1. Mobile Playfulness Video…
Femme Den is a small internal cadre of designers of Smart Design — the company that was responsible for the OXO Good Grips kitchen tools and the Flip Mini Digital Camcorder — that is devoted to thinking about the differences between genders and what that…
Matt Jones, design director at Berg in London, has published a piece in Future Metro which Bruce Sterling “would like to call ‘the greatest design-fiction writing I’ve ever seen,” but (a) it’s not about design, (b) it’s not fictional and (c) it’s not even writing.”…
The world’s biggest chip maker predicts that by 2015 there will be 12 billion devices capable of connecting to 500 billion hours of TV and video content. The audience heard from a number of speakers on what promises to be a new kind of TV…
In his Wall Street Journal De Gustibus column, Eric Felten describes Total Recall, a Microsoft project that will archive every detail of our daily lives. “A certain kind of techno-triumphalist may find this idea appealing, but I suspect that most of us will be slightly…
Changing Behaviour is a project that aims to support change in energy use and energy services. They do so by applying social research on technological change to practical use. Their focus is on the interaction between energy experts and energy users: How can these different…
The Nordic Innovation Centre just published a report on the role of user-driven innovation in the growing Nordic sports equipment industry. Not only on how users help firms develop better technical products but also on how taking users seriously helps firms build and commercialise better…
The Mercury News reports on how Yahoo believes it can build its search audience by focusing on the user “experience,” rather than viewing search as a raw data query. “‘What’s notable about many of the stable of researchers at Yahoo backing that effort is that…
Experientia, the Turin-based user experience design company, has created a new and innovative international website for the Max Mara brand. It’s online. www.maxmara.com is the address of the new Max Mara website, historical Made in Italy fashion brand, based in Reggio Emilia, and with over…
Nicolas Nova reports on the “networked objects†session at Lift Asia 09. Speakers were Rafi Haladjian (in transition from Violet to his new company called sen.se), Adrian David Cheok (from the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore and Keio University) and Hojun Song. Read full story
The New Scientist reviews the current state of Augmented Reality and is a bit concerned: “While some who back the technology think its time has now come, after more than a decade in development, others warn that undercooked applications or “apps” are set to…
Too many emails, texts and tweets can lead to rising anxiety, lower intelligence – and a generation of BlackBerry orphans. Paul Hemp reports in The Guardian. “With the information floodgates open, content rushes at us in countless formats: text messages and tweets on our mobile…
Canada’s International Development Research Center and Harvard’s Berkman Center convened a conversation at Harvard yesterday on the future of information and communication technology and development (ICT4D). Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and Michael Spence joined Information and Communication Technology (ICT) experts Yochai Benkler and Clotilde Fonseca…
O2 is launching a new mobile phone network which it has dubbed as the first “people powered†service in the sector, reports mad.co.uk. “The online SIM-only offer called giffgaff will aim to capitalise on the trend towards online content creation. The company says the more…
Tomorrow I will be speaking at an informal, but high energy Paris conference, called (somewhat predictably) Paris 2.0. The conference takes a total of four days, and is attended by a young, edgy French crowd. I am unfortunately only here for an afternoon and a…
Luke Wroblewski, an internationally recognized Web thought leader and Senior Director of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc., provides a comprehensive overview of augmentation as a user interface, complete with real-world examples. “Though many computer applications and operating systems make use of real-world metaphors…
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 interview with Donald Norman: “Long live the body, the physical world, reality. The world of computers led to an unfortunate…
Louis Rosenfeld alerted me to two new Ning-based community sites that Rosenfeld Media authors recently started: Design for Care compiles methods, results, case studies, and research from many healthcare contexts to help designers understand and improve healthcare products and services. If you’re interested in…
Fast Company profiles David Butler, the man who is “responsible for how they think and what they do with design at The Coca-Cola Company.” “Butler oversees a team of 50 designers within Coke and works with some 300 agencies worldwide. In a company as colossal…
Sarah Perez criticises on ReadWriteWeb the common view on crowdsourcing: “Recent research by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Vassilis Kostakos pokes a big hole in the prevailing wisdom that the “wisdom of crowds” is a trustworthy force on today’s web. His research focused on studying…
Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS, wrote a guest piece for BBC News. His main claim: “If you want to see how east Africa may respond to the arrival of high-speed internet links, look no further than the mobile phone market.” “If there’s one thing I’ve…
Vinay Venkatraman, an interaction designer, is one of a rapidly expanding group of scholars and professionals around the world working to define the way our stuff behaves, writes Julia Levitt on Worldchanging. “Venkatraman is a partner at Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (CIID), an institution…
The World Bank is embarking on a new study investigating issues related to the use of mobile phones in education in developing countries. “The study is intended to help to raise awareness among key decision makers in the public, private and civil society sectors…
Michael Sanserino reports in the Wall Street Journal on the latest applications of insights in behavioural economics: “More businesses are using behavioral economics to appeal to customers, seeking to capitalize on the notion that people don’t always act in their economic self-interest. Behavioral economics is…
“Involving users in the innovation process seems to be increasingly recognised as an important challenge not only for enterprises, but also for innovation support providers,” reports the website of Pro Inno Europe, an innovation policy initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry.…
An article published by the European Commission’s Enterprise & Industry department: “Design management is a key driver of innovation and competitiveness and the EU-backed ADMIRE (Design Management Europe, DME) project is raising awareness of this important area and awarding organisations which use design management successfully.…
One of the projects of AppLab, the application laboratory of the Grameen Foundation, is focused on mobile technology for community health (MoTeCH) in Ghana: “Grameen Foundation has launched an initiative to determine how best to use mobile phones to increase the quantity and quality of…
This week the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation hosted Transform, a collaborative symposium on innovations in health care experience and delivery. The symposium, which featured over twenty presenters, was structured in six sessions — Redefining Roles, Policy Perspectives, Enabling Technologies, Alternative Models and How We…
Archana Rai of LiveMint.com, the online edition of Mint, an Indian partner publication of the Wall Street Journal, has interviewed Elizabeth Churchill of Yahoo! Research. In the interview, Churchill explains how in her present position as principal research scientist at Yahoo Inc., she aims to…
This happened is a series of London-based events focusing on the stories behind interaction design. “Having ideas is easier than making them happen. We delve into projects that exist today, how their concepts and production process can help inform future work. Interaction design companies are…
Cennydd Bowles, a user experience designer for Clearleft, discusses how people form mental models of urban environments, and how technology can augment and even replace our wayfinding skills. The article was published on Johnny Holland and is an extract from his upcoming talk at EuroIA…
On July 27, 2009, National Public Radio (NPR) relaunched the website www.npr.org through the efforts of its in-house design team and interactive agency Schematic. Senior interaction designer Neylan describes the massive task in a case study written for AIGA. “NPR embarked on a major redesign…
In a two-part podcast Genevieve Bell, Intel Fellow and Director of the User Experience Group, discusses the intersection of technology and society, with a special focus on the social media explosion and worldwide technology adoption. Listen to podcast: part 1 – part 2
The Wall Street Journal looks at the rise of alternative currencies: “The weak dollar. A Federal Reserve constantly being second-guessed. It’s times like these when talk inevitably turns to alternative or complementary currencies. While local currencies have come and gone, many involved in social networks…
Frank Spillers, a usability consultant, looks at the hot topic of Augmented Reality from a user experience point of view, shows some examples, and highlights the drawbacks and benefits. Read full story
In emerging markets, agents are the customer-facing element for mobile banking providers, “who rely on them to open accounts, do customer care, and (crucially) stock adequate amounts of cash and e-float to enable clients to deposit and withdrawal. Yet, there is no consensus on how…
Gartner says the bridge to the future with social networks will be with roles with origins in the social sciences, reports eWeek. Better understanding of the Web will require skill sets more closely aligned with sociology, psychology and other behavioral-centric sciences. “In a recent…
Jamais Cascio argues on Fast Company that, as our various electronic devices gain more and more sensory awareness, we open up the potential for entirely new forms of interaction. “The real shift comes when we move away from direct interaction and input, towards a world…