Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Philips Research has integrated experience research into its innovation pipeline. “Our people-centric research involves understanding what people actually want from technology to improve their daily lives,” continued Rick Harwig. “For this purpose Philips Research has built two new research laboratories in Europe, next to the existing HomeLab. One for personal healthcare technologies (CareLab) and another for atmosphere creation for retail (ShopLab). Here people are confronted with the latest innovations and we are able to research the functionality and acceptability of the concept, as well as the way people experience it.”

about, with & for is a collaborative forum hosted by the Institute of Design to discuss emerging topics, methods and issues in design research. The core values of research and discovery methodologies have been embraced by leading companies wishing to increase brand legitimacy, capacity, and impact. What challenges are on the forefront for these leading institutions?

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People are always asking us for descriptions of techniques and “how to” resources. We came across two resources lately, and thought we’d pass them on to blog readers. James Hom’s “Usability Methods Toolbox” includes techniques for user research , prototyping, and evaluation, pointing to sites and books for deeper study of each technique.

Fredrik Winberg maintains “Usor” a collection of user oriented methods. Like Hom’s, it’s incomplete but still useful. And Winberg invites us all to add to his catalog, which should help the resource grow over time.

The online version of a keynote speech given by John Thackara, Director of Doors of Perception, at CHI2000 in The Hague. “Locating innovation in specific social contexts can, I am sure, be a resolution to the innovation dilemma I talked about today. Designing with people, not for them, can bring the whole subject of user experience literally to life.” While I don’t necessarily feel as passionate as John about replacing the term “users” with “actors”, I do hold similar beliefs to his “Articles of Association Between Design, Technology and The People Formerly Known As Users.” A great read!

I was very excited to see this piece from Wharton advocating for user understanding to influence not only the development of business to support business strategy, but business strategy itself. Some our most forward thinking clients have been moving in this direction and we feel it will yield significant competitive edge in a fast changing and uncertain battle for business success. Full story here.

In this paper the authors Andreas Lund and John A Waterworth contrast what they refer to as “traditional cognitivist approach to interface design” with an alternative they term “experiential interface design”. The authors describe traditional cognitive approach as “interface metaphors (and other components of the system image) as a medium of communication between the designer and the users; the aim is for the user to develop a mental model that matches that of the designer as closely as possible”. In contrast then they say “experiential interface design sees the designer as a creator of possible user experiences”. This paper is a great read while keeping two things in mind. First, a traditional cognitivist’s approach should be to match the interface directly to the users’ mental model. What the authors describe is what I call “designer-centered design” as opposed to “user-centered design”. Second point, Designers can not create user experiences we can only design the circumstances in which they happen. Read full paper here.