Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
A prototype of a cheap and robust laptop for pupils has been welcomed as an “expression of global solidarity” by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The green machine was showcased for the first time by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte at the…
MIT has established seven so-called Fabrication Labs in places as distant as Norway and Ghana. Each lab has tool sets that, costing about $25,000, would be out of the reach of most fledgling inventors. Advocates of such “Fab Labs” think…
Usability is an approach to product development that incorporates direct user feedback throughout the development cycle in order to reduce costs and create products and tools that meet user needs. India may have achieved global recognition as an IT…
Bruce Nussbaum, who writes a column on innovation and design for Business Week, reflects today on the IDSA/HP Design About on BOP–the bottom of the pyramid. “Gary Elliot, the vice president of brand marketing for HP, talked about “Me-ism” in…
Cell phones made up 74.6 percent of all African phone subscriptions last year, says the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union. Cell phone subscriptions jumped 67 percent south of the Sahara in 2004, compared with 10 percent in cell-phone-saturated Western Europe, according…
Voices in Your Hand is a humanitarian project, sponsored by Philips Electronics, to create a simple, voice-email handset and cheap audio services to help urban shantytowns and isolated rural areas in the developing world, overcoming illiteracy or minority languages. The…
The growing role of wireless communication in international economic development was the focus of a major research workshop organised by the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication. The October 7-8, 2005 gathering of the world’s leading global communication researchers included…
The Sacred World Foundation was founded several years ago by Ranjit Makkuni, a visionary and designer and a former leading researcher at Xerox PARC. It is a state of the art research and design think tank, located in New Delhi,…
The HP research on Innovation for Emerging Economies is done from Bangalore, India, where they tackle such issues as the access divide, the communications divide, the need for contextual design, the language divide and the lack of sustainable business ecologies…
Intel’s People and Practices Research Lab engages the techniques of social science (including anthropology and ethnography) and design in order develop a deep understanding of how people live and work. This knowledge is then translated into insights for guiding corporate…
India will face a shortage of managerial and marketing skills while dealing with Western customers, creating a significant opportunity for European and American workers. A recent report from researchers Evalueserve estimates that 120,000 continental European workers will be needed in…
Cellphones are already used for music downloads, text messaging, and video games. But here in South Africa, they are beginning to perform another function: personal piggy bank. With the new technology, a grandmother in rural area can receive money from…
Africa is the world’s fastest-growing cellphone market, a boom that has taken the industry by surprise. From 1999 through 2004, the number of mobile subscribers in Africa jumped to 76.8 million, from 7.5 million, an average annual increase of 58…
CKS (Center for Knowledge Societies) is the first and only usability and interaction design research practice in and for South-East Asia. The company, which is based in Bangalore and New Delhi, affords design driven insight into the contextual use of…
Graduate students from top schools in the United States, Europe and Asia, most from master of business administration programs, are vying for internships at India’s biggest private companies. For many, outsourcing companies are the destinations of choice. Read full…
In a bid to eventually sell more chips, Intel has set up four new offices in Bangalore, Cairo, Sao Paulo and Shanghai that are staffed with anthropologists and engineers to help design computers with features for emerging markets. The four…
Indigenous peoples are using both digital and narrative media to preserve and express their cultures and beliefs. Often this involves adapting media and technology to what the people need, rather than pushing them into a pre-digested or “mainstream” model of…
Ethiopia, one of Africa’s poorest countries, is spending one tenth of its GDP every year on IT. Over the next five years, the government plans to invest more than $100m (£56m) in public sector computers. It aims to equip hundreds…
Sick of hearing about design and China? So were Bruce Tharp and Stephanie Munson. They got on a plane and went there. Read full story Related: the top 10 myths and truths about design in China
High tech’s biggest name are keen to set up research operations in India — and not just because of the cheap labor. Sarnoff is one of many Western tech research outfits that have turned to India for its combination…