Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Focusing on improving and innovating services is a smart way to foster economic growth. Jeneanne Rae reports from the Netherlands. “Recognizing the need to steer the typical conversation about innovation away from technology and products toward services, Minister of Economic…
Videos of the November 23, 2009 Diabetes Innovation Fair at the IIT Institute of Design are now on the web. Graduate students presented design innovation proposals from three courses: Platform Strategy, Persuasive Technology, and Wellness Experience. Each presentation was followed…
Barbara Pantuso, director of healthcare innovation at frog design, reports on health outcomes and financial implications of Evidence-Based Design (EBD). “It’s similar to how healthcare professionals make treatment decisions and how insurance companies determine coverage. They are heavily influenced by…
Cellphone-based money transfer is transforming the prospects of people who live without bank accounts or ATMs – and they don’t need a smartphone. The New Scientist reports. “It works like this: you pay cash to your local agent – often…
The Design Council and the Department of Health partner to combat the spread of infection in U.K. hospitals. David Sokol reports in Metropolis Magazine. “Patients go into hospitals to be cured of what ails them, but the ugly truth is…
The BBC reports on Janala, a service that is revolutionising the teaching of English in Bangladesh using simple mobile technology. “Janala – it means Window – is a service run by the BBC World Service Trust and funded by the…
The growing use of branchless banking channels over the coming years is inevitable in most countries. But it’s far less certain whether large numbers of the unbanked poor will use these alternative channels for financial services beyond payments, such as…
Philips reports that its new Lifeline Cordless Phone System has been designed “to enable the frail and elderly to maintain independence, despite their changing physical needs.” “The Philips Lifeline Cordless Phone System is a cordless home phone with a medical…
The Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at the University of California, Irvine, headed by Bill Maurer, Professor of Anthropology, aims to foster a community of inquiry and practice on new forms of money and financial technology among…
On the 4th annual Data Protection day (28th January 2010) the European Commission announced the intention to reform the 1995 European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive 95 “Our privacy faces new challenges: behavioural advertising can use your internet history to…
Ethnographer Tricia Wang wrote an excellent and long comment on why Google is having troubles in China: While unfortunate that Google.CN may be shutting down, my ethnographic work in China revealed five things that aren’t being told in the current…
Arup Australasia has published a three-part technical overview on its research blog of its ‘urban sensing via mobile phones’ project. The research project, in collaboration with the UTS Centre for Real-Time Information Networks, explores technical approaches to sensing the presence…
Mobile health is emerging at the intersection of dynamic changes in mobility patterns, health care delivery, and new mobile technologies and networks. New technologies and the services they enable will be just one piece of a larger strategy for engaging…
The latest Intel Technology Journal (Volume 13, Issue 30 reports the research and development activities of the Intel Digital Health Group and its colleagues. One article, entitled “From people to prototypes and products: ethnographic liquidity and the Intel Global Aging…
Using medical devices and notebook computers, Danish patients can see doctors without leaving home, and have the information automatically logged into electronic records. The New York Times reports. “Several studies, including one to be published later this month by the…
Yahoo Labs is beefing up its ranks of social scientists, adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. “In the last year, Yahoo Labs has bolstered its ranks of…
Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics provides an evaluation of “the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change.” Here are the scores: 7.3 – Nokia…
A new pilot programme from InterTradeIreland is aimed at assisting small and medium-sized firms, initially in the civil security sector, to innovate and meet identified but as yet unmet market needs, using ethnographic research and user-centred design approaches. The Irish…
The latest issue of Interfaces Magazine, a quarterly magazine published by Interaction, the specialist HCI group of the British Computer Society (BCS), contains a lengthy article on an emerging market research project Experientia conducted for Vodafone Global. Many, many thanks…
Since cellphones became widely used in Kenya five years ago, they’ve become the bank card du jour. The Christian Science Monitor reports. “[In Kenya] with a mobile phone, one can pay electricity and water bills, pay for goods at the…