Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Wired UK has published a long article on P2P money-lending in its June issue: The article devotes particular attention to Kiva.org, a San Francisco-based peer-to-peer (P2P) non-profit, which uses the principles of social networking to connect individual or group lenders…
The Spring 2010 issue of Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, is dedicated to the Future of News. Front Matter Introduction Loren Ghiglione, Professor of Media Ethics at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern…
Mobile app developers are sprouting in Africa to help tackle that continent’s problems. Many create applications that can be used with phone text messages. The African technologists say local knowledge is key to their successes. CNN reports: “While developers in…
The Winter 2009 issue of MIT’s Innovations Journal is focused on “Mobilizing Markets.” All contents are available online. Prerequisite to Prosperity Why Africa’s Future Depends on Better Governance by Mohamed (Mo) Ibrahim Harnessing the Mobile Revolution by Thomas Kalil Phone…
“Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa: pilots and early deployments” is a new paper by Jonathan Donner, a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India, The paper describes a collection of initiatives delivering support via mobile…
The title might be a bit cryptic for some readers, but Jan Chipchase is a well-known user researcher/anthropologist at Nokia. He spent a decade exploring the intersection of technology, people and culture for Nokia, and specializes in turning insights into…
The World Bank in partnership with mobile handset maker Nokia is set to fund the establishment of mobile applications laboratories in Africa in a move to boost innovation in the field. “The mobile laboratories will help assist mobile applications entrepreneurs…
Africa Calling: Can Mobile Phones Make a Miracle? is the title of a long article by Jenny C. Aker (Assistant Professor, The Fletcher School) and Isaac M. Mbiti (Assistant Professor, SMU), published in the March/April 2010 edition of the Boston…
Twenty years after the emergence of the world wide web, Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC World Service’s Discovery series looks at the science driving its third decade. Web 3.0 promises a world where people and objects are seamlessly connected through…
Whether it’s checking market prices of crops, transferring money or simply making a call, mobile phones are transforming Africa. But, asks The Guardian, could this new technology end up bypassing the poorest? The problem apparently lies in the taxes levied…
Publishing Perspectives reports on a recent panel discussion on the African publishing industry at this year’s African Literature Week (16 – 21 November) in Oslo, Norway. [Muhtar] Bakare launched Kachifo [an independent literary publishing house in Lagos, Nigeria] in 2004,…
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…
The latest issue of Anthropology Matters contains an interesting article on the use of mobile phones in Africa: Being cool or being good: researching mobile phones in Mozambique Julie Soleil Archambault Drawing on my fieldwork experience in Inhambane, southern Mozambique,…
A number of articles illustrate the power of the mobile phone in emerging markets: What next after the Mobile revolution in Kenya? by John Karanja MPESA will be on its own a major driver of the economic expansion of the…
The November 2009 edition of Mobile Money Africa, “Africa’s leading online resource for mobile financial inclusion”, is entitled “Banking the unbanked Africans” and is entirely available for download. The December edition will focus on Mobile Money and Payment technologies for…
As trained observers of how people in a society live, ethnographers can help companies figure out what people need and then work with designers to meet those needs with new (or more often tweaked) products and services. CNN reports. “Microsoft…
Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS, wrote a guest piece for BBC News. His main claim: “If you want to see how east Africa may respond to the arrival of high-speed internet links, look no further than the mobile phone market.”…
One of the projects of AppLab, the application laboratory of the Grameen Foundation, is focused on mobile technology for community health (MoTeCH) in Ghana: “Grameen Foundation has launched an initiative to determine how best to use mobile phones to increase…
In emerging markets, agents are the customer-facing element for mobile banking providers, “who rely on them to open accounts, do customer care, and (crucially) stock adequate amounts of cash and e-float to enable clients to deposit and withdrawal. Yet, there…
Jonathan Donner, a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India, has submitted a paper — together with Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden — on first-time mobile internet use in South Africa to the upcoming (3rd)…