Picking the Brains of the Institute of Design

The Institute of Design (ID) is a rich source of papers on user-centred design. ID's research goal is to 'develop methods that will help organizations gain a more detailed and relevant understanding of users' increasingly complex lives, and drive the development of innovative and humane products and business concepts'.

Their work is set in the context of embedding computing into physical products, and the ability to create value by connecting products and services via networks to increase exponentially the variety of offerings a company can create.

'At the same time, organizations have a decreased ability to predict how consumers will use these new offerings. Twenty years ago it was possible to predict the general patterns of how people worked, learned, played, managed family life, and kept healthy. Today people have many more lifestyle options, making the old methods of market segmentation and demographic studies less reliable.'

In particular, one of the research programmes is Context-Sensitive Design.

Meanwhile, a good number of papers, attached as .pdf files, can be downloaded from the link below.

Associated Link: Institute of Design: papers

Online poker company uses Science to assess Player Preferences
Source: Recentpoker.com, 8 January 2009
 
Working with customer experience consultancy Foviance, PKR is exploiting the benefits of electroencephalography (EEG) technology to gather information on poker players' emotional relationship with a brand or service.

Do Users really love Laptops?
Source: channelinsider, 7 January 2009
 
More than one-fifth of all laptop computers will break down over the course of their life, and other limitations frustrate their users. From this list of user complaints come laptop opportunities.

User Interviews - Analysis Simplified
Source: Webcredible, 6 January 2009
 
You’ve conducted your user interviews, but now you need to make sense of all that information you’ve gathered.

Why Products Fail
Source: ComputerWorld, 5 January 2009
 
Most gadget and software makers don't understand what users want most: control.

How to Design Websites for Mobile Phones
Source: stemkoski.com, 3 January 2009
 
Tips from Ryan Stemkoski's web design blog.

Pioneer of Cyberspace honoured
Source: BBC, 2 January 2009
 
A professor who invented a forerunner of the world wide web has been made a dame in the New Year Honours.

2008 in Review: Developments that rocked the world of User Experience
Source: Catalyst Resources, 1 January 2009
 
A look back at 2008 highlights some of the key developments that rocked the world of user experience.

2008: The Year Online
Source: MIT Technology Review, 31 December 2008
 
The business of social networking, cloud computing, and a flaw in the fabric of the Internet top the most notable stories of 2008.

Shoveling through the Spamalanche
Source: UN, 30 December 2008
 
A ‘Spamalanche’ of 3,000 emails will be waiting in your inbox by the time you get back to work. What can you do besides 'delete all'?

New guidelines boost Web Access
Source: BBC, 29 December 2008
 
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced a new standard to make sites more accessible to older and disabled people.