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Tellingly, the latest discussion, which was lead by John Thackara, focused on the questions of how public service professionals can act more as ‘hubs’ capable of connecting users to significant others, and more in general, to what extent the role of users can re-define the terms of public service provision.
Update: A report on that discussion can be found here.
(via John Thackara and CPH127)
Guests are Dr Simon Roberts of Ideas Bazaar, Paul Eden of Ogilvy and Mather, Genevieve Bell of Intel, Professor Patrick Barwise of the London Business School, Professor Richard Harper of Microsoft, and Paco Underhill of Envirosell.
Listen to the programme (RealPlayer)
Programme web page
(via Usability Views)
The NOP Omnibus survey interviewed 999 nationally representative adults in Great Britain aged 15+ via telephone between 26-28 August, 2005 was conducted on behalf of Stockholm based mobile messaging company Mobeon. It found that, on a daily basis, advanced services such as call diverts, picture galleries, calendars, MMS, email or web access are left untouched by all but 17% of mobile users.
Mobeon concludes that, although the services may be clearly explained in accompanying manuals, users often do not understand the purpose of additional services and therefore do not feel any need to learn how to use them. [...]
The research also found that only half of all adults feel that operators understand what features customers actually want. This figure decreases with each age group. Only 23% of those aged over 55 believe that the carriers understand their needs.
(via Usernomics)
The Parsons Department of Design and Management is having Brenda Laurel speak as part of their Stephan Weiss Memorial Lecture Series in Business Strategy, Negotiation & Innovation.
The lecture, titled “Design Research: Informed Creativity”, will take place on Wednesday 28 September at 6pm.
Brenda Laurel is the author of Design Research Methods, a highly respected text in the field of design research methodology. Laurel’s lecture will examine design research methods and strategies that can illuminate and empower designers. She is currently the Chair of the Graduate Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
It is clear that user experience [and justification for high end products with hi end prices] is central to Sony’s strategy of branding of certain product lines.
“Being able to use a single card for all networks simplifies things and offers the possibility of giving incentives to people who travel in particular regions or at certain times,” said Tim Boric, a representative of Rover, an organisation that seeks to guard the rights of users of public transportation in the Netherlands. “It should save time for passengers and will make it less likely that you miss your train because you lost time waiting in line.”
What goes to show that companies can still learn a lot (and gain a lot) from putting user needs and user experience first, and make this a driver in their business strategies, rather than just an afterthought at the end.
Hundreds of towns and cities across Europe begin a week of events designed to persuade people to choose forms of transport other than cars.
More than 900 towns and cities in Europe will be taking part in the annual European Mobility Week event.
The high point of the event, the fourth of its kind, will be “no-car days” when towns and cities bar all non-emergency vehicles from the streets.
Cars appeal to all of our senses. We use our sight, hearing, smell and touch to appraise the shape and colour of the body, the sound of the engine, the fragrance of the
leather, and the feel of the seat fabric and the steering wheel. Sensory analysis plays a key role in understanding customer perception. And it helps manufacturers design vehicles that fulfil their customers’ sensory expectations.
The magazine discusses various senses in more detail: fragrance, touch and sound.
Related: the new PSA Peugeot Citroën Design Centre (review)
Download speech (pdf, 1.1 mb, 12 pages)
The INDEX: Views Summit, which takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmö, Sweden on 25-28 September 2005, believes that new design processes are an invaluable tool for such “human centred innovation”. The purpose of the conference is to show how we can use these potentials of design – and to inspire the participants and other representatives from business, government and society to develop new designs that improve human life.
INDEX: Views summits 30 international creative leaders – prominent innovators, creative thinkers and leaders in e.g. design & architecture, research & development, business & society.
In conjunction with the event, two exhibitions are taking place, including one on future scenarios.
(via CPH127)
Based on research conducted in dozens of countries, this insightful and entertaining book examines the once unexpected interaction between humans and cell phones, and between humans, period. The compelling discussion and projections about the future of the telephone should give designers everywhere a more informed practice and process, and provide researchers with new ideas to last years.
Read book review
Download first chapter (pdf, 500 kb, 20 pages)
Consult book description and buy book
(via Usability Views)
(via Usability Views)
Gel is a conference and community, exploring good experience in all its forms — in business, art, society, technology, and life. The goal of the conference [which is well regarded and highly orginal in concept] is to create an environment that allows our multi-disciplinary community to explore the idea of “good experience” in a variety of contexts.
The Gel 2006 conference will take place on 4-5 May 2006 in The Equitable Theater in New York.
A few months later Gel is going international: euroGel 2006 will be a Europe-wide conversation about good experience, featuring speakers from across the continent, and will take place on 1 September 2006 in the main library in Copenhagen, Denmark.
With the underlying capabilities of a basic web browser like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox, the new browser, called Flock – after the buzz it hopes to create – adds features specifically designed to make writing, editing, sharing and displaying web content faster and easier.
(via textually.org)
Unlike executives at so many corporations, who would be loath to let their customers anywhere near the inner workings of their software tools, the Lego honchos saw an opportunity to lean on the collective thinking of an Internet community to improve their own product while bolstering relations with committed customers.
In his new book “Ambient Findability” Peter Morville, the president and founder of Semantic Studios and the author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, examines the convergence of information and connectivity that have made our current age one of unlimited findability. In other words, anyone can find anything at any time. Complete navigability.
Morville discusses the Internet, GIS, and other network technologies that are coming together to make unlimited findability possible. He explores how the melding of these innovations impacts society, since web access is now a standard requirement for successful people and businesses. But before he does that, Morville looks back at the history of wayfinding and human evolution, suggesting that our fear of being lost has driven us to create maps, charts, and now, the mobile internet.
The book’s central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order. Hand in hand with that is the contention that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices and internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future.
Buy book (amazon.com)
Download first chapter (pdf)
Visit findability blog
Interview in Infonomia