Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
UCL (which is the abbreviation for “University College London” although you have to look at the site‘s footer to find out) is starting a new MA in Digital Anthropology. And it seems serious stuff. Digital technologies have become ubiquitous. From…
The current paradigm of creating of serious news stories — through newspapers and big media — is under threat. Here is a haul of background on the matter (from today’s stories): ‘Hyperlocal’ web sites deliver news without newspapers [The…
Last week, the W3C Mobile Web Initiative organised a workshop on the “Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development” in Maputo, Mozambique. The workshop set out to understand the specific challenges of using mobile phones…
An EU-wide study of emerging technologies led by Leicester’s De Montfort University aims to alert policy makers to any potential social and ethical problems New technology is changing the way we live and work so quickly that it is easy…
Chris Lawer underlines that is important to identify that co-creation is not just about firms improving their social marketing, open innovation, community-building and learning efforts to generate new proprietary and valuable knowledge with/from their customers. Rather, there is also a…
A controversial post by Sam Ladner, followed by a rich debate between the author, Paula Thornton, Peter Merholz, Raymond Pirouz, and others. Design is attractive to management because it is a de-politicized version of the well known socio-cultural critique…
Microsoft just published a rather thorough report on the future developments of the internet across Europe. In the report, Microsoft analyses the differences in broadband penetration levels across Europe, examines the causes fuelling the growth of Internet adoption, assesses the…
Religious technology may seem like an oxymoron, but as more people obtain mobile phones, iPhones and other devices to help them manage their lives, it’s only natural that many of them will be using their gadgets to help them enrich…
Jeff Howard draws attention to a recent service design paper by Daniela Sangiorgi of Lancaster University: “Dr. Daniela Sangiorgi’s 2008 presentation from ISDN3 just came across my radar. It’s on Service Design as the Design of Activity Systems (pdf 2.1MB).…
ACM reports that “a top researcher for Nokia Design [addressed] the need for effective cross-culture design research when developing informed and inspired designs for future mobile technologies. Jan Chipchase, who studies how people around the world behave, communicate, and interact…
Two new interviews on Nokia’s IdeasProject: Social media may have unforeseen limits John Jordan, a pathbreaking tech consultant and academic, measures social technologies in terms of the notion of ‘network externalities,’ which posits that the value of a technology improves…
Grand Old Man of HCI, Jack Carroll, explains the history of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and how the field gave birth to User Experience and Interaction Design. Few people know the history of fields like UX, IxD, Usability and Human-Centered Design…
Richard Heeks reflects in the latest edition of “Communications of the ACM” on how information technology can be best applied to address problems and provide opportunities for inhabitants of the world’s poorest countries. “In terms of IT, the three key…
Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic need your help. Despite the fact that U.S. citizen Bruce Sterling and Serbian citizen Jasmina Tesanovic have been married for nearly five years, and for all I can tell still very much in love, US…
If you ever need a solid case on why ethnographic research can provide strategic value to companies, yesterday’s announcement of the $250 million Intel/GE healthcare alliance provides you with a great one. Intel has for years heavily invested in on-the-ground…
The Wall Street Journal reports on work done by Intel’s Digital Home Group on people’s tendency to lie online and what the implications of lying are on the design of new technologies. “[Ethnographer Francoise] Bourdonnec, for example, works for Intel’s…
Ben Fullerton has an article out in the March/April issue of Interactions magazine on Co-creation in Service Design. It focuses on the “Make It Work†project for the Sunderland City Council and live|work’s efforts to collaborate on the design of…
Informal networks are the links and exchanges that bind people together, explains Dr Karen Stephenson, a corporate anthropologist and an expert on social networks in business. She describes the challenge of creating a new transparent networked economy as, “a gargantuan…
The website of Microsoft Research seemed to have been redesigned recently and contains some nice interviews: Buxton putting design into MIX Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, who delivered a keynote address in Las Vegas on March 18 during MIX09, the…
Dotmocracy: Crowdsourcing, Mashups, and Social Change by Lisa Campbell Free download As San Francisco braces itself to be the first major American city to not have a daily newspaper, the canary has sung as the death of print looks eminent.…