Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
On International Women’s Day, the GSMA mWomen Programme released a study called “Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid,” reports MobileActive.org. Drawn from 2,500 interviews with women (aged 16-64 in both rural…
MobileActive has posted an in-depth new case study that focuses on evaluating mobile health interventions. Written by Kate Otto, the case study looks at testing the efficacy of using mobile phones in health care in Ethiopia. A team of researchers…
Tricia Wang of UCSD’s Department of Sociology and Barry Brown of the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Center Stockholm presented the paper “Ethnography of the telephone: Changing uses of communication technology in village life” at MobileHCI 2011. Abstract While mobile HCI…
Two interesting posts by Danish photographer and visual ethnographer Jacob Langvad Nilsson: Business ethnography as a key strategy for international brands When penetrating new markets, two critical mistakes seem to repeat themselves. The first mistake involves thinking that because it…
Reboot, a service design firm working in the fields of governance and international development, recently spent time with three marginalized groups in China — the rural poor, ethnic minorities, and migrant workers — to research the impacts of three decades…
In an article for DMLCentral Nishant Shah, founder and director of research for the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, wants to explore new ways of thinking about the Digital Native. “Based on my research on young people in the…
Hivos (The Netherlands) and the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) have consolidated their three year knowledge inquiry into the field of youth, technology and change in a four book collective “Digital AlterNatives with a cause?â€. This collaboratively produced…
Dr. Kusum Gopal, an anthropologist who has served as a United Nations (UN) Expert and Technical Advisor to government agencies, speaks to The Chronicle on challenges facing developing countries and offers solutions. Q: You mention Ethnographic analysis – what…
Applying Anthropology in the Global Village Christina Wasson (Editor); Mary Odell Butler (Editor); Jacqueline Copeland-Carson (Editor) 288 pp. – Nov, 2011 Left Coast Press Hardback (978-1-61132-085-5) Paperback (978-1-61132-086-2) [Amazon link] Synopsis The realities of the globalized world have revolutionized traditional…
The mobile phone is now a ubiquitous item even among the world’s poorest, and in fact over 70% of the mobile phones on the planet are in developing countries. With this in mind, a new Mobile Learning Toolkit has been…
In a long post on reBoot, Panthea Lee has laid out some basic principles, approaches, and tools of design research so public institutions can better understand how it serves their work. As pointed out by Tricia Wang, the article is…
Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS, reports on how Activate 2011, the one-day conference in London on technology and development, made clear it’s not just about technology, but who uses it and how. “As the day drew to a…
The World Health Organisation has just issued a major (free) report on mHealth, entitled “mHealth: New horizons for health through mobile technologies“. Abstract Only five years ago who would have imagined that today a woman in sub-Saharan Africa could use…
The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World by Cyrus Farivar Rutgers University Press May 2011 Abstract Through the lens of culture, The Internet of Elsewhere looks at the role of the Internet as a catalyst in…
Lessons in innovation that Vodafone learns from its work in sub-Saharan Africa will be applied to its projects around the world. For Vodafone, sub-Saharan Africa is proving to be the testbed for R&D development that will transition to the rest…
Targeting women with mobile phones and mobile-based projects can bring great benefits and opportunities, as MobileActive outlined in Part 1 of its series on women and mobiles [see also this blog post]. But, there is a “darker side†to this…
As mobile penetration increases across the developing world, the entry of mobile phones in the hands of women causes reactions. In many cases, mobile phone ownership empowers women in myriad ways: economic gains, increased access to information, greater autonomy and…
A convergence of historical circumstance and an increase in innovative mobile applications may make Africa the first post-PC continent. Low investment in wired telecommunication infrastructure has driven increased mobile penetration, creating a user base that supports a rise in…
LiveMint.com, the Indian online partner publication of the Wall Street Journal, reports on India’s first Design!publiC conclave “on design thinking and the challenge of government innovation,” which took place in New Delhi on 18 March. The event — which was…
Experientia intern, Ane Eguiguren, together with her team partner François Verez, has been announced the winner of the INDEX: Design Challenge 2010. The UNICEF challenge encouraged young designers to envision solutions to education in developing countries. UNICEF in collaboration with…