This is the fifth of six articles in our User Experience Maturity series. Read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Last week, we offered a reading list with an eye toward global citizenship.

Today’s titles include classics with a more temporal perspective (both real and imaginary) and a mix of Zen koans and big-data thinking.

As designers, we inhabit the everyday world.

Though our visions might occupy a different realm, we live in the same orbit as those for whom we design. Innovation requires us to understand what came before us, what lies around us, and the part we play in making the world a better place.

Episode Summary

It’s a busy time of year, full of demands and distractions. How to stay healthy, focused, and happy?

Get Enough Sleep

What sleep deprivation does to your brain, in one stunning infographic put together by GE and Mic for BrainMic.

Take a Nap

The folks at Mic are ready to help fight that sleep deprivation by telling you how to take the perfect nap. Really, with scientific evidence to back it up.

Episode Summary

This is the fourth of six articles in our User Experience Maturity series. Read part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Ah, the holidays.

That time of year when DIY-ers want to d.i.e. because they have set the bar too high again. Gifts in a jar, hand-felted laptop cases—carefully crafted artisanal homespun organic and fair trade objects imbued with positive vibrations.

Caution: that last story has seizure-trigger potential.

The Human API

MedTech Boston recently posted an interview with Michael DePalma and Richie Etwaru, founders of The Human API. Their mission is to create a “prevention industry” with a new economic and behavioral model for health. According to the article, The Human API wants to “foster paradigm shift by instilling prevention and early identification health barometers into everyday life.” We should talk.

Why Life Exists

Business Insider this week featured a story about MIT physicist Jeremy England who has derived a mathematical formula that he asserts underlies the theory of evolution by natural selection. I particularly appreciated the explanation of thermodynamic equilibrium using the example of a room-temperature cup of coffee: it will never spontaneously reheat. That is my kind of physics.

Nintype

According to John Brownlee on Fast Company’s CoDesign, “the experience of using Nintype is like playing the craziest game of Dance Dance Revolution ever at some futuristic space rave while out of your gourd on LSD-infused cotton candy.”