Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
On Sept. 22, 2008, Microsoft Research New England conducted an inaugural symposium in Cambridge, Mass., hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to open an extensive collaboration with leading research institutions in the region. The symposium included introductions to Microsoft Research and its New England…
I enjoyed this funny little article by Jasper van Kuijk on extremely persuasive software: We humans were not designed to work behind a computer all day. In fact we were not designed to be in the office all day. We find it hard to concentrate,…
Frankly, I don’t think so. But it’s a thought that provokes someone’s thinking, apparently. “Is Adam Greenfield A Communist Or…?” is the provocative title of an article by Jeroen Elstgeest (interaction designer at Informaat) on InfoDesign, who reflects on Adam Greenfield‘s keynote at the coming…
Experientia’s senior partner Jan-Christoph Zoels is this week at the Picnic conference in Amsterdam and is sending regular updates. Here is his second one, covering the Thursday morning sessions: Group actions just got easier! – Clay Shirky jump-started the second day of PICNIC 08 with…
Experientia’s senior partner Jan-Christoph Zoels is this week at the Picnic conference in Amsterdam and is sending regular updates. Here is his first one: Create the Future – Collaborative creativity is the guiding theme of Picnic, Amsterdam’s Cross Media Conference, now in its third year…
The Financial Times argues that the ability of computers to read and understand our gestures is bound to move the mouse into retirement: At almost 30 years old, is the computer mouse ready for retirement? Certainly, a growing band of human-computer interaction (HCI) specialists believe…
Nokia Research Center published a technical report, entitled “Homebird – Task-based User Experience for Home Networks and Smart Spaces”. Contemporary wireless networks in people’s homes are already enabling consumer electronics devices to communicate with each other. Standards like Universal Plug and Play are being developed…
The New School has announced that Bruce Nussbaum, one of the leading thinkers and writers about the intersections of innovation and design, has been appointed Visiting Professor of Innovation and Design. He will work broadly across The New School, with a faculty “home base” in…
The Restaurant of the Future at the University of Wageningen investigates the influences on eating behaviour and carries out studies for the food industry. Ceiling cameras record not only what food you selected, but what you almost selected and how long you paused before deciding.…
Joe Lamantia, a New York-based user experience and information architecture consultant, has a very good blog which now also contains a worthwhile article on the emergence of cultural clouds as the newest kind of public commons. By cultural clouds, I’m talking about the new layer…
In March this year Trendbuero, the consultancy “for social change”, organised its 13th Trend Day. The topic was “Identity Management – Recognition replaces attention”, with speakers such as Richard Florida, Willem Velthoven of Mediamatic, Norbert Bolz (BANG-Design), Hartmut Esslinger of frog design, and Dick Hardt…
In March, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (blog) organised a symposium on service design. Some time ago, I reported that videos of three of the presentations (Bill Hollins, Bill Moggridge, and Jørgen Rosted) were online. Meanwhile you can also see videos and read extensive…
What is the experience design terminology in other languages? Here are some equivalent expressions dealing with interface design, user experience, experience design, user-centred design and usability in nine European languages (updated version of older post): – Czech: design uživatelskeho rozhranà (interface design), zkuÅ¡enost uživatele (user…
Cross media storytelling, vibrant and fast moving technological and creative developments in cities across Africa and the new plans that Google, Vodafone and Nokia have for the region: these are a few of the things that will be discussed in the Surprising Africa special, a…
The BBC reports that Sir Mick Jagger has taken on a new challenge, as an EU usability consultant: You can’t always get what you want – that was the EU’s message to rock star Sir Mick Jagger at a forum aimed at making internet shopping…
Advertising Age is waking up to a situation which for us in the experience design community has been apparent for many years: simple question-and-answer consumer surveys are not sufficient to be “in touch with the lifestyles of consumers”. “After issuing dire warnings about the future…
Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age by C. Russell Brumfield Quimby Press, Hardcover, June 2008 Secretly, scores of Fortune 500 companies, like Proctor & Gamble, Disney, Bloomingdales, Lexus, Reebok, Sony, Samsung, and Starwood Hotels, have been using aroma to bypass their…
Building on the momentum in social networking for business, IBM Corp. is opening the IBM Center for Social Software in Cambridge, Mass., to research and quantify the effects of social software on workplace productivity. The center will bring together the area’s top minds in software…
Nokia’s Legends Telegraph is a new Flash interface – with a silly, old-fashioned look and feel – to eight introductory videos and a new section on the company’s website on upcoming innovations and new experiences Nokia is working on and how they work. Covered are…
For years I wondered why IDEO was so little present in the online debate. That has now changed with no less than two new blogs by IDEO: IDEO Labs “IDEO Labs is a place where we can share bits of what we’re working on, talk…
Interesting article by Hubert Guillaud of InternetActu.net on understanding non-users (my translation): The French Marsouin research lab just published an interesting study on people who do not use the internet. The study starts off with the various existing typologies to characterise non-users, such as those…
Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, states that ethnic minority groups are the prime early adopters in Europe, thereby confirming ethnographic user research at Swisscom. “Ethnic minority groups are at the forefront of digital communications in the UK, with high levels of mobile phone, internet and…
The latest issue of the International Journal of Design is devoted to the cultural aspects of interaction design: “When a group of people, no matter its scale, start sharing common ways of thinking, feeling and living, culture emerges. Culture therefore can emerge from any population…
Open source projects have historically suffered from featuritis and poor usability (even WordPress, which this blog runs on, has a cumbersome software update). Now a private company is investing in improving Ubuntu, the Linux desktop poster child: “Canonical, the corporate backer of the Ubuntu version…
Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s informed consent [Wikipedia definition], and we all hate it. But is there something more relevant to say about the user experience of malware? Yes, because the definition of what constitutes malware…
Eataly, the very successful “slow” and experiential supermarket in Turin, Italy, is now opening branches in Tokyo and New York. According to the La Repubblica newspaper, Eataly will inaugurate its first foreign branch on 26 September in Tokyo’s Daikanyama neighbourhood. The two-floor, 1500 m2 shop…
Philips Design magazine used to be published three to four times a year, but the last edition was from July 2007. Now it has been turned into a simple newsletter, that comes to you via email (not rss). The articles in the first (September 2008)…
NLab is a lab developed by the Faculty of the Humanities of De Montfort University in Leicester, UK to connect creative businesses with writers and generate pioneering partnerships. In June they organised a very interesting one-day conference on social networks (blog), addressing the following four…
Philips’ new sex toy range, in other words. Here some excerpts from today’s press release: Philips launches new category of ‘Relationship Care’ with intimate massagers for couples Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG, AEX:PHI) today announced the launch of a new category of ‘Relationship Care’ with the…
The Brazilian experience designer Andrë Braz, who is user experience design manager at the Globo Corporation, has published an appealing Experience Design Manifesto. Here is his reasoning behind it: I have always thought that most designers pay little attention to the subjective side of what’s…
Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Hardcover) by Tom Boellstorff Princeton University Press Hardcover, 2008, 328 pages Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the…
Digital technology is changing the everyday forms and experience of money. Cheryl Miller reports on the Research@Intel blog how field research by Intel’s People & Practices Research team identified key themes and opportunities for technological innovation. The researchers presented their findings at the Day Zero…
Normally Putting People First doesn’t promote conferences, but this is one organised by a good colleague, held at the Belgian university town where I studied, and on a topic that we at Experientia are professionally quite heavily involved with. So here is the announcement, to…
Two of the three Nokia presentations at the LIFT Asia conference are now online. Raphael Grignani (Nokia Design, USA) talked about how Nokia Design addresses environmental and social issues including recycling, energy and making the benefits of mobile technology available to more people, as exemplified…
The Adaptive City is the title of an excellent essay by Dan Hill on recent ideas around urban informatics and urban information design, the impact of real-time data and collaborative planning on urban form, and most of all the changing role and new empowerment of…
The upcoming New York Times Magazine has a long feature on the effects of News Feed, Twitter and other forms of incessant online contact. “Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.†It is, they say,…
Nicolas Nova and Bruno Giussani have been blogging two of the LIFT Asia conference sessions that took place in Seoul today. Session: Networked city The new digital layers provided by ICTs are transforming contemporary urban environments. What does that mean for its inhabitants? What changes…
Mobile Nation: Creating Methodologies for Mobile Platforms by Martha Ladly and Philip Beesley, editors Riverside Architectural Press (August 15, 2008) Hardcover, 272 pages Mobile Nation explores the emerging field of mobile experience design. The papers in this anthology include essays on design theories and methods…
Two new articles on Core77 caught my interest: Beyond the schlock of the new: eight strategies for design and foresight by Kevin McCullagh [For those from outside the USA: “schlock” is a play of words, referring to both the “shock of the new” and the…
Anne Galloway of Purse Lip Square Jaw has published her PhD thesis, entitled “A Brief History of the Future of Urban Computing and Locative Media“. It builds on available sociological approaches to understanding everyday life in the networked city to show that emergent technologies reshape…