Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
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…
A Design Council case study illustrates how a people-centred redesign of the T-Mobile phone bill has resulted in customers being substantially less likely to phone customer services for help understanding their bill. Although the user research was limited, it was effective: “‘We used T-Mobile employees…
If you are considering coming to Turin, Italy this year, you may want to come at the end of June and/or the beginning of July. Not only is that the time when two important conferences — the World Congress of Architecture and the Changing the…
95% of consumer electronics products returned to retailers are working “properly”, according to Accenture. ? ? ? ? ? “Only 5 percent of consumer electronics products returned to retailers are malfunctioning — yet many people who return working products think they are broken, a new…
The Spring issue of Ambidextrous, the design journal of the Stanford d.school, contains a fairly long interview with Joy Mountford>. Joy has been designing and managing interface design efforts for over 20 years. Most recently she was vice president in charge of Yahoo’s user experience…
Last year, Associated Press commissioned Baltimore-based Context-Based Research Group to conduct an ethnographic research study focusing on the news consumption habits of young digital consumers in six cities around the world. The drive for this research came from the recognition that a significant shift in…
David Armano of Critical Mass catches Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum for a half hour interview on design and innovation. In the interview Bruce talks about the One Laptop Per Child, the difference between design and design thinking, the changing concept of privacy, and much more.…
The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is organising a four-part lecture series on “Digital Natives,” referring to the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part of their lives, especially the young people who are currently in…
HCI Remixed – Reflections on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Community Edited by Thomas Erickson and David W. McDonald MIT Press, 2008 Hardcover, 344 pages > Table of Contents Abstract Over almost three decades, the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has produced a rich…
The Spanish innovation network Infonomia features a video section (called Infonomia TV) with a series of English language video interviews that the readers of this blog might find interesting: Nicolas Nova: The future of urban computing [5:25] Nicolas Nova is researcher at the Media and…
Sohrab Vossoughi, founder and president of ZIBA Design, has published an article in Business Week on authenticity, with examples from the Umpqua Bank, Starbucks, and the Anthropologie clothing chain. “Consumers seek meaning and a brand they can trust. They are busy at work on Web…
Business Week reports on how Americans flock to different sites when they use their mobile phones to go online, than when they surf from their computers. “Welcome to the weekend Web, where people are spending a bigger slice of time online via wireless devices—and using…
Harvard Business Review has published a long article by Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO, on design thinking. “Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy,” says Brown. “Edison’s approach was an early example of what is now…
Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies Edited by James E. Katz Afterword by Manuel Castells MIT Press, 2008 Hardcover, 486 pages Abstract Mobile communication has become mainstream and even omnipresent. It is arguably the most successful and certainly the most rapidly adopted new technology in the…
A few weeks ago the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) of the UK Parliament published the first parliamentary assessment of the idea of “user involvement” in public services, which they see as “potentially a new model for public service delivery that promises improved services and…
Experientia/Putting People First has been invited to become a media partner of PICNIC 2008. Set up as a series of events – a top-class conference, seminars and workshops – PICNIC will be held in Amsterdam from 24 to 26 September this year and will attract…
Last week Genevieve Bell, a highly respected anthropologist and Director of User Experience within Intel’s Digital Home Group, gave the 2008 commencement speech at the UC Berkeley School of Information. She filled it with “anthropological advice” about how to approach the world like a fieldwork…
Jeff Parks and Chris Baum of Boxes and Arrows sat down with several of the speakers and organisers of Adaptive Path’s San Francisco conference: MX San Francisco: Managing Experience through Creative Leadership, that took place on April 20-22. The result is a series of podcasts…
Design Anthropology takes user research to a whole new level. Dr. Elizabeth Tunstall explains in an essay on Adobe Design Center’s Think Tank how this emerging field can help to redefine design by exploring what it means to be human. Design anthropology seeks to answer…
A few weeks ago we were contacted by Marco Bevolo of Philips Design who was looking for some advance feedback on the book he is writing together with co-authors Stefano Marzano (also Philips Design), Dr. Howard R. Moskowitz and Alex Gofman (president and vice-president of…
PSFK is a global trends and innovation company that also organises conferences in various parts of the world. Videos of over forty presentations at these conferences are now online. My ten highlights: Allan Chochinov on the Dumbest Smartest Design Problem At the PSFK Conference New…
Demos, the UK think tank for “everyday democracy”, has published its latest pamphlet on privacy. “The transformation of our social lives and the increase in surveillance and technological innovations have led us to believe that privacy is in the midst of a very public death.…
Podtech has published a number of audio interviews with senior staff of Alcatel-Lucent on their thinking about user-centric experience, as it informs their applications and solutions. Exploiting end-user trends to create value with sticky services – The “Me” network for the “We” experience [12:43] The…
The Danish programme for user-driven innovation (English summary) aims to strengthen the diffusion of methods for user-driven innovation, and to contribute to increased growth in the participating companies, and to increased user satisfaction and/or increased efficiency in participating public institutions. The programme should also result…
Nokia has over 300 designers worldwide, and ships over 1.2 million products everyday. So Allan Chochinov of Core77 was anxious to attend Nokia’s recent London design event, offering a curtainpeek at their design process, ethnographic wanderings, sustainability initiatives, and plans for the future. Listen in…
The three-day Changing the Change conference, which is about the role of design research in sustainable change and scheduled for 10-12 July in Turin, Italy, looks to become very interesting indeed. The list of invited speakers and discussants features Bill Moggridge (IDEO); Geetha Narayanan (Srishti…
The UK think tank Demos has launched a new publication, The Politics of Public Behaviour, which explores the role of government in influencing people’s lifestyles and everyday decision-making. Abstract: The personal has become political. Increasingly, governments find themselves drawn into questions about how children are…
The May/June issue of Interactions Magazine just came out and some of the content is available online (and more will follow soon). The issue is all about “colliding worlds” with “interactions disciplines” becoming “more appropriately integrated into other creative disciplines (e.g. architecture and music), into…
‘User-centred Design for Sustainable Behaviour’ is a paper by Renee Wever (TU Delft), Jasper van Kuijk (TU Delft) and Casper Boks (NTNU Norway) that explores how to involve users in more sustainable product use. The paper was published in the first issue of the new…
The Microsoft Health Common User Interface (CUI) is a site conceived by Microsoft providing user interface Design Guidance and Toolkit controls that address a wide range of patient safety concerns for healthcare organizations worldwide. Microsoft has created it in order to allow a new generation…
Reuters report on mobile coupons and gifts in South Korea: oung, tech-savvy South Koreans are making coupon clipping a thing of the past and turning to their mobile phones instead. Some of the fastest-growing mobile phone services in the country let retailers send discount coupons…
The Guardian reviews a book that argues that our privacy is under threat by increased digital surveillance. Being able to make your own decisions and hold your own views without interference; controlling information about yourself; and being in charge of your personal space – these…
The (UK) Times reports on how you don’t need a computer anymore to browse people’s profiles. “After the explosion in internet-based social networking (MySpace, Facebook) doing the same thing in real life instead of in front of a computer became an obvious next step. Much…
A series of web pages on the France Telecom/Orange site give an insight in how the company moves from the many ideas that come out of R&D, to a product or service that is ready for the market. In 2005-2006, France Telecom created two structures,…
The May issue of UX matters contains an interview with Lou Rosenfeld and Liz Danzico of the publishing house Rosenfeld Media, a publisher of user experience design books. After working on five books as an editor or co-author, Lou Rosenfeld became disenchanted with the traditional…
Consumer Reports WebWatch released the results of an ethnographic study on how children interact with online environments. The study, “Like Taking Candy from a Baby: How Young Children Interact with Online Environments,” used ethnographic methods and focused on young children, ages 2½ to 8. For…
The French magazine Chronic’Art recently interviewed Adam Greenfield (Nokia’s new head of design direction) about his recent book Everyware and ubiquitous computing in general. An English version of the interview can be found on Greenfield’s blog. Read interview
At the beginning of March, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID | blog) a symposium on service design. The symposium featured speakers who are pioneers in service design thinking and practice from several countries, including Andrea Koerselman (IDEO), Andrew Mcgrath (Orange Global), Bill Hollins…