UNDP Guide to Deep Listening
This UNDP guide provides step-by-step guidance, practical tools, and hands-on experiences on the process of Deep Listening, including systems mapping, rapid ethnographic research, sensemaking and analysis.
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Developing markets
Are digital IDs a “digital road to hell”?
A report by researchers at New York University warns that biometric and other digital ID systems that are increasingly linked to large-scale human rights violations, especially in the Global South.
Lack of partnership with key community members causes ICT4D projects to fail
The main lesson is that even a nearly imperceptible deviation from the full inclusion of all relevant parties in every aspect of the project can result in large deviations from the expected outcomes
The digital lives of refugees [Research report]
There is growing recognition among donors and humanitarian organisations that mobile technology and mobile network operators (MNOs) have an important role to play in the delivery of dignified aid. This includes providing digital tools that help people affected by crisis…
[Book] The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West
The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West by Payal Arora Harvard University Press, 2019 280 pages A digital anthropologist examines the online lives of millions of people in China, India, Brazil, and across the Middle East – home…
[Report] Consuming Differently, Consuming Sustainably: Behavioural Insights for Policymaking
The objective of this report, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is to shed light on opportunities to strengthen the effectiveness of policies for sustainable consumption in both developed and developing countries. The publication provides evidence-based insights from…
The complexity of plastic bags
As societies face increasingly complex problems, design is emerging as the tool to solve some of Asia’s biggest issues. Through field trips with designers skilled in human-centered design, the team behind Ethnographers’ Field Guide to Innovation, a new series on…
How the World Bank is ‘nudging’ attitudes to health and hygiene
Many of the problems governments and NGOs in developing countries are trying to fix are at least partly behavioural. This is where nudge theory comes in. It is about using insights from behavioural science to identify reasons why people make…
Uday Dandavate: “stupidity wrapped in ignorance” underlies Facebook’s Free Basics program
Uday Dandavate, co-founder and CEO of design research company SonicRim, is appalled about Facebook pushing its Free Basics program in India, which he think is driven by “an attitude that represents stupidity wrapped in ignorance”. He just posted this reflection…
LSE anthropologist: microcredit only adds to poverty
Far from being a panacea, small loans add to poverty and undermine people by saddling them with unsustainable debt, argues anthropologist Dr. Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics: What’s so fascinating about the microfinance craze is that it…
Putting technology in its place
Kentaro Toyama is a former Microsoft Research Executive and now an associate professor at the University of Michigan. Toyama calls himself “a recovering technoholicâ€â€”someone who once was “addicted to a technological way of solving problems.†Five years in India changed…
Design prototypes for Nairobi, Kenya
In 2014, Ericsson and UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) entered a three-year partnership with the intention to collaborate around Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and sustainable urbanization. One of the first explorations was driven by the Ericsson User Experience…
Design fiction personas illustrate possible impact of educational tech
People talk about the future of technology in education as though it’s right around the corner, but most of us get to that corner and see it disappearing around the next. This innovation-obsessed cycle continues as we are endlessly dissatisfied…
World Development Report 2015 explores “Mind, Society, and Behavior”
WASHINGTON, December 2, 2014 — Development policies based on new insights into how people actually think and make decisions will help governments and civil society achieve development goals more effectively. A richer and more accurate understanding of human behavior can…
Society’s sandbox
Steve Daniels, director at Makeshift magazine, explains why informal economies are the world’s biggest — and most overlooked — design research opportunity. “Informal economies are society’s sandbox, where early experimentation can take place freely. In the same way that thoughtless acts inspire us to…
The challenge of connecting the unconnected
Every time we return to or sign up for an Internet service (e.g. Facebook, Google, Gmail, YouTube, etc.), writes Hassan Baig on TechCrunch, we rely on what UX experts call a “mental model†for navigating through the choices. “A mental…
Using HCD to make mobile money relevant
Earlier in 2014, two consecutive Mondato Insights examined the role of Human Centered Design (HCD) in enhancing the user experience and closing the gap between registered and active users of Mobile Money. In the six months since then, reports Mondato,…
Call to bring refugee-led innovation into humanitarian work
The humanitarian sector must lift barriers to user-led innovation by refugee communities if it is to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world, says a new report, Humanitarian Innovation: The State of the Art, published by the UN Office for…
Financial consumer protection: 5 lessons from behavioral research
In its new Focus Note, Applying Behavioral Insights in Consumer Protection Policy, CGAP (a unit affiliated with the Worldbank) presents a summary of the growing evidence from consumer and behavioral research for consumer protection policy on four topics—disclosure and transparency;…
Behavioral approaches to product innovation at the Base of the Pyramid
Alexandra Fiorillo, Principal of GRID Impact, writes that if we want to achieve full financial inclusion, we cannot simply offer more financial products and services to more people and hope they need, want, like, and use them. Instead, she writes,…