Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
“Service design tools – communication methods supporting design processes” is an open collection of communication tools used in design processes that deal with complex systems. Compiled by Roberta Tassi for her thesis at the Politecnico di Milano, the 45 tools are displayed according to the…
Will smartphone connectivity become the new measure of civic engagement? Can the app replace the neighborhood association? “While some might feel that engaging communities through handheld devices may erode civic bonds, apps that connect citizens to civil servants and elected officials could play an important…
Today, market research is a $19 billion industry and focus groups are one of the most expensive types of market research. The question is, asks Ravi Sawhney, founder and CEO of RKS, in Fast Company, what role should design play in the process? “Long before…
The New York Times writes about the power of grassroots buzz, exemplified by public relations approaches in Silicon Valley. “Gone are the days when snaring attention for start-ups in the Valley meant mentions in print and on television, or even spotlights on technology Web sites…
Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels was one of the speakers at London’s Media Futures Conference last week, which was themed “beyond broadcast” and explored the future of media. Willem Boijens (Vodafone) and Jan-Christoph Zoels (Experientia) presented Lifestream, a research project that uses large data sets to…
David Simoes-Brown alerts us on UK’s Nesta Connect about an excellent new collaborative book about The Future of Innovation where hundred of authors give their views. Over 350 leading thinkers from business, government, consulting and academia from around the globe share their thoughts, experiences,…
Re-Public, an online journal focusing on innovative developments in contemporary political theory and practice, has just launched its latest special issue, entitled “Innovative Service Design for All“. Applicable culture: Towards future services for the city of Milan Walter Aprile, Henrik den Ouden Runshaug and Eyal…
Will Evans, principal, experience design for Twin Technologies, writes in a somewhat rambling post about the value of mood maps to document and map the emotional states of a user so that it can guide the creation and communication of personas to stakeholders while also…
Celine Perin, design researcher at frog design, describes on Use8 what digital diaries are, and why this a great methodology for interactive, international user research. “Our solution was to conduct a “digital diary study”: a novel hybrid technique that combined aspects of traditional methodologies into…
Stowe Boyd, an internationally recognised authority on social applications and their impact on business, media, and society, launched a new interview series examining the future of money. The series is sponsored in part by Neo.org, a non-profit he is working with. Because of Neo’s efforts…
Vicky Teinaki talked to Alex Wright, Director of User Experience at The New York Times, and author of Glut, a book on the history of information architecture from human evolution to the internet, about how a librarian gets into user experience, why the New York…
All videos of the Compostmodern conference (San Francisco, February 2009) are now online. Presented by the San Francisco chapter of AIGA and the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design (CFSD), this interdisciplinary conference explores the range of design thinking necessary to create a socially and ecologically…
A few months ago, we wrote with satisfaction how the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) got inspired by the theme of its first European regional conference (Turin, December 2008 – co-chaired by Experientia partner Michele Visciola), and chose for a major focus on design for its…
The July-August issue of Interactions magazine is out and more and more content is publicly available online (thank goodness): Editorial: Interactions: Time, Culture, and Behavior Jon Kolko Over the past 10 issues, interactions has, with a great deal of conscious repetition, investigated themes of global…
Two interesting articles on recent Steelcase research, and particularly on the challenge of how to best gather relevant insights from qualitative research: How to find insights from your research You did the interviews, got the photos, and compiled the reams of data. Now what? A…
Pattie Maes, an associate professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences, leads research in human-computer interfaces at MIT’s Media Lab. She recently spoke with MHT associate editor James M. Connolly about the lab and innovation. “There is a wealth of information available, and…
Matt Rhodes reflects on the role that users can play in generating news content, and the implications for us all. “I’ve spent the last ten days with no Internet and very little access to English-language news sources. On my return I turned to my three…
Today work is somewhere you travel to – in the future work will come to you. So says a report attempting to work out what the offices and workplaces of 2030 will be like, reports the BBC. The report, which is sponsored by Johnson Controls,…
Cory Doctorow reflects in his latest Guardian column — which is subtitled “Tales from the encrypt” — on how important it is to have a secure, long-term solution for decrypting our data if we croak. “What I found surprising all through this process was the…
In a short essay on Core77, Robert Fabricant is not afraid to tackle some big questions: “What role did Design play in contributing to our current global crisis? What role should/will Designers play in leading us out of this mess?” and “Do we need to…
The latest issue of Interfaces Magazine, a quarterly magazine published by Interaction, the specialist HCI group of the British Computer Society (BCS), is all devoted to education. It is available as a free download. Table of contents: • HCI 2009 by Alan Blackwell • Play…
Katrin Verclas of Mobile Active points out that the new Google/ MTN/ Grameen collaboration on mobile information services in Uganda is very expensive, and this is creating some problems: “This will, be definition, limit access of such services to the poorest individuals in the country…
Interactive Screen 0.9: The Makers (10 to 15 August 2009) is the 14th installment of the Banff New Media Institute’s acclaimed new media summit, where media makers from Canada and the world gather to reflect on the current state of new media and the shape…
Samuel Greengard writes in the latest issue of Communications of the ACM on how some experts believe that computer technology might be affecting people’s ability to think deeply. “We’re exposed to [greater amounts of] poor yet charismatic thinking, the fads of intellectual fashion, opinion, and…
Arup’s Drivers of Change initiative is an on-going research programme exploring those issues most likely to have a major impact upon society, on Arup’s business and on that of their clients. Following the success of drivers of change 2006 publication, Arup Foresight recently published an…
Navi Radjou writes on HarvardBusiness.org that he recently visited the Microsoft Research India lab in Bangalore, describes what he learned about their Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) unit, and draws some interesting wider conclusions. “What impressed me most about TEM is its staff members’ multidisciplinary…
Service design, while often talked about in academia, is getting more and more attention from design companies and service providers, as the impact of experience design has been proven to increase customer satisfaction and brand perception, argues Jennifer Bove in Creativity Online. In the article,…
Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter: Reflections on Research in and of Corporations Edited by Melissa Cefkin Berghahn Books, July 2009 262 pages Abstract Businesses and other organizations are increasingly hiring anthropologists and other ethnographically-oriented social scientists as employees, consultants, and advisors. The nature of such…
A few days into the brouhaha about Nokia-Siemens Networks equipment being used for surveillance in Iran, Nokia user researcher Jan Chipchase reflects on the controversy, and delves into the subject of privacy.
The Independent is publishing a collection of essays to launch NESTA’s ‘Reboot Britain’ programme. Reboot Britain will explore the role new technologies and online networks can play in driving economic growth and radically changing public services. The programme will begin with a one day event…
Charles Leadbeater explores what the advent of the web, collaborative practice and open source ways of working mean for the arts and art organisations in this excellent 20-page essay commissioned by Cornerhouse. “The 20 century avant garde was built on the principle: separate and shock.…
Malaysian newspaper The Star devotes plenty of space to user-centred design in three stories that feature the work of Genevieve Bell, Intel’s user experience director. “Marrying†anthropology and science “I still write and publish my work in academic journals. To me, what we do in…
In an article for Computerworld, Paul Lamb suggests that we are transitioning from online social media to an era of social mobile media or “SoMoâ€. “Social media is literally on the move. While useful for anonymous and asynchronous communications, computer-based social media is rapidly becoming…
In an article with a very stupid illustration, MobileCrunch reports on a short story that appeared in the German version of Technology Review, which states that Gesche Joost, head of the Design Research Lab of Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, says “making things small and pink is…
The first LIFT France conference took place last way in Marseilles. Being in Seoul, South Korea, myself, I missed it entirely, but luckily the videos are now becoming available. Welcome to Lift! Lift founder Laurent Haug and Lift France chair Daniel Kaplan will explain the…
Four must-read pieces on UX Matters: The social buzz: designing user experiences for social media By Junaid Asad, UX and human factors professional With the rise of social technologies, one-way design is no longer enough. The collective intellect of users, arising from the societies they…
Anne Galloway was one of the excellent presenters at the recent LIFT conference in Geneva. So it is with much pleasure to notice that she has written the latest contribution to Vodafone’s Receiver Magazine. In her critical contribution ‘The rise of the sensor citizen –…
Social business design is a new concept that could potentially become quite important for businesses and corporations: In “From Social Media To Social Business Design, David Armano explores what businesses would be like if they were truly social. “Imagine if a company like GM, was…
Now that the refrains of “Twitter Revolution” and “the first uprising powered by social media” are fading into the distant memory that is 24 hours ago, we can start debating, says Jonathan Salem Baskin, what impact, if any, it had (or is still having) on…
LinkedIn founder and CEO Reid Hoffman says in an interview on Nokia’s Ideas Project that the unprecedented accumulation of social network data provides fertile ground for the cultivation of products and applications that leverage and yield analytics from user identities and relationships. Watch video Related…