Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Africa
Jan Chipchase of Nokia on literacy and mobile phone design
Illiterate consumers are in many ways lead users for the rest of us, argues Jan Chipchase, principal researcher at Nokia, at his presentation at the LIFT conference. A person is literate who can with understanding both read and write a…
Interview with Genevieve Bell, director of user experience at Intel
Genevieve Bell is a highly respected anthropologist and director of user experience at Intel. In this interview with Australian usability consultant Gerry Gaffney, she talks about what it means to build technology with the home in mind, about cultural influences…
Nokia Research on Uganda’s Village Phone initiative
Jan Chipchase and Indri Tulusan of Nokia Research are on a roll. Following a July 2006 field study in Uganda, and previous presentations on shared phone practices and street charging services, they now explored the Village Phone initiative between the…
Nokia research on street charging services in Uganda
Uganda is a country coping with a severe energy crisis resulting in frequent power cuts. In addition, access to mains electricity in rural locations is limited. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable –…
Human-centred design at GE’s health-care unit [Business Week]
Business Week writes about how GE’s health-care unit went to design students at the Art Center College of Design for out-of-the-box ideas that are focused on people rather than technology, take a systems approach to problem solving, and are culturally…
Nokia research on shared phone practices
What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use? Jan Chipchase and Indri Tulusan of Nokia Research set out explore this topic during a July 2006 field study in Uganda with a brief to understand…
Book: Mobile Communications and Society
Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective Manuel Castells, Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol, Jack Linchuan Qiu and Araba Sey Published by the MIT Press How wireless technology is redefining the relationship of communication, technology, and society around the world–in everyday work and…
European Market Research Event – Day 2, afternoon
Mike Spang, Kodak Mike Spang has the long job title: “Business Research Director, Document Imaging, Corporate Business Research, Eastman Kodak Company”. He spoke about how Kodak went about creating a satisfying global corporate web experience. To put it in somewhat…
European Market Research Event – Day 2, morning
Due to travelling, it took me a few days to write up my summary of the Tuesday presentations at the European Market Research Event, but here we are. In this write-up I will concentrate on five speakers: James Surowiecki, Roula…
The Economist on mobile telephony and banking
“Most South Africans do not have bank accounts. But most do have mobile phones,” writes The Economist today in a story about mobile telephony and banking with a particular focus on Africa. “About half a million South Africans now use…
Jan Chipchase of Nokia on connecting the unconnected
BBC Wap use flourishing in Africa
Africa, in particular Nigeria, is dominating international mobile phone access to the BBC’s website. According to July’s statistics, 61% of the BBC’s international Wap users came from Nigeria and 19% from South Africa. Africa is the world’s largest-growing mobile phone…
Digital diversity – the end game?
David Gyimah, a video journalist and the director of the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC), has written a thought-provoking article on the future of diversity in the rapidly developing world of the net and connected mobile devices. “If the net…
Poverty-stricken Rwanda puts its faith and future into the wide wired world [The Guardian]
Rwanda’s Vision 2020 project aims to rapidly transform a depressed agricultural economy into one driven by information communications and technology (ICT). If it works, the percentage of Rwanda’s workforce involved in farming will drop from 90% to 50% in 15…
Qualitative research in the Middle East and North Africa
African mobile phone subscribers hit 100 million mark [Mobile Africa]
The number of mobile telephone subscribers in Africa has risen from 8 million, five years ago, to 100 million, Kenya`s information and communication minister Mutahi Kagwe said Tuesday. He said one in every nine Africans subscribes today to a mobile…
Manipulated videos and the concept of truth in media
I just looked in amazement at an astonishingly realistic 3D animation of a military robot patrolling the (real) streets of Johannesburg, South Africa. The effect of reality is so overwhelming that most people will accept this footage as a fact.…
Mobile services and applicability issues, in Vodafone’s Receiver magazine
Vodafone has just published the 14th issue of Receiver, its online magazine on the future of communications technologies. The current edition is devoted to applicability issues in mobile services: how can we work, learn, cooperate and know better using mobiles?…
Mobility special in today’s Financial Times
Plugged into it all From Japanese girls texting their friends to the BlackBerry-armed executive, it’s now who you are connected to, not who you know. But does this mean greater freedom or loss of control? Failed to fly Why do…