Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
The New Scientist has published an interview with Nokia user researcher Jan Chipchase: “Most of us take mobile phones for granted. Not so for Jan Chipchase, a design researcher for Nokia, who travels the globe exploring how people use their…
Dawn Nafus, an Intel anthropologist and her team have created Intel’s “Technology Metabolism Index,” which shows how citizens of countries’ tech adoption exceeds or lags what one would expect given their levels of wealth. The map (hi-res pdf) shows fast…
A new report, Perceived economic benefits of telecom access at the Bottom of the Pyramid in emerging Asia, takes a new look at the effect of mobile phones on the lives of people at the so-called ‘bottom of the pyramid.’…
Vodafone receiver magazine’s new issue is about “Emerging Markets“. But it’s a shortened issue: Vodafone thought that launching a whole new issue, with all articles of all authors at once, might be too much to swallow. Therefore they decided to…
Nokia has over 300 designers worldwide, and ships over 1.2 million products everyday. So Allan Chochinov of Core77 was anxious to attend Nokia’s recent London design event, offering a curtainpeek at their design process, ethnographic wanderings, sustainability initiatives, and plans…
The three-day Changing the Change conference, which is about the role of design research in sustainable change and scheduled for 10-12 July in Turin, Italy, looks to become very interesting indeed. The list of invited speakers and discussants features Bill…
Here is my selection on emerging markets related papers presented at CHI 2008. (Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available) Re-placing faith: reconsidering the secular-religious use divide in the United States and Kenya [abstract] Authors: Susan P. Wyche…
Business Week reports on how online aps such as Sports Tracker and Nokia Beta Lab, allow the Finnish handset giant to gather customers’ ideas from around the world, and virtually for free. “Sports Tracker is an example of how Nokia…
Nokia press release (dated 29 April 2008): Nokia’s advanced design team today shared “Homegrown”, a long term research project looking at how Nokia can help people make more sustainable choices. The team is exploring specific environmental and social issues including…
IBM press release: At the 10th anniversary commemoration of IBM’s India Research Lab, the company this week unveiled a new initiative to bring even more features and functions to mobile devices as they continue to rival the PC as the…
Daniel Lende wrote a good annotated summary of the New York Times magazine feature of Jan Chipchase, on the “Neuroanthropology” blog. He thinks the “world is going to see a transformation through the convergence of four factors: people-driven processes, change…
The Chipchase hype has hit the New York Times Magazine. Nokia’s user anthropologist Jan Chipchase is becoming very popular. Just a day after the Economist, now one of the world’s top newspapers has published a 6,000 word feature on him,…
Business Week reports on how Indians are using their cell phones as a “one-stop shop” for everything from e-mailing to banking. A growing group of Indian consumers who want more from their phone than just talk time. […] Indians spent…
The International Herald Tribune reports on a new very cheap mobile phone for emerging markets: It looks a bit like a child’s toy, a walkie-talkie circa 1975, a cheap plastic throwback to the good old days when telephones were made…
The Washington Post reflects on what it means that there is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth. “From essentially zero, we’ve passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6…
Kiwanja.net is a very interesting initiative, led by anthropologist Ken Banks, helping local, national and international non-profit organisations in developing countries (mostly in Africa) make better use of information and communications technology in their work. The Kiwanja website also has…
Nicole Ferraro investigates in a long article in Information Week if cell phones and other inexpensive wireless devices can close the digital divide in the world’s poorest countries. “For the developing world, the Internet experience is going to be a…
In a previous post I wrote how it would be a good idea for the publishers of Interactions Magazine to make the magazine content available online. It just happened. Here is the announcement by Scott Delman, ACM Group Publisher: ACM…
Jan Chipchase, the well-known Nokia anthropologist, has just published a blog post, an executive summary, and a paper (ppt, 7 mb, 70 pages) that explores mobile phone sharing in emerging markets and how it works. “Much of the growth in the telecommunications…
Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase reports on just published research from Microsoft Research India‘s Jonathan Donner that explores the practice of beeping – making intentional missed calls. The paper draws on field research from Rwanda in 2004, categorising three different types…