Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Fortune Magazine profiles Dr Genevieve Bell, an Australian-born anthropologist and ethnographer, and the Director of User Experience in Intel Corporation’s Digital Home Group. Part of Bell’s job is to help the company understand quirks of human behavior that could determine whether its strategies fly or…
Given the success of the pilot year, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) and the Danish Design School (DKDS) have decided to continue their collaboration in interaction design education. A year-long, graduate programme, led by former Interaction-Ivrea professor Simona Maschi, is scheduled to begin…
Adam Greenfield, Nokia’s head of design direction for service and user-interface design, is frequently featured on Putting People First as his thinking is close to our own interests. According to his Twitter feed, he is not entirely happy in Finland, but having lived up north…
The Financial Times has posted a very long analysis on Twitter as a social phenomenon: “In its deceptively simple way, Twitter has stumbled on a formula that a whole generation of recent web start-ups has been searching for: a way for people to connect with…
Bruce Sterling’s new science fiction novel The Caryatids is out and is collecting its first reviews. Here are the ones I found so far: Cory Doctorow – Boing Boing “Bruce Sterling’s The Caryatids, my pick for best book of 2009, a novel of clear-eyed hope…
Cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito has posted a rough transcript of her (quite long) keynote address at the 51st NFAIS Annual Conference. “If I were to pick one thing that is profoundly different, it is the fact that making and sharing media has become so fundamental…
A new video from Microsoft shows in an elegant, if utopian way, what it might look like if all of those gadgets came together several years hence. Ina Fried of CNet News wasn’t entirely impressed: “The hardest thing for me to imagine wasn’t that in…
With the help of a proprietary “ageing suit” that mimics the mobility and faculties of an elderly driver, interaction designers at Nissan Design Center were able to create a unique interior-concept prototype. “It is almost painful to watch Nissan designer Naoki Yamamoto get out of…
Bruce Sterling keynoted last week on “The Short but Glorious Life of Web 2.0 and What Comes Afterward” at Webstock in Wellington. No video is (yet) available, but American journalist Annalee Newitz was there and she reports: Sterling began his talk by poking fun at…
The Economist calls in primatologists to better understand the limits of Facebook: “Perhaps additional friends are not free. Primatologists call at least some of the things that happen on social networks “groomingâ€. In the wild, grooming is time-consuming and here computerisation certainly helps. But keeping…
IRealize Turin, Italy 9-10 June 2009 It’s still early days for this conference that presents itself as “two days aimed at identifying unsolved problems, suggesting possible (technological?) solutions and stimulating the creation of new disruptive start-ups”. The website needs some TLC and not much is…
Programmer Michael Nygard thinks that the quality about some software that inspires love in their users, is totally devoid in enterprise software. “The best you can ever say about enterprise software is when it doesn’t get in the way of the business. At it’s worst,…
Ken Anderson, a senior researcher and anthropologist at Intel, wrote a short article for the Harvard Business Review on the importance of corporate ethnography: “Corporate ethnography isn’t just for innovation anymore. It’s central to gaining a full understanding of your customers and the business itself.…
After coming home from the Mobile World Congress, Mark Pickens, a microfinance analyst with CGAP’s Technology Program, asks why, when he can load any software he want onto his PC, he can’t do the same with his phone. Better yet, why can’t poor people? “I’d…
Christian Lindholm, a partner and director at Fjord, argues that there are three layers in handhelds user experience: “The highest level I call Bling (this is because, it caters to the visual senses) it contains the visuals, colours, content density and partly motion. The next…
The Nokia Siemens Network website and its forum site “Unite” contain a wealth of valuable articles and background papers: A huge amount of articles and whitepapers on basic internet access for the ‘next billion’ customers (see also here). An entire section on enriching the customer…
In February 2008, the European Commission and an European industry working group (EPoSS) held a workshop on the Internet of Things, involving more than 80 experts from universities, research centres and private companies such as France Telecom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Philips Research, and Telenor. A report,…
Microsoft Research Principal Scientist Bill Buxton outlines some counter-propositions to the idea of achieving mastery and the dogged pursuit of excellence: Always be bad at something that you are passionate about. You can be everything in your life—just not all at once. When you get…
Innovating for and by users Edited by Jo Pierson, Enid Mante-Meijer, Eugène Loos and Bartolomeo Sapio A publication of COST – European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research Abstract What is the role of people in the development of digital media? What…
“Does UX still matter in tough economic times,” asks Temple University librarian Steven Bell on the blog “Designing Better Libraries”. “Promoting the user experience is still a good strategy – even in recessionary times. And for libraries that will be forced to trim book collections,…
Mandy Brown, creative director at W. W. Norton & Company, wrote a nice story on A List Apart about understanding the needs of readers in web design. Despite the ubiquity of reading on the web, readers remain a neglected audience. Much of our talk about…
The Center for Social Media of the American University in Washington has published a new whitepaper entitled: “Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics“. This white paper lays out an expanded vision for “public media 2.0†that places engaged publics at its core, showcasing innovative experiments…
“Cellphones have changed how we communicate with others, and now they are changing how we think about information,” argues John Markoff of the New York Times. “With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information.…
MIT Media Lab has set up a Center for Future Banking. I guess they have some work to do. “Researchers at the Center for Future Banking, in collaboration with Bank of America, will explore how emerging technologies and insights into human behavior can transform the…
Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals, was interviewed on allAfrica on how mobile devices could potentially revolutionize how development assistance works. “It doesn’t take more than a…
Yochai Benkler, who is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, was interviewed on Ideas Project, the Nokia site that explores “where technology and communications may be taking us”. Yochai Benchler has…
Rosenfeld Media, which is run by Lou Rosenfeld, publishes short, practical, and useful books and webinars on user experience design. Here are their forthcoming titles: Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable by Nathan Shedroff Design makes a tremendous impact on…
Touch is a research project, led by Timo Arnall, that investigates Near Field Communication (NFC), a technology that enables connections between mobile phones and physical things. The project aims to develop applications and services that enable people to interact with everyday objects and situations through…
Kazys Varnelis [CV | blog], the author of Networked Publics and the Director of the Network Architecture Lab at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, is writing a new book and posting drafts online. “My current research project—already well underway—is a…
Hugh Dubberly is a forum editor at Interactions Magazine, which means that he writes, co-writes or edits articles for the magazine. The website of his company, Dubberly Design Office, contains all of these excellently written and very thoughtful articles. Here is a short and personal…
Jeff Howard writes the blog Design for Service and is also the curator of the most comprehensive and well organised service design reference library on the internet. Over the past few days he has been discussing service designing, service design education and service design blogging…
Ajit Jaokar, founder of futuretext, just wrote a somewhat technical article on his blog where he discusses the basic ideas and significance of the Internet of Things, especially in the context of its integration with mobile phones. Still worth a read. Also for the links.…
The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects by Deyan Sudjic Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (June 1, 2009) Hardcover: 224 pages Description What is it that persuades us to camp outside Apple stores to be the first to buy an iPhone? Why…
Peter Merholz, founding partner and president of Adaptive Path, now writes the “Experience Matters” column for the revamped HarvardBusiness.org where he tries “to articulate the things that matter to us, to folks who know little to nothing of what we do, but without whom we…
Nick Marsh of Engine Service Design contemplates how user-centred design can help public services. How do we enable patients with chronic conditions to take care of themselves better? How do we include partners from other sectors such as charities or even families in our service…
Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels is currently in Ahmedabad, India, for a client project. But he found time for an informal talk at the highly acclaimed National Institute of Design, scheduled for Wednesday 11 February at 17:15. “Join us for the Baatein session with Jan-Christoph Zoels…
John Knight, user experience manager at Vodafone’s UE Design Development team was interviewed by Giles Colborne of cxpartners. “One of the things I’ve learned is that we often think too much about designing interfaces. If you design an interface, there is a tendency to put…
IdeasProject, an excellent Nokia site, interviewed behavioural economist, MIT Media Lab contributor and best-selling author Dan Ariely. He said that web technologies like remote cameras can enable individuals to bypass traditional financial systems and engage directly in transactions like mortgages and business loans. Assuming we…
MIT researchers argue that computers need to become as easy to use as those yellow sticky notes. Office workers are like electricity: When they want to get something done, they follow the path of least resistance. Which is why, say researchers at MIT, the Post-it…