Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Jonathan Donner of Microsoft Research India and Camilo Andres Tellez of the London School of Economics and Political Science have together written a paper on mobile banking and economic development that just got published in the December issue of the…
At the beginning of last year, we at Experientia worked with a Belgian regional authority on developing the concept for a new design centre, called the Transformation Factory (read more about it in this paper). Now also Business Week’s Bruce…
Last week, the World Bank’s CGAP hosted a roundtable and webinar on the important topic of how mobile phone banking can deliver a range of financial services to poor people and change lives for the better (see also this blog…
Increasingly our personal records and social lives are being privatised, with normal people having very little recourse when these private services are being cancelled or the companies themselves disappear (as most companies eventually do). Currently the country where I live…
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded UC Irvine a $1.7 million grant to create a new research institute focused on the growing use of mobile technology in providing banking and financial services to people in developing countries. The…
Bruce Sterling looked at the KashKlash questionnaire results and condensed it all into four narrative future scenarios. An excerpt from the last one: But then his son — who had gone into “cloud design,†God help him — started referring…
Mobile advertising specialist Alan Moore, founder of the communication consultancy SMLXL, was asked by Microsoft US to write a paper on the future of the mobile society. It is available as a whitepaper. “When it comes to mobile telecommunications, it…
A year ago I wrote about Adam Greenfield’s pamphlet Urban computing and its discontents. Adam’s pamphlet was the firsts in a nine-part series that aims to explore the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: How are our experience…
If you are interested in bottom-up innovation within emerging markets using mobile phones, the recent MobileActive08 conference (more here) in Johannesburg, South Africa generated a wealth of materials. Below are some videos: Mobiles and news gathering at Al Jazeera Safdar…
We all live in a digital world, although it means different things to different people. In her inaugural public lecture as Adelaide’s Thinker in Residence, Intel’s Genevieve Bell will explore how digital technology is shaping our lives, our culture, and…
McGraw-Hill is pitching me books and now and then I request a copy because the subject matter interests me greatly. Don Tapscott’s “Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World” is such a book. It explains how…
The New York Times reports on the privacy issues of our digital communication habits: “A vast sea of digital information [is] being recorded by an ever thicker web of sensors, from phones to GPS units to the tags in office…
Ethan Zuckerman, a researcher on the impact of information technology in developing nations, reports on his blog on a recent panel discussion, organised by the Open Society Institute, on new media in authoritarian societies. The discussion started from the premise…
Some months ago I announced the publication of the book Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. The book, which grew out of the digital natives project at Harvard University’s Berkman Center,…
“Patenting will be seen as a limitation of human rights.” “There are no cheaters ’cause in my system cheating is the most positive activity.” “Faulty residents are charged with negligence and sent to live in ‘financially active’ communities.” “[The will…
Deep Search was a conference on the social, cultural and political implications of search, that took place on 8 November 2008 in Vienna, Austria. “Deep Search” wants to look at the social and political dimensions of how we navigate the…
A review of the Shaping the Global Design Agenda conference by Mark Vanderbeeken (Experientia) and Marcia Caines (Cluster) The days after the American presidential election are clearly a period of reflection. Newspapers and magazines are full of thoughtful articles, and…
The current issue of Vodafone’s Receiver magazine — on space and location — is one of the best yet. Every week the editors invite another thoughtful thinker to contribute an essay on the topic, and this week the honour goes…
Over 250 participants are expected to attend the first European regional conference of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) next month. From December 4-6, 2008, the beautiful baroque city of Turin, 2008 World Design Capital, will host the conference, themed “Usability…
The Denmark-based Center for Sustainable Innovation (blog) is embarking on a new combined research and consultancy project about People Centred Innovation with Base of the Pyramid. The project, which is funded by the Danish Network for Research Based Userdriven Innovation…