Jun 13, 2024Join Jennifer Fraser and Akendi's Scott Plewes to explore quantitave personas. In some UX circles personas have fallen out of favour. This is a byproduct of many personas being poorly written and not being rooted in research and data. Instead of bringing value to conversations about journeys and use scenarios, these personas instead led to stereotyping and the amplification of bias. So, where do we go from here?

Jul 1, 2023 We are pleased to announce that on 1st July Akendi UK Ltd is entering into a new and exciting partnership with Keen Design of The Netherlands. Together we have formed a new company, Keen Design Ltd which will leverage the strengths of both companies to provide User Experience Design services to a wider range of clients in the UK. Akendi UK Ltd will continue to operate within its established markets, offering UX services with domain knowledge in semiconductors, healthcare and telecommunications in the UK and abroad.

Jun 15, 2023 Join Jennifer Fraser and Akendi's Scott Plewes at 9am EST to push the boundaries of Quant and QualUX. We all know the expression “garbage in, garbage out”. But how do you systematically and rigorously avoid the garbage in? While we don't know the universal answer to that, we have identified 3 common areas where QuantUX might be at risk of getting off on the wrong foot, and where a little QualUX, and some systems thinking, could work with QuantUX to avoid the problem:

1. One of these things is not like the other: Combining distinct sets (and we don't mean from different databases); we mean sets like from your second year probability course (reinforcing the model you have eg: medical data sets based on men being applied to women ie: sports helmets; ADHD)
2. Sorry, that's not my table: Data generated for one process, used to evaluate a different process (or system)
3. Uh, over here, you forgot about me!: Ignoring contextual data in building your math or stats model We'll go through these situations with examples, and show you how to avoid these trap, making sure all that math will be worth it!

Apr 28, 2023 Akendi, a global user experience research, design, and strategy team, is proud to announce the opening of our New York City office in celebration of our 15th anniversary. This opening marks an exciting time for Akendi as we expand our presence and continue to deliver exceptional user research, strategy and UX design services to a wide range of clients, including in the AI, fintech and healthcare sectors.

Mar 28, 2023 Join our CSO Scott Plewes who will take a look at how UX propagates within organizations using a viral model (a modified SIR model to be more precise). He'll look at such questions as: Does it simply need more time? Is the transmission rate/function the problem? Is part of the organization effectively “inoculated” against UX? And how, when and where to track progress while getting UX into an organization isn't as simple as solving a set of differential equations, he hopes to show you that doing just that might be a useful step in getting insights into what might work and what might not.

Nov 29, 2022 Join Akendi's Tedde van Gelderen who will participate in an in-person panel discussion organized by TPMA and TorCHI. The partnership between product and design is more important than ever solving rewarding business challenges for users such as data rich problem spaces and complex interactivities. Let's explore how product management and user experience practitioners work best together solving problems with a human centered approach. We'll take a look at experiences within firms and those servicing firms as well as from the different disciplines perspectives. All delivering satisfying impactful experiences.

Jun 8, 2022 Fans of the critically acclaimed Netflix series Squid Games perhaps didn't see the correlation between the challenges and User Experience, but Akendi's Chief Strategy Officer did! You can hear Scott Plewes' unique view with Jennifer Fraser from Macadamian at the Quant UX Con 2022 in Sunnyvale, California. Together they are presenting Crossing the Glass Bridge: What Squid Games can Teach us about Systems Thinking, Data Science & UX. QUXCON22 (June 8-9) is the first unconference dedicated to Quantitative UX Research and will be a hybrid of live and virtual sessions.

Oct 20, 2021 Data Science can be instrumental in understanding where and how products and services can further business and customer goals. But with all the big data out there, how do you know where to look? How to categorize the data? Or what's most likely relevant? Join Scott Plewes, Chief Strategy Officer at Akendi in this talk where he will share how UX practices can help inform data science, and how data science can return the favour.

Sep 28, 2021 Join Akendi's Scott Plewes and Jennifer Fraser from Macadamian in a talk on physics and mathematics that are so connected that sometimes it's not obvious they are completely different disciplines. The history of math and physics has a few Emmy Noethers who made a fundamental connection between the two disciplines. Where is that connection between Data Science/math and Interaction Design? It is inevitable that Data Science, AI and other math heavy approaches find their way more and more into Interaction Design. This transformation is coming. In this talk we will explore ways to connect Data Science and Interaction Design using Systems Thinking. This approach makes them partners instead of feuding neighbours, and has some pragmatic and clear consequences for Interaction Design deliverables and processes.

Sep 7, 2021 Akendi's Leo Poll chairs an online event hosted by Cambridge Wireless on how to effectively apply AI in User Experiences. The event's speakers from @BBC and @University of the Arts London answering questions such as 'What impact do the apparent human qualities have on our expectations?' and ‘What shape or form might the interaction take to improve communication between the AI and the human?’

If you’re interested, you can join as Leo Poll's guest with code SIGCHAMPGUEST