Getting people to talk: an ethnography and interviewing primer (video)
A couple of IIT graduate students (Gabriel Biller & Kristy Scovel) have put together an entertaining video primer on field interview techniques. The video runs about 30 minutes.
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Co-creation at Nokia
Charlie Schick, editor-in-chief for Nokia Conversations, has posted a story about co-creation at Nokia: “One trend that is growing rapidly here in Nokia is ‘co-creation’, working with users to create and improve products. While on one side it seems cheap to release unfinished goods and…
Polite, pertinent and… pretty
“Polite, pertinent and… pretty: designing for the new wave of personal informatics” was the title of a talk given by Matt Jones (Dopplr) and Tom Coates (Yahoo! Brickhouse) at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Summarising their talk is not an easy thing…
Mobile communication in the developing world – a design challenge
Neil Clavin has written the latest contribution in the ongoing series of emerging markets articles that are on a weekly basis being published Vodafone Receiver’s magazine. In his paper for receiver Clavin argues that for better design, we must first of all understand different user…
From ubiquitous technology to human context (videos)
On Wednesday 2 July Nicolas Nova (LIFT lab) moderated a session at the World Congress of Architecture in Turin, Italy, entitled “From ubiquitous technology to human context – Technology applied to architecture and design: does it solve problems or create needs?”. Speakers were Adam Greenfield…
Frontiers of Interaction
Today I attended the Frontiers of Interaction IV conference in Turin, Italy, which — with some kind input from Bruce Sterling — has now reached quite an international level. Speakers today were Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford Humanities Lab – via video), Ashley Benigno (Global 3G Handset…
New consumption patterns in telecoms services in Europe
Some interesting data illustrate the emergence of new consumption patterns in telecoms services in Europe: An EU-wide survey of 27,000 households has revealed the emergence of new consumption patterns in telecoms services in Europe. Technological progress and competition have brought more choice to European consumers;…
Demos presents international survey of public service co-design
Today Demos, the UK think tank on everyday democracy, launched a new discussion paper Making the most of collaboration: an international survey of co-design, produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Public Sector Research Centre. In 2006 Demos published Journey to the Interface – an impassioned advocation…
Book: Nudge
WorldChanging book review: “Authored by two Univeristy of Chicago heavy-hitters, Economist Richard Thaler and Law Professor Cass Sunstein, Nudge explores the policy implications of behavioral economics, a field describing the irrationalities of human behavior. Taking findings from psychology (e.g. people procrastinate; they’re averse to losing…
Conversation with Raphael Grignani of Nokia Design about Homegrown
Rachel Hinman, mobile design strategist at Adaptive Path, has conducted an interview with Raphael Grignani of Nokia Design about “Homegrown”, a long term research project looking at how Nokia can help people make more sustainable choices (see also here). A short excerpt: “With Remade, Andrew…
From Business to Buttons presentations
Many presentations of Malmö University’s “From Business To Buttons” conference, held last week in Malmö, Sweden, are already available for download. They include talks by Alberto Knapp Bjerén (The Cocktail, Spain), David Cuartielles (K3, Malmo University, Sweden), Brendan Dawes (magneticNorth, UK), Daniel Fellman (Umeå University…
European Council of Ministers approves 600m euro project for new digital solutions for the elderly
Critical SAP report on CHI 2008
The SAP Design Guild has published a long and quite critical report on the recent CHI conference by Gerd Waloszek, a user experience professional at the business software company SAP. The SAP Design Guild is a site maintained by SAP User Experience, where SAP AG…
Videos online of Mx presentations
Adaptive Path has posted a couple of videos of user experience related presentations given at this year’s MX Conference. Matt Jones (Dopplr) – “Battle for the Planet of the Apes: A Perspective on Social Software and Social Networks” Matt Jones is one of the founders/lead…
Mito Akiyoshi: the digital divide does not vanish with the mobile
The great people at the splendid French blog InternetActu have conducted an interview with the Japanese sociologist, Mito Akiyoshi. Since InternetActu is published in French, and I have been pushing them time and again to make the rich contents of their blog also available in…
Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience
The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is “Googley” – and…
Bridging communities via interactions
Richard Anderson reports on a discussion session that Elizabeth Churchill and Experientia partner Mark Vanderbeeken participated in, held at the recent CHI conference in Florence, Italy, that dealt with the role of interactions magazine in bridging communities – “something essential for “user experience” to play…
The doobly, the podger, the twitcher or the melly?
The remote control seems to have inspired a great creative flowering of new words in colloquial UK English: “The English Project cites “doobly”, but there are an awful lot more, including “podger”, “blipper”, “twitcher” and “melly”. A friend of mine calls it the “ponker”. Someone…
Involved observational research
I always appreciate unusual perspectives so when Dr. Tina Basi, who consults with Intel’s Digital Health Group, contacted me about her research on power dynamics in ethnographic research, I was intrigued. She recently presented a paper on the matter, entitled “Identity at Work and Play:…
Technology giants join forces to fight communications clutter
Firms including Microsoft, Intel, Google and IBM have formed an Information Overload Research Group to help workers cope with the digital deluge and improve productivity. “Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and IBM, are banding together to fight information overload. Last…
Google’s Joe Kraus on how to make the web more social
Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach spoke with Joe Kraus (weblog), director of product management at Google, recently about the increasing socialisation of the Internet. Kraus believes every killer app on the web — instant messaging, e-mail, blogging, photo-sharing — has succeeded because it helps…
Interview: the cellphone anthropologist
The New Scientist has published an interview with Nokia user researcher Jan Chipchase: “Most of us take mobile phones for granted. Not so for Jan Chipchase, a design researcher for Nokia, who travels the globe exploring how people use their mobile devices, discovering how to…
Is Google making us stupid?
Nicholas Carr, the author of “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google” and “Does IT Matter?” wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly on what the internet is doing to our brains: it is chipping away our capacity for concentration and contemplation,…
Cluster #7 “Transmitting Architecture”
The upcoming issue of Cluster, the bilingual (Eng/Ita) innovation magazine is entitled “Transmitting Architecture“. It is made in collaboration with XXIII UIA World Congress of Architecture 2008, to be held in Turin, Italy in a few weeks. Two years on from the Olympic games, Torino…
Spain’s national obsession with mobiles, texting
Jennifer Woodard Maderazo reports on PBS’s Mediashift blog on the Spanish relationship with the cell phone and “how it has evolved differently from the one in the US for reasons that are clear and others that remain a mystery”. “Because Spain seemed so much ahead…
China and the next billion customers
The second article in Vodafone’s newly updated Receiver Magazine is about China and the next billion customers. Author Jared Braiterman seeks to understand mobile phones play in China’s fast-paced development and explores why China become a centre of passionate technology usage. Braiterman claims there are…
Intel anthropologists find keys to tech adoption
Dawn Nafus, an Intel anthropologist and her team have created Intel’s “Technology Metabolism Index,” which shows how citizens of countries’ tech adoption exceeds or lags what one would expect given their levels of wealth. The map (hi-res pdf) shows fast tech adopters in bright colors…
Philips and NH Hoteles collaborating to optimise the hotel experience
NH Hoteles and Philips have announced that they will conduct an intensive two-year study into the optimization of well-being amongst hotel guests. To support the research, NH Hoteles and Philips have teamed up as a first step to create a unique room at NH Hoteles’…
Information Architecture Television
Information Architecture Television is a weblog that contains quite an extensive collection of online videos concerning usability, information architecture, interaction design and user experience design. (via InfoDesign)
French ethnographic study on teens and mobiles
The fact that young people are more adapt at using the latest technologies has less to do with expertise, experience or access, but more with their “non-dramatic” relation with these technologies, as evidenced by the way they deal with small failures and technological problems. This…
Hurdle for future cities: human habits
The Christian Science Monitor published an interesting article that voices scepticism on whether the planned carbon-neutral city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi could indeed become a sustainable urban innovation model globally: “The project has done little to impress green city planners not connected with the…
In Japan, mobile phones have become too complex to use
Wired Magazine reports on how Japanese handsets have become prime examples of feature creep gone mad. In many cases, they say, phones in Japan are far too complex for users to master. Yet, they wonder whether the iPhone stands any chance in this feature-obsessed culture.…
User experience design: the evolution of a multi-disciplinary approach
A better ATM experience from Wells Fargo
Holger Struppek (a design director at Hot Studio and former senior interaction designer at Pentagram Design) shares on his Physical Interface (!) blog some design insights that went into Wells Fargo’s touchscreen ATM interface–a product freed from a major hardware-imposed restriction of the past. “Wells…
One month to go to the World Congress of Architecture
In a month’s time Turin, Italy will host the XXIII edition of the World Congress of Architecture, promoted by the UIA (International Union of Architects). More than 4000 participants have registered already. There are over 70 sessions with more than 360 speakers. The topic chosen…
New report looks at economic benefits of mobile phones for those at the bottom of the pyramid
A new report, Perceived economic benefits of telecom access at the Bottom of the Pyramid in emerging Asia, takes a new look at the effect of mobile phones on the lives of people at the so-called ‘bottom of the pyramid.’ The report, published by LIRNEasia,…
Africa’s grassroots mobile revolution – a traveller’s perspective
Vodafone receiver magazine’s new issue is about “Emerging Markets“. But it’s a shortened issue: Vodafone thought that launching a whole new issue, with all articles of all authors at once, might be too much to swallow. Therefore they decided to “feed us” one article each…
Nokia research on the “Internet of Things” officially begins
Nokia press release: LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Today marks the launch of the new long-term research partnership between Nokia Research Center and the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, with the Pervasive Communications Laboratory doors officially opening in Lausanne. The focus of this major research collaboration is…
MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning
The MacArthur Foundation launched its five-year, $50 million digital media and learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions…
Top ten disruptive technologies for 2008 to 2012, according to Gartner
Gartner’s top 10 disruptive technologies 2008-2012: (for what it is worth – the emphasis is mine) Multicore and hybrid processors Virtualisation and fabric computing Social networks and social software – because business IT applications will start to mirror the features found in popular consumer social…