Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
LG Electronics (LG) launched two new handsets exclusively equipped with Islamic features. “Launching across the region this August, pan-Arab consumers will benefit from a number of special features, including a Qiblah indicator that uses an inbuilt longitude and latitude orientation or city references that, when…
Richard Fisher reflects in the New Scientist on how mobile applications are changing the way we live. “While gaming still accounts for the lion’s share of app activity, it is beyond doubt that apps, and the new wave of phones in which they reside, are…
Jonathan Gosier, a software developer, writer and social entrepreneur in Kampala, Uganda, shares his ideas on what augmented reality could mean for Africa. “Already people are recording audio, video, and blogging to keep donors abreast of their work in the field. Imagine making appointments for…
Don Hammonds of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on the use of market research and ethnographic observations by car manufacturers: “The tool that most people associate with automotive market research is the focus group but another tool has become more popular recently: ethnography. With this, market…
The User Experience Design blog reports that Jonathan Hassell of BBC online shared a presentation on the challenges and methodologies of the company’s Usability & Accessibility team. The short presentation describes the challenges, such as a wide range of platforms and audience types, as well…
Juliette LaMontagne argues on the Design Observer that mobile devices aren’t distractions in schools; they’re machines for learning. “When it comes to technology integration, you need to meet students (and teachers) where they are. When you begin with a tool they already know and love,…
CGAP has published a brief entitled “Poor People Using Mobile Financial Services: Observations on Customer Usage and Impact from M-PESA”. “Despite growing agreement on the potential of technology to expand access to finance, or branchless banking, there is surprisingly little data publicly available about low-income…
Paula Fortner, iHealthBeat senior staff writer, reports on how innovative mobile technologies are helping to fundamentally transform health care in many developing countries. “Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation announced a $100 million initiative to strengthen health systems in Africa and Asia by building capacity,…
Millions of Africans are using mobile phones to pay bills, move cash and buy basic everyday items. So why, asks the BBC, has a form of banking that has proved a dead duck in the West been such a hit across the continent? “However, the…
Michael Trucano explains on the World Bank’s EduTech blog why the World Bank will be kicking off a study next month looking at “The Use of Mobile Phones in Education in Developing Countries“. “This study is intended to help to raise awareness among key decisionmakers…
The new BBC Digital Revolution blog explores the way the web is changing our lives. Some recent posts: Tim Berners-Lee on the web and the developing world It’s the connection, the sharing, the two-way communication that seem to fuel Sir Tim’s views there. Sir Tim…
Cambridge Design Partnership and Instrata, a Cambridge-based user experience specialist, recently teamed up to approach mobile communications innovation from the experience of the consumer. More in particular, the team developed some ideas into new device and service concepts focussing on three key areas: the tactile…
The Wall Street Journal has published an excellent manifesto by John Freeman, the acting editor of Granta magazine, on the need for slow communication. “We will die, that much is certain; and everyone we have ever loved and cared about will die, too, sometimes—heartbreakingly—before us.…
Participle, the UK social design consultancy, is doing on-the-ground testing of a new model for universal youth services. According to Sarah Schulman, it’s “less of a service, and more of a wholesale approach for community & youth development,” which they call Loops. “Loops is designed…
The UK service design consultancy live|work is working with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) to design better community security services for humanitarian and development organisations. A news article on their site provides more background on this pioneering application of service design to…
Richard MacManus reports on ReadWriteWeb that Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle released a white paper entitled Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On, which focuses on the intersection of social web technologies with the emerging Internet of Things (real world objects connected to the Internet).…
Christian Crumlish, curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library and author of The Power of Many, describes the patterns that are relevant when adding a social dimension to an existing experience. “Designing and building a successful social website or application is no mean feat. Adding…
Gunnar Camner and Emil Sjöblom recently spent three months in Tanzania for their master’s thesis in Media Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, to investigate mobile banking services from a user perspective. In which contexts do alternative uses, e.g. savings,…
Johnathan Bonnell and Jason Theodor explain in a two part series on Experience Matters how technology is increasingly closing the gap between manufacturers and consumers. “The chasm between consumer feedback and product offerings has virtually been erased, and this convergence has created a new opportunity…
The Myth of Digital Democracy by Matthew Hindman Princeton University Press, 2008 Paperback, 198 pages Abstract: Is the Internet democratizing American politics? Do political Web sites and blogs mobilize inactive citizens and make the public sphere more inclusive? The Myth of Digital Democracy reveals that,…
Joe Lamantia, an Amsterdam based experience architect, discussed the role of emotion in game design. In his article, Lamantia draws heavily on the work by Nicole Lazzaro, a leading games researcher and design consultant. “Emotion is one of the most powerful elements of an experience,…
Technology pundit Mike Elgan says on Nokia’s IdeasProject that we’re evolving a new paradigm for the workplace as technology makes it easier for white collar workers to engage in location-independent employment. These “digital nomads” will be able to travel the world or go to locations…
Nokia’s MeraNokia (Majha Nokia in Marathi) is actually a Nokia Life Tools (NLT) application coded into the 2300 and 2323 handsets being used in the pilot. Farmers and villagers pay around Rs 2 per day, every 10 days, for the latest on crop pricing, weather,…
The MIT Sloan Management Review has published Donald Norman’s paper ‘Designing Waits That Work‘ (available for $6.50). It is based on a 2008 paper by Norman, entitled ‘The Psychology of Waiting Lines‘ (which is freely available), but sections have been added on “Variations of basic…
Scott Wilson interviewed Prof. Eric von Hippel of MIT’s Sloan School of Management for the Deloitte Review. “Open source technology and lead user innovation: two subjects very much in evidence across a diverse number of business sectors today. But how can they help companies grow,…
Fascinating and seemingly very realistic tale on the potential of Nokia (and other device manufacturers) to be able to react to the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, based on the time frame of their product development cycles. “When the iPhone was announced (January 2007),…
Can the Apple iPhone measure your happiness, asks Jenna Wortham on the New York Times Bits blog. “Matt Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University, thinks the phone might at least help researchers gather some data about it. Mr. Killingsworth, a former software…
In a truly excellent article, entitled “You can’t innovate like Apple”, Alain Breillatt also discusses Apple’s approach to user research. “While I’m sure Jobs says he doesn’t do research, it’s pretty clear that his team goes out to thoroughly study behaviors and interests of those…
John Clippinger, who directs the Law Lab at Harvard University, predicts, in this video on Nokia’s IdeasProject, a huge shift over the next one to two years in the way people manage their identities. He asserts that “user-centric identity, “the ability of individuals to carry…
“CS547. Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)” is a course of the Stanford HCI Group, coordinated by Terry Winograd, on topics related to human-computer interaction design. Below is a run-down of the 2008-2009 speakers (all videos are available online): September 26, 2008…
As the world moves to accommodate “everyone’s interest†could we be headed towards a global economy based on “free interestâ€, asks Jay Deragon on AlwaysOn. And what is the interest created by conversational currency? Social media is about depositing conversational currency for use and gaining…
An article in the New York Times Magazine brought me to an interesting article by behavioural economist Daniel Ariely, who has been featured previously on this blog: “Anybody who is honest about consumer behavior knows that often what we buy is not simply some thing…
With every high-tech gadget we buy, we give up a little more privacy. Many devices today are in constant communication with their manufacturer. And it’s not just consumers who are losing their rights — the technology gives authoritarian states whole new ways of keeping tabs…
The Design for All Institute India has published a special issue of its newsletter together with IDZ International Design Centre, Berlin. Guest Editor is Prof Birgit Weller. Design for All Institute Of India is a self financed, non-profit voluntary organization, located in Delhi, India, which…
Benedict Singleton is in the later stages of a practice-based PhD on service design at Northumbria University. In his research he uses “critical, self-directed design projects, alongside literary and ethnographic strategies, to rethink some basic assumptions about service design – which have proliferated so quickly…
(Article contributed by Experientia editor Erin O’Loughlin:) On the 23rd July 2009, Experientia celebrated its fourth anniversary in style, at the stunning Villa Tiboldi in the lush Piemontese wine country. There was a lot to celebrate, in four years of challenges, successes and growth. Starting…
Two articles by Richard MacManus on ReadWriteWeb caught my attention because they both deal with IBM and the Internet of Things. In a first article, MacManus describes how IBM is involved in some very interesting projects at the intersection of two big trends [he has]…
Anthropologist Stefana Broadbent says that modern communications aren’t expanding our circle of friends but are strengthening our most important relationships, reports Kevin Anderson on The Guardian’s PDA blog. “Modern communications are not expanding our social circle, but anthropologist Stefana Broadbent says that mobile phones, instant…
As part of a feature series on Facebook (see below), Newsweek explores how the digital world is changing the rules of modern courtship: “It wasn’t so long ago that the idea of a college romance playing out online—for better or for worse—would have been deemed…
Both the Guardian newspaper’s PDA blog and TED itself are posting regular updates from the current TEDGlobal conference in Oxford, UK. (TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, and it’s an exclusive conference that brings togethers thinkers and doers from around the world. The TEDGlobal…