The latest from GAIN, AIGA’s Journal of Business and Design

GAIN, AIGA’s Journal of Business and Design, is a rich resource for user experience designers.

They just published for instance a series of papers that were originally presented at the dux 05 conference and I highlight some here:

The Mobile Storefront: let your fingers do the shopping
The Mobile Storefront Case Study is a project to improve the retail user experience for shopping and purchasing ringtones, games, pictures, and other content on handsets.
Abstract | Full paper (pdf, 348 kb, 7 pages)

Designing speculative household cleaning
This report examines the impact of aging on housework in the context of product design and presents a human-centered approach to designing cleaning products.
Abstract | Full paper (pdf, 7.7 mb, 7 pages)

Design-led passenger environment and passenger experience
This paper explores the need for design-aid tools to help designers understand and communicate the end-user perception of comfort, focusing in particular on the case of railway passengers.
Abstract | Full paper (pdf, 712 kb, 5 pages)

Augmenting the City: the design of a context-aware mobile web site
This paper presents the design of “Just-for-Us” – a context-aware web site for mobile devices augmenting the social experience of the city. The produced solution augments the city through web-based access to a digital layer of information about people, places and activities adapted to users’ physical and social context and their history of social interactions in the city.
Abstract | Full paper (pdf, 1.5 mb, 7 pages)

Also in GAIN, you can find a lengthy interview with Michael Benedikt, who is writing a general theory of value.