Nicolas Nova

Nicolas is research and consultant at the Near Future Laboratory.As a curator at Lift, he is taking care of the program of the conferences, finding speakers and working with them on their talks.
Nicolas' research work is split between user experience studies and foresight research. He runs user studies that aim at uncovering people's behavior when using technologies to turn them into insights for designers, engineers and marketers (recommendations, constraints, ideas, inspiration, limits). For that matter, methods employed ranges from ethnography to conducting tests and experiments. His work in foresight is about scanning/analysis of signals about the future of various technologies. In particular, he watches the underlying factors, needs and motivations that shape the diffusion of technologies.

The domains he covers range from mobile/urban/location-based applications to tangible and gestural interactions, social computing and gaming.

His blog is about future technologies/practices and their implications. One can think of it as a compendium of material he runs across and that he finds interesting, challenging, relevant to his user experience work or simply intriguing.

Nicolas has a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL, Lausanne) where he also worked as a research scientist at the Media and Design Lab. He also holds an undergraduate degree in Cognitive Sciences and a M.Sc. in Human-Computer Interaction.

He speaks and lectures widely in conferences and institutions such as O'Reilly's Etech, Reboot, PicNic, GDC, Google, Nokia, Cisco, Mobile Monday, etc.