Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
The Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Irvine recently organised a workshop on innovation in digital money, entitled Everyday Digital Money. The workshop examined this emerging, complex, and unevenly distributed landscape of digital money innovation from cultural,…
Nokia Open Studios are a design research method for engaging communities in shanty towns. According to Nokia’s senior design manager Younghee Jung, they were set up as a community design competition with the theme of ‘design your ideal mobile phone’,…
Cross media storytelling, vibrant and fast moving technological and creative developments in cities across Africa and the new plans that Google, Vodafone and Nokia have for the region: these are a few of the things that will be discussed in…
MobileActive reports on how farmers in emerging markets are using mobile phones to improve their livelihoods: Agriculture is what keeps economies in most developing countries alive. However, farmers in many countries face major challenges. In an age of global markets,…
As part of its coverage on the Bellagio conference on mobile health, MobileActive interviewed Patricia Mechael who is coordinating the mobile strategy for the Millennium Village Project. She talks about mobile adoption, user-centric design, women and mobiles, how Millennium Villages…
Ken Banks writes in PC World on the capacity of the mobile phone to bridge the digital divide. While developed markets get excited by the iPhone, N95, BlackBerry, 3G, WiMax and Android, in developing countries, most excitement centers around the…
Jan Chipcase, Nokia’s user researcher, is the latest contributor in the ongoing series of emerging markets articles that are being published on a weekly basis in Vodafone Receiver’s magazine. Chipchase stresses that his research is more than just “an attempt…
The New York Times reports on software development for mobile devices in emerging markets, through a nice feature on what is currently happening in that area in Kenya: “While engineers in the United States lavish attention on expensive phones that…
As our lives become exposed to more and more technology, and companies become more and more interested in how technology affects us and how we interface with it, anthropologists have found themselves in increasing demand. Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net provides…
In May this year, the Guardian weekly published a 5-page special report for World Telecommunication and Information Society Day on how new technologies are improving the lives of people around the world, with a particular emphasis on developing nations. Articles…
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…
Neil Clavin has written the latest contribution in the ongoing series of emerging markets articles that are on a weekly basis being published Vodafone Receiver’s magazine. In his paper for receiver Clavin argues that for better design, we must first…
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…
Vodafone receiver magazine’s new issue is about “Emerging Markets“. But it’s a shortened issue: Vodafone thought that launching a whole new issue, with all articles of all authors at once, might be too much to swallow. Therefore they decided to…
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…
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…
Business Week reports on how online aps such as Sports Tracker and Nokia Beta Lab, allow the Finnish handset giant to gather customers’ ideas from around the world, and virtually for free. “Sports Tracker is an example of how Nokia…
Daniel Lende wrote a good annotated summary of the New York Times magazine feature of Jan Chipchase, on the “Neuroanthropology” blog. He thinks the “world is going to see a transformation through the convergence of four factors: people-driven processes, change…
The Chipchase hype has hit the New York Times Magazine. Nokia’s user anthropologist Jan Chipchase is becoming very popular. Just a day after the Economist, now one of the world’s top newspapers has published a 6,000 word feature on him,…
The world of design and innovation has greatly changed in the last decade. The challenges are more complex, more intricate, and more systemic, and therefore require an increasingly holistic and multidisciplinary approach, especially in education. Or in the words of…