There’s been much ado this week about the debut of the Microsoft HoloLens and the renewed promise of augmented reality. The vision of a digitally enhanced world, with entertainment, gaming, and work options integrated spatially into our day-to-day existence is powerful stuff. But the disappointing adoption of the first major foray into the space, with Google Glass, has left us skeptical. Will augmented reality via glass or lens be relegated to specialist applications, like health and manufacturing? Or will consumers flock to the product that gets the user experience right? In this episode of The Digital Life, we examine the UX of augmented reality and discuss the promise and potential perils of the Microsoft HoloLens.

Health is one of just a few universal human needs: From the moment we’re born to the moment we die, our health is at the forefront of our lives. Despite this inherent importance, American healthcare remains woefully out of balance.

We spend too much and get too little for our hard-earned dollars. According to a recent Medicare report, healthcare spending is projected to grow 1.1% faster than the rest of the economy during 2013- 2023, with its share of the GDP rising from 17.2% in 2012 to 19.3% in 2023. What else should we expect from a system that first prioritizes the administrative and business aspects, then clinical care, with the patient experience and patient / provider relationship placing a distant third?

The key to re-balancing the US healthcare delivery system and making progress toward reducing future costs, may lie in better understanding not its administration or even clinical care — while these both are important — but rather, the day-to-day needs of its patients. In this episode of The Digital Life, we dig into some of the challenges in designing for the patient experience.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES),  after a few years flirting with irrelevance, is on the rise again, as the wild technology and gadgets from the 2015 conference captured the imagination of consumers and media pundits alike. A big and important theme of CES 2015 was the Internet of Things, with major companies like Samsung taking IoT strategy for a new connected world. In this episode of the Digital Life we discuss some of the cool tech from CES, like Intel’s Curie chip, and how it relates to the IoT, wearables and the future of UX.

In this episode of The Digital Life, the first of 2015, we discuss the design of time, and in particular, the rampant busyness of the digital age — what has been described as the time poverty of knowledge workers.

It seems like the work of the digital worker is never done. Software helps users complete tasks more efficiently, but there are two sides to that coin. As we get things done, we are expected to do even more things, adding to that eternal sense of busyness. How do we separate work from play, busyness from leisure in the digital age? Join us as we explore that question.