Designing for Humans

Innovation Design Research Issue now online

Selected articles from the Summer 2006 issue of IDSA's Innovation are available online, including:

Digital Ethnography: Sparking Brilliant Innovation
Darrel Rhea, IDSA, CEO, Cheskin, and Lisa Leckle, account management director, Cheskin

Market Research Today: How to Stay on Target
Forrest Elizabeth Folsom, marketing communications manager, Herbst LaZar Bell, Inc.

A Visit with the Chair Man
Bruce Sterling, novelist, journalist, columnist for Wired magazine and the former Visionary in Residence at the Art Center College of Design.

You may also download:

The Future of User Research Ubiquitous Computing - Rob Tannen, PhD, IDSA - Posits that many of the constraints of current research methods may be overcome through the development of product usage measurement technology.  You may download Tannen's artice:  innovation_tannen.pdf.

Portigal on Design Research

Interesting online interview between Luke Wroblewski and Steve Portigal on the pragmatics of conducting ethnography for online product research.  Specifically - does observing someone using a web site in their normal environment provide advantages over conducting research in a lab?

"there are lots of “hidden” subtleties within digital social systems that govern how people behave. There are contexts of when and where that alter behavior. As an example, during a home visit a buyer on eBay may tell you: “I leave positive feedback when I get an item in good condition.” Their actual behavior, however, differs."

This is a two part interview.

Part 1 - http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?368

Part 2 - http://www.portigal.com/blog/design-research-a-conversation-with-steve-portigal-pt-2

Innovation: Design Research

The Summer 2006 issue of the IDSA quarterly, Innovation, has just been published.  This issue is of particular interest because it features eight articles representing a range of perspectives on design and user research.  Three articles of particular interest for Human Factors advocates:

• Digital Ethnography Sparking Brilliant Innovation - Darrel Rhea, IDSA and Lisa Leckie - Discusses the role of digital consumer technology as a means to for users to capture and deliver self-report research from the field.
• The Integration of Industrial Design and Human Factors Bricks & Mortar - Barry H. Beith, PhD and Joseph Jasinski, IDSA - Provides a discussion of how Industrial Designers and Human Factors experts can work together effectively.
• The Future of User Research Ubiquitous Computing - Rob Tannen, PhD, IDSA - Posits that many of the constraints of current research methods may be overcome through the development of product usage measurement technology.  You may download Tannen's artice:  innovation_tannen.pdf.

Note - IDSA typically publishes a few of these articles online.  The journal site has not been updated as of this posting (it still features the Spring 2006 issue), but when the Summer issue is posted, we will post a blog entry with the specific links.