The slow suit experience
A few days ago I was part of a panel at the Biella Chamber of Commerce. Biella is a small city in the North of Italy, that became wealthy because of its textile industry, and is now coming to terms…
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Culture
Ageing in England
If you are interested in the elderly, two interesting UK studies were published this week. The first report, “Living in the 21st century: older people in England” (press release – study download) presents a major longitudinal study (316 pages) about…
Podcast: Hello everybody… Clay Shirky at Demos
Demos, the UK “think tank for everyday democracy”, hosted a conversation with Clay Shirky a few days ago. He was in conversation with Demos Associate and School of Everything CEO Paul Miller, talking around the ideas thrown up by Here…
How users are changing the rules of innovation
NESTA, the UK innovation organisation, has published a research report and policy briefing on how users are changing the rules of innovation. User-led innovation – where users play an active part in the development of new or improved products and…
From favelas to townships: mobile use in low-income populations
MobileActive reports on two studies that explore how low-income people use mobile technology in Brazil and South Africa. This rise of mobile phone use by low-income and so-called ‘base-of-the-pyramid’ users raises a number of questions. Are low-income people using mobile…
Changing the Change – a call to action
I just wrote a long article on Core77 on the international three-day Changing the Change conference “on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability”, which just ended here in Turin, Italy.
From ubiquitous technology to human context (videos)
On Wednesday 2 July Nicolas Nova (LIFT lab) moderated a session at the World Congress of Architecture in Turin, Italy, entitled “From ubiquitous technology to human context – Technology applied to architecture and design: does it solve problems or create…
Book: Nudge
WorldChanging book review: “Authored by two Univeristy of Chicago heavy-hitters, Economist Richard Thaler and Law Professor Cass Sunstein, Nudge explores the policy implications of behavioral economics, a field describing the irrationalities of human behavior. Taking findings from psychology (e.g. people…
European Council of Ministers approves 600m euro project for new digital solutions for the elderly
Mito Akiyoshi: the digital divide does not vanish with the mobile
The great people at the splendid French blog InternetActu have conducted an interview with the Japanese sociologist, Mito Akiyoshi. Since InternetActu is published in French, and I have been pushing them time and again to make the rich contents of…
The doobly, the podger, the twitcher or the melly?
The remote control seems to have inspired a great creative flowering of new words in colloquial UK English: “The English Project cites “doobly”, but there are an awful lot more, including “podger”, “blipper”, “twitcher” and “melly”. A friend of mine…
Interview: the cellphone anthropologist
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…
Is Google making us stupid?
Nicholas Carr, the author of “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google” and “Does IT Matter?” wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly on what the internet is doing to our brains: it is chipping away our…
China and the next billion customers
The second article in Vodafone’s newly updated Receiver Magazine is about China and the next billion customers. Author Jared Braiterman seeks to understand mobile phones play in China’s fast-paced development and explores why China become a centre of passionate technology…
Intel anthropologists find keys to tech adoption
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…
French ethnographic study on teens and mobiles
The fact that young people are more adapt at using the latest technologies has less to do with expertise, experience or access, but more with their “non-dramatic” relation with these technologies, as evidenced by the way they deal with small…
Hurdle for future cities: human habits
The Christian Science Monitor published an interesting article that voices scepticism on whether the planned carbon-neutral city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi could indeed become a sustainable urban innovation model globally: “The project has done little to impress green city…
One month to go to the World Congress of Architecture
In a month’s time Turin, Italy will host the XXIII edition of the World Congress of Architecture, promoted by the UIA (International Union of Architects). More than 4000 participants have registered already. There are over 70 sessions with more than…
New report looks at economic benefits of mobile phones for those at the bottom of the pyramid
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.’…
Off Congress, an impressive series of events on design and architecture in Turin, Italy
If you are considering coming to Turin, Italy this year, you may want to come at the end of June and/or the beginning of July. Not only is that the time when two important conferences — the World Congress of…