Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Somehow I missed out on this 24 May New York Times article about South Korea being the test case for the mobile future, thanks to its high-speed wireless networks and top technology companies. “It has been a while since the…
Bill Thompson, back from the Venice Biennale, reflects on digital art and its relationship with technology. “While there was a lot of interesting art, I saw little that attempted to explore our use of or reliance on technology itself, and…
Web 2.0 solutions offer people in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange. This brochure, published by GTZ, provides a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences made to date in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It serves as…
Navi Radjou argues on the HarvardBusiness.org Voices blog that R&D in emerging markets needs fewer engineers and more anthropologists. “To effectively identify and address the explicit and unmet needs of the broader consumer base in emerging markets, I believe multi-national…
The Future Tense programme on Australia’s ABC Radio features bottom-up, user-generated innovation in Africa: “In this program we’ll highlight several interesting initiatives, one in Africa and one in the South Asia region, initiatives which have had success largely because of…
Fabio Sergio, a design and user experience strategist, creative director at frog design, and former associate professor at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, was one of the speakers at the Frontiers of Interaction conference that took place on Tuesday in Rome,…
Barclays 360 magazine, a quarterly thought leadership magazine for senior management within the Barclays Group, is devoted to simplicity in product and service design. Here are the feature articles (of which the last one, which is excellently written and directly…
The people of Microfinance Podcast have just posted a short video interview with Nick Hughes, Head of International Mobile Payment Solutions at the Vodafone Group, who has been instrumental in getting M-PESA up and running. Watch video (via CGAP)
This week the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion hosted a conference about the “Bottom of the Pyramid” and Elizabeth Losh, author of Virtualpolitik and writing director of the Humanities Core Course at the University of California, Irvine, has…
The site of Participle, a UK social design consultancy, contains some good materials on the design of the next generation of public services. Only the Lonely: Public Service Reform, the Individual and the State Article to be published in the…
After Patrick Meier, a doctoral research fellow at Harvard University, a PhD candidate at The Fletcher School, and an active contributor at Ushahidi, participated in a high-level mobile banking (mBanking) conference in Nairobi, he reflected on the issue of trust…
The Financial Times has published a special report on connectivity, analysing the implications of a connected planet. My preferred pieces: Skills: Business must learn from the new tribe So-called ‘digital natives’ are bringing down the barriers to collaborative working, finds…
The Wall Street Journal reports on the use of the internet by homeless people in San Francisco. “A few years ago, some people were worrying that a “digital divide” would separate technology haves and have-nots. The poorest lack the means…
The Nokia Siemens Networks has created an extremely well produced website and video series, entitled “Round. The World. Connected.” that sets out to understand what connectivity means to different people and cultures across Europe, Asia and the Americas. The project…
Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS, writes in PC World on the future of mobile phones and believes that many future mobile innovations will be borne out of the realities of the developing world. “In order to understand what users need…
In Asia, Africa, Europe and elsewhere, cell phone technology has always been way ahead of what’s available in the states. Around the world, people use their phones in innovative, creative ways. For example, mobile phones help rural farmers gather information…
Natasha Schull, assistant professor in the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society, says Vegas gambling machines designed to get people to ‘play to extinction’. “After more than a decade of research that included lengthy observations and interviews focused on…
Leading up to the 2009 Mobile Money Summit CGAP, an independent policy and research centre dedicated to advancing financial access for the world’s poor, is running a podcast series with some of the key people involved in the CGAP/DFID Branchless…
Global Post reports on how millions in Ghana are entering the banking system through mobile phone system. “Nobody stands to benefit quite like Africa’s increasingly powerful telecom companies, the conglomerates who built this continent’s cellular towers and enable its calls.…
Alice Rawsthorn of The New York Times has published an article on social design and service innovation: “When Ritt Bjerregaard became lord mayor of the city of Copenhagen in 2006, she was astonished to discover how many working days were…