Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Informal networks are the links and exchanges that bind people together, explains Dr Karen Stephenson, a corporate anthropologist and an expert on social networks in business. She describes the challenge of creating a new transparent networked economy as, “a gargantuan…
More than a month before Business Week published an article about ‘trickle-up innovation’ (that I reported on earlier this week), Fast Company had already delved into the issue of how innovation now trickles up from emerging to advanced economies. “So…
The website of Microsoft Research seemed to have been redesigned recently and contains some nice interviews: Buxton putting design into MIX Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, who delivered a keynote address in Las Vegas on March 18 during MIX09, the…
The Economist argues that the demise of a popular but unsustainable business model now seems inevitable: The idea that you can give things away online, and hope that advertising revenue will somehow materialise later on, undoubtedly appeals to users, who…
The March issue of Metropolis is focused on products with the theme of Good Design. Several articles are fitting quite well with the topic of this blog: What is good design? By Peter Hall The 20th-century definition of “good design 
Business Week reports on how some companies like General Electric, Nokia, and others are reversing the traditional process where products are created in rich nations and repackaged for emerging ones: “This month, General Electric’s (GE) health-care division will begin marketing…
Over the last few months, Franco Papeschi and Tory Dunn of the Vodafone User Experience team have been doing work on a set of principles and guidelines to support the formation of ethical / sustainable social enterprise services. They were…
Reena Jana of Business Week reports from SXSW on the activities of Moshe Tamssot, Kraft’s VP of New Services. “Formerly of American Express and G.E., Tamssot was hired about a year and a half ago to help Kraft “transform†itself…
Consulting firm McKinsey has just launched a new website, called What Matters, that is an extensive collection of essays and interviews with opinion formers around the world. The content is categorized into ten big topics: Biotechnology, Climate Change, Credit Crisis,…
The Independent today introduced SustainIT, the first in a series of three monthly supplements on ICT and globalisation. Some of the articles in the supplement (especially those not written by sponsor BT staff) are a treat: Corporate social responsibility is…
The Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India seeks to address the needs and aspirations of people in emerging-market countries, including those who are increasingly consuming computing technologies and services, as well as those for whom access to…
The session devoted to Design Thinking was my personal favourite of the entire 2009 LIFT conference. Beyond the engineers and business’ discourse about the future, what is it designers can propose? What sort of alternatives are they envisioning? What’s the…
The business channel of The Atlantic Online published this weekend the first of two articles by Grant McCracken on the implications of the recession on consumer habits. This article just deals with three variations of a mere quantitative change. The…
Business Week reports on how a nascent industry involving the likes of Google and Nokia is pinpointing the movements and behaviors of millions of cell-phone users. “Marketers have long dreamed of zeroing in on shoppers, whether in a mall or…
In an interview with Nokia’s IdeasProject renowned cyberlaw scholar Jonathan Zittrain talks about how ubiquitous human computing, which he describes as the ability to treat the human mind as a fungible resource, has enabled companies to attack any number of…
In an interview with Nokia’s IdeasProject, social media innovator Laura Fitton talks about the most basic of human connections: our immediate physical community. This is the kind of intimacy that is built up over numerous ‘unimportant,’ low-level interactions…with the neighbours…
Programmer Michael Nygard thinks that the quality about some software that inspires love in their users, is totally devoid in enterprise software. “The best you can ever say about enterprise software is when it doesn’t get in the way of…
Ken Anderson, a senior researcher and anthropologist at Intel, wrote a short article for the Harvard Business Review on the importance of corporate ethnography: “Corporate ethnography isn’t just for innovation anymore. It’s central to gaining a full understanding of your…
The Nokia Siemens Network website and its forum site “Unite” contain a wealth of valuable articles and background papers: A huge amount of articles and whitepapers on basic internet access for the ‘next billion’ customers (see also here). An entire…