Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
In this three-part video series, originally posted on Adobe’s Inspire site (a publication from the Adobe Experience Design Team), watch highlights from the Adobe-sponsored roundtable discussion, moderated by former XD Director, Josh Ulm, and featuring leaders of the software industry, design profession, and sustainability movement.…
The Futures of Learning blog, which is associated with a MacArthur Foundation project, just completed an extensive literature review, conducted as part of the project, Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age. The work discussed in this literature review seeks…
The age of globalization is over. The coming 30 years will be shaped by the logic of scarcity, resulting in a turn away from global trade and the creation of self-reliant geopolitical zones. Wolfram Eilenberger argues on Spiegel Online that Europe is prepared for these…
According to an Elsevier press release, the ew article prototype introduces non-linear structure, enhanced graphical navigation, and integrated multimedia. “Elsevier, the leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announces the ‘Article of the Future’ project, an ongoing collaboration with the…
In this article Jessica Ching, Laura Henneberry and Shally Lee share the findings of a collaborative project between the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and Canadian network operator TELUS. “Touch is a vital human need and a deeply emotional form of communication. When…
While most people see mobile as the answer to so many problems, research from Nielsen Norman Group sees it as another problem on the list. “The key finding showed that users are 35 percent less successful completing Web site tasks via their mobile phones than…
The urge to describe experiences by telling a story runs throughout human history. From pictograms to hieroglyphs to the songs of the wandering bard, argues Ben Fullerton, we have developed many different ways of using storytelling devices such as allegory and the arc of a…
Ross Mayfield (blog), a leading social software entrepreneur and founder of Socialtext, talks on Nokia’s IdeasProject site about a major transformation in the way organizations assimilate ideas. Whereas in the past companies were protective and less inclined to track outside feedback, the rapid growth of…
On 21 July 2009, Experientia turns four years old. From four friends and business partners to an office of over twenty staff and collaborators, Experientia has grown quickly. It’s a far cry from the early days of meeting in partners’ homes, but it has been…
The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada looks at the future of libraries: Long the subject of warnings that the Internet would spell their demise, public libraries are booming through new branches, more resources and more computers. And in addition to their regular schedule of…
According to the New York Times, evidence suggests that crowdsourcing succeeds when it’s designed for specific tasks — and when the incentives attract the most effective collaborators. “A look at recent cases and new research suggests that open-innovation models succeed only when carefully designed for…
Technological tools are not made for people who speak more than one language, and there are many of us: immigrants, travellers, polyglots, emerging market facilitators, people from smaller language communities … In fact, people who are not Anglo-Saxon frequently use more than one language. But…
Human-Computer Interaction: Development Process (Series: Human Factors and Ergonomics) by Andrew Sears and Julie A. Jacko (Editors) CRC Press, March 2, 2009 Hardcover, 356 pages Amazon – Google Books Preview Hailed on first publication as a compendium of foundational principles and cutting-edge research, The Human-Computer…
Tyler Cowen (Wikipedia), a professor of economics at George Mason University, has written a thought-provoking piece for Fast Company, that is many ways highly complementary to our own KashKlash discussion on the future of value exchange. “Online, you can literally create your own economy. By…
Design ethnography: strategy for visual communications Leslie MacNeil Weber 2009 Graduate Thesis University of Washington Ethnography, a field of anthropological study and a research technique, helps visual communication designers create materials that evoke meaning and inspire action in their audiences. Ethnography enables a designer’s understanding…
The Financial Times analyses the implications of a connected planet in this series of roundtable discussions. Connected Lives: the debate – Part 1 Three experts (Suranga Chandratillake, CEO of Blinkx; Niall Murphy, co-founder of The Cloud; and Ade McCormack of Auridian) discuss what it means…
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang of The Institute for the Future has been working recently on a think-piece on what futures would look like if it started now: “If instead of starting during the Cold War, in the middle of enthusiasm for social engineering, computer programming, and…
The [UK] Government’s drive to reform public services by giving more power back to the citizen was accelerated yesterday, with the publication of a new study of innovative public services from around the world. Drawing on more than 30 of the best examples from around…
Social media expert and social interaction theorist Adrian Chan describes on Johnny Holland on what he means with ‘social interaction design’ and on the role of frames of meaning, frames of experience, and frames as a concept for a user-centric description of social interactions. A…
80% of the transactions of the UK Government are done with the bottom 25% of society and migrating services online offers great cost savings. Yet, 17 million Britons have never been online and many of those are poor. Now the UK has a ‘Digital Champion’…
In a country where people don’t have electricity, much less Internet access, the Grameen Foundation partners with Google to relay information through mobile phones. Dara Kerr reports from on the ground for CNet: “The research for this project began a year and a half ago…
The digitally deprived have rights too, says BBC News columnist Bill Thompson, who is quite upset about a new French law: “If it is unacceptable to cut people off from the network because their actions are commercially damaging to the record companies, why is it…
Olga Morawczynski, a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh and has spent more than a year investigating customer adoption and usage in both urban and rural Kenya, and has been sharing some of her insights on the CGAP blog. This time she talks about…
danah boyd, a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, got incensed at an Italian conference and bites back: “I’m 31 years old. I’ve been online since I was a teen. I’ve grown…
In a BoingBoing guest blog, Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, discusses the personal transformations everyone goes through as they age, and how in the new age of connectivity, these former selves sometimes come back to haunt us. “How will personal…
In an exploration into how games can add value to the innovation process, Philips Design has created ‘Spark’, a board game that stimulates creativity and innovative thinking. To play Spark, the players move counters representing different characters around the board, with each space along the…
A promotional video earlier today, and now a patent application — too much of a coincidence: “We know that Nokia is looking into more areas than just buttons and touchscreens for phone controls, and a recently revealed patent has shed light on an option the…
The Nokia Conversations blog reports: Designing gestures to help you interact with your device in intuitive ways is a challenge that Nokia is grabbing with both hands and welcoming with a respectful bow. Younghee Jung is one of Nokia’s explorative designers, and she’s keenly leading…
In a short video interview on Nokia’s IdeasProject Craigslist founder and customer service expert Craig Newmark says Internet connectivity is adjusting the balance between centralized expertize and the power derived from online consumer reviews, networking and other forms of user feedback, lending weight to our…
The MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory has just published a recent project about location-based media, focusing on how the future of mobile contents are related to the physical environment. The project, Locast, was made in collaboration with RAI New Media in Italy. Locast is an innovative…
Mobile Communication by Rich Ling and Jonathan Donner Polity, 2009 200 pages With staggering swiftness, the mobile phone has become a fixture of daily life in almost every society on earth. In 2007, the world had over 3 billion mobile subscriptions. Prosperous nations boast of…
In a long essay on Technology Review, Simson Garfinkel reflects on what protecting an inalienable right might mean in the age of Facebook. “Privacy matters. Data privacy protects us from electronic crimes of opportunity–identity theft, stalking, even little crimes like spam. Privacy gives us the…
The spread of Internet rankings and reviews is freeing consumers to focus on the decisions that matter, writes Kevin Maney in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly. “The more technology can help with decisions, the better life will be. Guided by ratings and personalized…
Culminatum Ltd – Helsinki Region Centre of Expertise has published a great online tool, entitled Introduction to service design. “The purpose of this digital communications tool is to establish a common ground and a starting point for discussion on service design. By publishing this tool…
The Wall Street Journal and India Knowledge@Wharton present a unique mix of reporting, analysis, interviews and video on life and business in rural India. The Rural India reader resource combines specially-commissioned material with recent articles. A selection of articles relevant to the topics of this…
Wired UK reports on a new foresight project by Ericsson: Ericsson, the company that, with Sony, gave birth to Sony Ericsson in 2001, has unveiled its Life in 2020 project, which involved 450 experts from inside and outside the company coming together to predict how…
Last week Google announced a suite of SMS services in Uganda. In a follow-up post on the main google blog, the company explains that it is the result of more than a year of true user-centred research and design. “We knew we wanted to build…
The [British] government’s new public services reforms focus on rights and entitlements, but, argues Charles Leadbeater in this piece for The Guardian, supportive relationships are key to tackling social ills. “Radical public services innovation will only come from a markedly different starting point. The key…
Umair Haque has a message for the G8: “Dear Old People Who Run the World, My generation would like to break up with you. Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it.…
Social by Social – a practical guide to using new technologies to deliver social impact by Andy Gibson, Nigel Courtney, Amy Sample Ward, David Wilcox and Professor Clive Holtham 2009 ISBN 978-1-906496-41-8 “New technologies are changing the way we engage communities, run companies, deliver public…