Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Socio-cultural change
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…
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.’…
AP using ethnography to rethink news in the digital age
Last year, Associated Press commissioned Baltimore-based Context-Based Research Group to conduct an ethnographic research study focusing on the news consumption habits of young digital consumers in six cities around the world. The drive for this research came from the recognition…
Library of Congress lecture series on “digital natives”
The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is organising a four-part lecture series on “Digital Natives,” referring to the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part of their lives, especially the young…
Web habits on mobile differ from those on computer
Business Week reports on how Americans flock to different sites when they use their mobile phones to go online, than when they surf from their computers. “Welcome to the weekend Web, where people are spending a bigger slice of time…
Handbook of Mobile Communications Studies
Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies Edited by James E. Katz Afterword by Manuel Castells MIT Press, 2008 Hardcover, 486 pages Abstract Mobile communication has become mainstream and even omnipresent. It is arguably the most successful and certainly the most rapidly…
Design anthropology: What can it add to your design practice?
Design Anthropology takes user research to a whole new level. Dr. Elizabeth Tunstall explains in an essay on Adobe Design Center’s Think Tank how this emerging field can help to redefine design by exploring what it means to be human.…
New Demos paper: UK Confidential
Demos, the UK think tank for “everyday democracy”, has published its latest pamphlet on privacy. “The transformation of our social lives and the increase in surveillance and technological innovations have led us to believe that privacy is in the midst…
Alcatel-Lucent podcasts on user trends and millennials
Podtech has published a number of audio interviews with senior staff of Alcatel-Lucent on their thinking about user-centric experience, as it informs their applications and solutions. Exploiting end-user trends to create value with sticky services – The “Me” network for…
Book review: Groundswell
Today I read Groundswell: winning a world transformed by social technologies (alternate site – amazon page) by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (analysts at Forrester). [I was sent a review copy].   It is a book aimed senior managers in charge…
Recent immigrants driving advanced mobile phone use, both in Europe and in the US
Last year, The Economist published an article about ethnographic user research at Swisscom. One of the findings it highlighted was that immigrant workers are the most advanced users of communications technology: “It is migrants, rather than geeks, who have emerged…
CHI 2008: a selection on emerging markets
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…