Category Methods
Designing for digital well-being
Tricia Wang on why the big data mentality fails – and what to do about it
Human-centred policy? Blending “big data” and “thick data” in national policy
Experientia launches a training program on “Behavioral Design & Cultural Transformation within the Cottino Social Impact Campus
Experientia is offering a new behavioral design training program within the new Cottino Social Impact Campus, the first center in Europe dedicated to impact education. The “Behavioral Design & Cultural Transformation” course (scheduled 23 to 27 March) is aimed at…
Experientia lancia un programma di formazione su “Design comportamentale e trasformazione delle culture” entro il Cottino Social Impact Campus
Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing
[Book] All the Ghosts in the Machine
Co-design at the BBC
[Report] Shaping Choices in the Digital World
Smart City Index that takes citizen engagement into account
A team of researchers from IMD in Switzerland and SUTD in Singapore put together the Smart City Index. For the first time, researchers attempted to assess people’s perceptions of technology – as opposed to the quality of the technology itself…
The anthropologist of Artificial Intelligence
The algorithms that underlie much of the modern world have grown so complex that we always can’t predict what they’ll do. Iyad Rahwan, who directs the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, proposes…
[Book] The Costs of Connection
The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias Stanford University Press August 2019, 352 pages Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity…
End user perceptions of smart home device data practices and risks
“I don’t own the data”: End User Perceptions of Smart Home Device Data Practices and Risks Madiha Tabassum, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Tomasz Kosinski, Chalmers University of Technology; Heather Lipford, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Paper included…
The digital lives of refugees [Research report]
There is growing recognition among donors and humanitarian organisations that mobile technology and mobile network operators (MNOs) have an important role to play in the delivery of dignified aid. This includes providing digital tools that help people affected by crisis…
The story of Spotify personas
Spotify’s product designer Mady Torres de Souza and senior user researchers Olga Hörding and Sohit Karol explain how they developed their personas tool, how they use it today and why it’s so useful for an autonomous, cross-functional organisation like Spotify.…
When ethnography becomes a joke
For a number of years, we have witnessed a diminishing appetite for ethnographic work among commercial clients, writes Patricia Sunderland, PhD and founder of Cultural Research and Analysis, on the site of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA). Competition and…
Research findings send automated sentiment analysis to the trash bin
The age of social media has opened up exciting opportunities for researchers to investigate people’s emotional states on a massive scale. For example, one study found that tweets contain more positive emotional words in the morning, which was interpreted as…
[Book] The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West
The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West by Payal Arora Harvard University Press, 2019 280 pages A digital anthropologist examines the online lives of millions of people in China, India, Brazil, and across the Middle East – home…
Papers on behaviour, design and the circular economy
Consumer insights into the circular economy Report of stakeholder meeting, 25 October 2018, 14 pages The “Stakeholder Meeting: Consumer Insights into the Circular Economy” in Brussels on 25 October 2018, was co-organised by the Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption (CSCP)…