TOTAL EXPERIENCE explores designing for experience: its theory, its practice, and how designing for experiences affects us socially and in our personal lives.
CO-AUTHORS
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
Check out IdeaFlow by Renee Hopkins Callahan for the latest on innovation trends and practices. On her radar screen: the creativity of bipolar children, Democrats' call for an "Innovation Agenda", grocery store innovations, creating a culture of business experimentation, and more.
Martijn van Welie
Remember the name ("ij" and all). This guy is quietly making a fabulous contribution to the interactive design industry. His site, www.welie.com, comes with the byline, "...patterns in Interaction Design". While that in itself might not be significant, on his home page he invites you to notify him if anything appears to be missing.
At the time, I had stumbled onto his site looking for calendaring/events samples. He didn't have any, so I did my own research. I prepared a 'report' to serve as a guide for my visual design colleague and forwarded that report to Marijn. I know what my report looked like, it was nothing like the results he came up with in just a short period of time (see Event Calendar pattern).
The bottom line here is, anyone and everyone who finds themselves doing some research on a 'best practice' idea, send what you find to Martijn -- he'll do something valuable with it.
[*Paula*]