Sometimes I get to lecture a crowd or two about the near future of smart networked products and services. This is an image I have used to describe where product design is heading. It is originally borrowed from robot research, showing what they call the “uncanny valley“; the steep drop just before the curve reaches the upper right corner of the chart. It shows how [ Read more ]

Health and lifestyle changes are popular topics in media, but is that what actually makes people change their lifestyle? What is it that really spurs change? What are the challenges? And how can such insights influence the way we design preventive care services?

These questions framed a recent research project at the User Experience Lab which we did in collaboration with our friends at [ Read more ]

So, we all know what a robot is, don’t we? C3PO and R2D2 are robots. So is the Terminator and so are the cute robots from “Robots”. At least these are the most common robots mentioned by the people I met during 6 months of fieldwork during 2009 and 2010 where I asked robotics specialists, those [ Read more ]

Imagine that things could speak. What would they say? – This was one of 26 questions put to 42 persons between the ages of 18-50 years old in Tokyo (Japan), San Jose (USA) and Beijing (China) that took part in a photo-dairy/self-ethnography study conducted by the User Experience Lab.

The question has two answers: What thing? and what should it say? (The study was by the [ Read more ]