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Business Week's cover story discusses Motion-Tracking Technologies that are utilized for design, entertainment. safety and research. Examples including monitoring blinking patterns to detect and manage driver drowsiness (see inset photo), and using hand-gestures to manipulate user interfaces. The accompanying slide show provides illustrations of various other motion-tracking technologies and applications, include eye tracking and virtual surgery.
Yesterday's NY Times business section (free registration required) included a brief article titled: How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It. The article discussed the rising use of user-driven innovation, where companies are receiving input from customers on the design and customization of their products.
Unlike user-centered design which incorporates end-user input into a company's internal design process, user-driven innovation is externally motivated. For example, a company may adapt a customization made by a current product user into the next version of its product.
The article discusses how this has happened for a particular medical device manufacturer, and touches on the logistical and legal challenges to this approach. For additional information, the article refers to Eric Von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation, which can be downloaded as a PDF.
Techsmith is launching the latest version of its usability testing and video editing software, Morae. Among other enhancements, the new version, Morae 2, will include built-in analysis and survey features - but the actual definition and scope of these is not clear at this point.
I've been using Morae for a couple of years and find it to be very effective for screen-based usability testing, but also as a quick way to record and edit interviews and observations. I've even used it for vehicle-based usability testing of a handheld device.
Will post a review in the near future.
-Rob Tannen
The list of speakers for the upcoming conference at RISD has been made available. Inside sources indicate that at least two of the topics will be related to Human Factors/Design research:
Detailed scheduling information is still pending.
A couple of recent Core77 articles of interest to the design research crowd - one about the flexible and unexpected ways that people utilize products in everyday life, and the other about the flexible material that goes into making so many everyday products:
The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society is co-chairing the upcoming conference - Living Rooms: Human Factors and Industrial Design Contributions to the Home as a Health Care Venue.
More detailed information and registration is forthcoming. As of now, the goals of the conference include:
There's finally some information available regarding the upcoming district conferences on the IDSA site. As of now, only the Mideast District conference in Cincinnati, Ohio and the Midwest District conference in Kohler, Wisconsin provide detail via working web sites. More information to come...
Perhaps too little, too late - as in too little information and too late to post, but IDSA Boston is hosting a panel on design research this Thursday evening, March 8 (Today!). Will post any information about the panel as a follow-up if it becomes available.
| Host: | IDSA Boston |
| Location: | Wentworth Institute of Technology 550 Parker Street, Bldg. 22, Boston, MA View Map |
| When: | Thursday, March 8, 7:00pm |
| Phone: | 917-836-3890 |
| Design Research, Business Strategy & Beyond. WHAT DOES DESIGN RESEARCH MEAN TO YOU? Help answer this question and learn from a panel of research experts as they present their current work and explore the impact of design research on product development, business strategy, and more. Speakers include: Mary-Lou Tierney - Farm Design Bill Hartman - Essential Design Beth Loring - Bently College Susan Walters - Gillette Leisbeth Wenzel - Insight PD | |
For those new to ethnography, or looking for a simple way to describe it to others, the AIGA and Cheskin have put together an ethnography primer. The visual appealing PDF has limited content, but focuses on the value, basic steps, applications and terminology of ethnographic research to support design. Perhaps most useful is the brief descriptions of the respective activities of the ethnographer and the designer during each step of the research process.
Check it out, and while you're there, explore AIGA's redesigned site.
