Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
So what is the weather forecast in Beijing for the next few days? At what time is the opening ceremony going to take place? And what is the competition schedule like when viewing the Olympics from Europe? Don’t expect to find answers to these “strange”…
Today we made a little survey of the languages spoken at our office and we came to a quite remarkable seventeen: Arabic, Armenian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Kashmiri, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. This is not just a trivial…
The various sessions of the June 2008 b.TWEEN conference, “a unique cross media gathering where interactive ideas are seeded, shared and sold”, are now online. One of them dealt with user centric design: Products designed without clear insight into end-user behaviour often end in failure.…
Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends…
Ken Banks writes in PC World on the capacity of the mobile phone to bridge the digital divide. While developed markets get excited by the iPhone, N95, BlackBerry, 3G, WiMax and Android, in developing countries, most excitement centers around the proliferation of mobile phones —…
No one disputes the exponentially greater accessibility of information and connections online, argues Marina Krakovsky in Stanford Magazine, but opinions vary on how genuine or effective online relationships can be. Among others, the author points out that social networks “take a crude, binary view of…
Jennifer van der Meer wrote a long article, published today on Core77, on how the green movement taps participatory networks to drive innovation. The emergence of more user-centered-thinking has given designers an influence well beyond the old drafting table. Upstream in the product development process,…
Two articles highlight the increasing social demand for better designed products: Bryce Rutter interview: “The tolerance for poorly designed products is decreasing dramatically” The Globe and Mail – 2 August 2008 Paying a visit to Toronto recently, Rutter spoke to Globe Style about the beauty…
Business Week reflects on the impact of cloud computing on global business. A host of providers including Amazon, Salesforce.com, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are helping corporate clients use the Internet to tap into everything from extra server space to software that helps manage customer relationships.…
There’s a revolution beginning in the practice of medicine, argues Bob Leckridge, a medical doctor who is working in Scotland. It’s about a shift in power which will change the way doctors work. The traditional doctor-patient relationship is based on a doctor as the expert…
Jan Chipcase, Nokia’s user researcher, is the latest contributor in the ongoing series of emerging markets articles that are being published on a weekly basis in Vodafone Receiver’s magazine. Chipchase stresses that his research is more than just “an attempt to understand the similarities and…
The upcoming edition of the internationally renowned LIFT conference will take place in Geneva on February 25, 26 and 27, 2009. The LIFT09 conference will explore the new forms of socialization with sessions about the impact of new technologies on the way we love, collaborate,…
Business Week reports on how Procter & Gamble is using design thinking to crack difficult business problems. In the words of Cindy Tripp, marketing director at P&G Global Design: “The analytical process we typically use to do our work—understand the problem and alternatives; develop several…
The next generation of social networking will give people more tools for defining smaller online communities in a way that mimics the real world, academic researchers said Monday, as reported by Nancy Gohring of IDG News Service in Macworld. “One thing that’s very broken in…
Something is clearly not working right: About 300,000 motorists have crashed because of a satnav, the [UK] Mirror [newspaper] has found. Around 1.5 million drivers have suddenly veered dangerously or illegally in busy traffic while following its directions. And five million have been sent the…
It’s half a year old but I only now discovered it: Having identified Service Design as an important new issue for the support of design in companies, SEEdesign developed a range of extra activities including workshops and training sessions on this topic. The material developed…
Fora TV (a.k.a. “the thinking man’s YouTube”) has some videos that are worth taking a look at: Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody Aspen Institute – Jul. 06, 2008 Clay Shirky discusses his latest book, Here Comes Everybody, about the way people organize themselves without formal…
“eCars – Now!” is a Finnish Internet community seeking to apply the collective approach taken by online collaborators like the authors of Wikipedia to start converting used petrol-fuelled cars to electric ones, with the first roll-out due this year. The Finnish-language forum [now also in…
There are quite a few new health-related social networking sites: Daily Strength Healia HopeCube ICYou iMedix I’m Too Young for This MDJunction MedHelp SugarStats TauMed Trusera TuDiabetes WEGOHealth Read more here
Three years ago we founded Experientia. It has been a very exciting ride since. In three years we worked with some of the best companies in the field and some of the best people too. Here they are in alphabetical order: Our clients Alcatel-Lucent (France,…
Online communities are proliferating as companies look to harness the collective wisdom and ideas of their employees, customers, and other constituents in order to innovate faster, reduce costs, and create the relationships that will grow their businesses and bolster their bottom lines. Beeline Labs, Deloitte…
Matt Rhodes, head of client services at FreshNetworks, writes about a study that studies, tracks and measures the impact of the internet on consumer behaviour across three European countries (UK, France and Germany), and suggests that the internet is twice as influential as television and…
The New York Times reports on software development for mobile devices in emerging markets, through a nice feature on what is currently happening in that area in Kenya: “While engineers in the United States lavish attention on expensive phones that boast laptoplike features, in Kenya…
As our lives become exposed to more and more technology, and companies become more and more interested in how technology affects us and how we interface with it, anthropologists have found themselves in increasing demand. Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net provides some context: “The explosive growth…
For the last two years, David Frohlich and Matt Jones have worked together on StoryBank (movie), a project enabling textual and computer illiterate people to build a repository of audio-visual content via camera phones. Vodafone Receiver magazine has published their report from Budikote, a village…
In May this year, the Guardian weekly published a 5-page special report for World Telecommunication and Information Society Day on how new technologies are improving the lives of people around the world, with a particular emphasis on developing nations. Articles focus on the concept of…
A few days ago I was part of a panel at the Biella Chamber of Commerce. Biella is a small city in the North of Italy, that became wealthy because of its textile industry, and is now coming to terms with a new global landscape…
Two articles in design mind, the online and print magazine of frog design, are worth pointing out on this blog: 555 Million Subscribers & Counting As the competition grows in China’s mobile market, it is cultural dynamics that will determine who comes out on top.…
If you are interested in the elderly, two interesting UK studies were published this week. The first report, “Living in the 21st century: older people in England” (press release – study download) presents a major longitudinal study (316 pages) about the reality of ageing in…
Press release: Hyderabad, India – Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) today announced a series of new portable, compact patient monitors that provides a reliable, yet affordable means to observe and care for patients. Now available to healthcare providers in India, the new Philips…
Nadyne Mielke, user experience researcher in the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft wasn’t so impressed apparently with Adaptive Path’s recent book Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design. “I was disappointed when I got my pre-order…
Demos, the UK “think tank for everyday democracy”, hosted a conversation with Clay Shirky a few days ago. He was in conversation with Demos Associate and School of Everything CEO Paul Miller, talking around the ideas thrown up by Here Comes Everybody: The Power of…
NESTA, the UK innovation organisation, has published a research report and policy briefing on how users are changing the rules of innovation. User-led innovation – where users play an active part in the development of new or improved products and services – is exploding: proliferating…
New mapping technologies are fundamentally changing the way we experience the city. Urban planners Varnelis and Meisterlin explore the busy intersections of design and cartography in a long and excellent essay on Adobe’s Design Center Think Tank. “Today’s intelligent maps don’t just represent spatial relationships,…
Andrew Grill, a UK telecoms senior executive, discusses the future of the Subscriber Identity Module, better known as the SIM card. “As a tool that securely manages a subscriber’s identity, the SIM is the only remaining element of the mobile an operator actually owns. The…
Consumers have always used — or misused — products however they see fit. Adweek reports on why some companies now follow the lead of consumers who have their own ideas about product usage. “Consumers have always used — or misused — products however they see…
MobileActive reports on two studies that explore how low-income people use mobile technology in Brazil and South Africa. This rise of mobile phone use by low-income and so-called ‘base-of-the-pyramid’ users raises a number of questions. Are low-income people using mobile technology in different ways than…
A group of experts from around the world will hold a first of its kind conference Thursday on global catastrophic risks. They will discuss what should be done to prevent these risks from becoming realities that could lead to the end of human life on…
I just wrote a long article on Core77 on the international three-day Changing the Change conference “on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability”, which just ended here in Turin, Italy.
Yann Gourvennec, head of internet and digital media at Orange Business Services, wonders whether making users’ live easier is a sustainable marketing argument for the development of a business. The article’s premise intrigued me but it was a disappointing read. Gourvennec just presents the typical…