Brand Bible examines all aspects of branding from its early beginnings in the Elizabethan era to its modern apotheosis. The book features interviews with leading designers and brand strategists including Michael Bierut (Pentagram), Matteo Bologna (Mucca Design), Christine Mau (Kimberly-Clark), and Steff Geissbuhler (C&G Partners). Corporate case studies include Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney, Google, Lacoste, Martha Stewart, MTV, Oprah, Playboy, Procter&Gamble and Starbucks.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159253726X/?tag=dexigner-20

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A multi-year study funded by the Home Office investigated the design features of high density urban housing developments and identified where poor design can lead to an increase in crime, anti-social behaviour and neighbour disputes. Three areas of the UK were analysed: Greater Manchester, Kent and West Midlands. The researchers conducted site visits to map design features and layouts, examined recorded crime, and interviewed neighbourhood policing teams and crime prevention design advisors. Design features which were identified as key to watch out for were:

- large rear parking courts
- paths and spaces that are not overlooked
- poorly-designed corner properties
- relying on gating a development as the only means to deliver security
- 'leaky' cul-de-sacs which have pedestrian access between them

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/crimeresearch

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User experience is one of the key elements of mobile phone design, and in recent years has received much attention in the HCI community. While many researchers transform user experience into quantitative data, Coxon’s Taxonomy of Experience (ToE), and its analytic approach of SEEing, uncover an understanding of the experience through qualitative analysis. The nine steps of the SEEing process clarify the experience by transforming and synthesising the user’s verbal commentary and ends into super-ordinary metaphors.

New research describes the application of the ToE-SEEing methodology to a touch screen mobile phone. ToE was applied to capture the experience of trialling an unfamiliar touch screen mobile phone. The research results suggest the benefits of ToE in the mobile telephony application, and highlight the importance of understanding user experience before touch screen design begins.

http://wi.hexagram.ca/?p=71

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Roberto Verganti suggests that innovation does not occur from within the existing market, but instead from a vision about possible new meanings which customers did not ask for, but which they fall in love with once experienced.

Verganti suggests that innovation requires getting close to “interpreters”, those individuals who share the vision, deeply understand it, and shape the market.

http://www.designdriveninnovation.com

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Eric Von Hippel suggests that products, systems and services are shaped by "lead users" who are ahead of the marketplace trends. He argues that businesses should redesign their processes so as to co-develop and co-design with customers at all stages.

Customers express their ideas, form innovation communities and sometimes even develop the new product, system or service themselves. Examples include the open source software movement and several recent products for the home.

http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

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"We want to hear from all of those with a stake in the housing sector in order to gain a deep understanding of the barriers to development, the challenges in the design process and the impact of economic pressures on the housing products that are delivered," commented Sir John Banham, Chair of the Future Homes Commission.

"We're embarking on a demanding and challenging exercise to understand what makes a quality home today, and how it can be designed and delivered to ensure a sustainable housing stock for the future.

http://www.dexigner.com/news/24538

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Call for Papers 2012_ENG_v12.pdf Download this file

The aim of the conference is to encourage multi and interdisciplinary aggregation of people and research centres which deal with color and light from a professional and scientific point of view. Conference themes include:

1. COLOR AND MEASUREMENT / PRODUCTION. Colorimetry, photometry and color atlas: method, theory and instrumentation.
2. COLOR AND DIGITAL. Reproduction, management, digital color correction, image processing, graphics, photography, printmaking, video production, artificial vision, virtual reality.
3. COLOR AND LIGHTING. Metamerism, color rendering, adaptation, color constancy, appearance, illusions, memory color and perception, color in extra-atmospheric environments, lighting design.
4. COLOR AND PHYSIOLOGY. Mechanisms of vision in their experimental and theoretical aspects, deficiencies, abnormalities, clinical and biological aspects.
5. COLOR AND PSYCHOLOGY. Phenomenology of color, perceptive, emotional, aesthetic and diagnostic aspects.
6. COLOR AND PRODUCTS. Foods and beverages, textiles, plastics, ceramics, paints.
7. COLOR AND RESTORATION. Archaeometry, painting materials, diagnostics and techniques of conservation, restoration and enhancement of cultural heritage, coloring and architectural syntax, territorial identities.
8. COLOR AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT. Urban planning, plans of color, architecture.
9. COLOR AND DESIGN. Furniture, design, fashion, textiles, graphics, communication, packaging, lettering, cosmetics.
10. COLOR AND CULTURE. Art, history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, aesthetics, representation and design, lexicology, semantics.
11. COLOR AND EDUCATION. Pedagogy, color's didactics, aesthetic education, artistic education.
8th Conferenza del Colore
September 13-14, 2012
Bologna, Italy

www.gruppodelcolore.it

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RSA Transforming Behaviour Change.pdf Download this file

A new report by Jonathan Rowson of the RSA probes the nature of the social brain and highlights the differences between nudging and thinking. "Transforming Behaviour Change: beyond nudge and neuromania" explores what neuroscience and philosophy can tell us about human social behaviour.

In the report Rowson identifies the significant problem that nudging interventions are not transformative. Rowson directs our attention to Aditya Chakrabortty;s comment in The Guardian that the application of nudging to public policy appears to have produced mostly "cute technocratic solutions to mainly minor problems." Rowson further goes on to suggest that nudging tends to achieve what psychologist Paul Watzlawick calls "first-order change" rather than "second-order change".

The report points to multiple items of evidence which suggest that we need to delve deeper into human nature if we wish to achieve design interventions which are socially beneficial. It closes with a short outline of a plan of action for a centre for the coordination and dissemination of research about social human nature.

http://www.thersa.org/projects/social-brain/transforming-behaviour-change

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Image © Philips Design

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"Conversational Capital: how to create stuff people love to talk about" by Bertrand Cesvet, Tony Babinski, Eric Alper and Sid Lee describes their approach to designing successful brands. Since people are social storytellers, a product experience that is worthy of telling as one's own authentic story creates brand capital in the form of meaningful and influential conversations. The authors suggest eight engines of conversational capital:

1) Myths are the narratives that become part of the fabric of consumption because they provide clues to the fundamental meaning of the consumption.

2) Rituals are an essential part of how human beings create and formalise meaning, and their presence marks out an experience as rich in meaning.

3) Exclusive Product Offering is about allowing consumers to create an experience that asserts and actualises their individuality; to feel and be unique.

4) Relevant Sensorial Oddity is about challenging the senses with something extraordinary, marking an experience as unique.

5) Icons are signs and symbols that demarcate a consumption experience from any other.

6) Tribalism is about the power of a brand experience to inspire the association of like-minded people.

7) Endorsement is about how the meaning and intensity of a brand experience leads to credible people organically endorsing it.

8) Continuity is a correspondence over time between what is promised, what people expect, and what is actually delivered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversational_Capital

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A fantastic book which hopefully every Human Centred Designer has read over their summer holiday is the multi-award winning "Through the Language Glass: why the world looks different in other languages". Guy Deutscher's highly enjoyable exposition calls into question some of our most basic assumptions regarding how language affects the way we see the world. Besides being a 2010 editor's choice of the New York Times and a 2010 book-of-the-year of Economist, Spectator and Financial Times, this enjoyable read now also counts Stephen Fry among its fans and boasts a short listing for science-book-of-the-year of The Royal Society.

http://sites.google.com/site/guydeutscher/through-the-language-glass

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Design & Emotion London 2012 “Out of Control”
11th-14 September 2012 Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design

The organising committee of the 8th International Design & Emotion Conference, London, 11th-14th September 2012, is very pleased to invite you to participate in this conference.

This conference is a forum held every other year where practitioners, academics and industry leaders meet and exchange knowledge and insights concerning the cross-disciplinary field of design and emotion

http://newsevents.arts.ac.uk/event/design-and-emotion-2012/

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The 12 projects of 365 Wellbeing are services or processes in the cities involved, and they include planning the Villa Breda service home for the elderly in Kauniainen to include cultural services, development of the treatment environments and practices in psychiatric care units located in Helsinki, a project to promote electronic transactions in health care, and a project aimed at creating smoke-free public environments. Each project has a team of approximately 15 students, which includes 2 postgraduate doctoral students. Blogs provide a way for people to keep up with and comment on the projects and major milestones will be disseminated through a variety of channels.

Among other things, the project will focus on applying aspects of service design and critical design. The project aims at presenting design as a socially proactive and responsible activity.

http://wdchelsinki2012.fi/en/news/2011-08-24/365-days-wellbeing-%E2%80%93-365...

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Book by Marc Hassenzahl

It takes an experiential approach, putting experience before functionality and leaving behind oversimplified calls for ease, efficiency, and automation or shallow beautification. Instead, it explores what really matters to humans and what it needs to make technology more meaningful.

Visit: http://hassenzahl.wordpress.com/experience-design-technology-for-all-the-right-reasons/

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When practised in its widest form Human Centred Design is a paradigm which transcends simplicity, usability and interaction, becoming a way of achieving experience, aesthetics and lifestyle. Few texts provide a more powerful demonstration of what can be achieved than Graham Pullin's book "Design Meets Disability".

Why shouldn't design sensibilities be applied to hearing aids, prosthetic limbs and communication aids? And why can't approaches such as "experience prototyping" or "critical design" complement clinical trials? Pullin provides convincing answers to these questions and more. Through creative and convincing examples, areas are revealed where Human Centred Designers can achieve products and systems which are not only simple to use, but also aesthetic, stylish and fun.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Meets-Disability-Graham-Pullin/dp/0262162555/r...

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RayMatic is an interactive picture frame which interacts with people through facial expressions and gestures. If the room is too hot, for example, Ray fans himself. By tapping Ray on the shoulder the settings mode is called up to permit the inputting of the desired temperature.

http://code.arc.cmu.edu/projects/raymatic/

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MyCake was set up in 2007 by ex-biologist and financial consultant Sarah Thelwall, who, after working alongside NESTA, saw the need for an online bookkeeping service for artists and designers.

Since few creatives learn software such as Excel while at college the lack of exposure can lead to a lack of confidence regarding numbers and a preference for visualisations rather than spreadsheets.

MyCake addresses this situation by providing a simple visual bookkeeping system which is now in regular use with hundreds of businesses.

http://www.jotta.com/jotta/published/home/article/v2-published/1662/mycake-ge...

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http://www.dexigner.com/news/23413

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A new Policy Booklet from the SEE project, a network of eleven design organisations in Europe, examines how to integrate design into regional, national and European policies. It outlines the role of design in bringing innovative ideas to market and discusses the methods by which this is achieved through a mix of examples and case histories.

http://jump.dexigner.com/news/23417

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