How constant tech is breaking our brains
Fast Company spoke with tech pioneer Jaron Lanier, Microsoft CVP Emma Williams and Stanford professor Jeremy Bailenson.
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Category Devices
Google’s ethnographic research on selfies
The Gogle Wellbeing Lab joined up with the company's Pixel team to run an ethnographic study across four countries, examining the relationship people in the United States, Germany, India, and South Korea had with their selfies.
Nicolas Nova: we have to learn how to domesticate our smartphones
Sur la base d'une enquête de terrain menée Genève, Los Angeles et Tokyo, cet ouvrage aborde la dimension proprement anthropologique du smartphone.
[Book] Smartphones: Une enquête anthropologique
Sur la base d'une enquête de terrain menée à Genève, Los Angeles et Tokyo, cet ouvrage aborde la dimension proprement anthropologique du smartphone.
Amy Orben: To talk about smartphones affecting the brain is a slippery slope
The psychologist Amy Orben talks about the widespread fear that smartphones are harmful to our wellbeing - and the difficulty of proving it
Designing for digital well-being
Smartphone attachment is so prevalent that the fear of being without a phone has a name: nomophobia, writes Elizabeth Churchill in Interactions. What can be done to manage such unhealthy attachments?
Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing
The Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing, a multi-sited research project based at UCL Anthropology, employs a team of 11 anthropologists conducting simultaneous 16-month ethnographies in Ireland, Italy, Cameroon, Uganda, Brazil, Chile, Al-Quds, China, and Japan.
[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…
[Book] Left to Our Own Devices
Left to Our Own Devices: Outsmarting Smart Technology to Reclaim Our Relationships, Health, and Focus Margaret E. Morris MIT Press, 2018 192 pages Unexpected ways that individuals adapt technology to reclaim what matters to them, from working through conflict with…
[Book] Left to Our Own Devices
Left to Our Own Devices: Outsmarting Smart Technology to Reclaim Our Relationships, Health, and Focus By Margaret E. Morris MIT Press, November 2018, 192 pages Unexpected ways that individuals adapt technology to reclaim what matters to them, from working through…
UX and Service Design for Connected Products
UX and Service Design for Connected Products by Claire Rowland Digital Catapult, 2018, 36 pages (via IoT.uk) There are a huge variety of applications in IoT spanning connected products and hardware enabled services. Consumer products such as home lighting and…
Ambient contextuality, the next big game-changer in technology interface
Jim Hunter, chief scientist and technology evangelist at Greenwave Systems, predicts in TechCrunch that the next big game-changer in technology interface is ambient contextuality. “Ambient contextuality hinges on the idea that there is information hidden all around us that helps…
[Book] The Qualified Self
The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life by Lee Humphreys MIT Press May 2018, 179 pages How sharing the mundane details of daily life did not start with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube but with pocket diaries,…
A cultural approach to wearables (and the design opportunities it provides)
In January of this year, Sakari Tamminen and Elisabet Holmgren of the Finnish/USA innovation agency Gemic, published a paper on EPIC entitled “The Anthropology of Wearables: The Self, The Social, and the Autobiographical“. A wide range of new digital products…
Forrester Research: Mobile marketing companies lack ethnographic capabilities
In June 2015, Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how prepared mobile marketers are to deliver to consumers during quick mobile “moments” – i.e. — instances when they reflexively turn to their devices to act on a need to learn,…
Blackphone 2 review: privacy and great usability
Guardian writer Samuel Gibbs writes that the second edition of the Blackphone by security and privacy company Silent Circle is a step up in usability and is surprisingly easy to set up and use, even for privacy novices. “The Blackphone…
Interview with HTC’s head designer on experience design
Drew Bamford is the person responsible for making the ITC’s experience design – how the company’s devices feel and work like ‘HTC phones’ rather than just another Android handset. HTC’s head designer’s purvue is focused on the digital part of…
UK report on consumer problems in the mobile phone market
Calling the shots? is the title of a new Citizens Advice Bureau report that analyses consumer problems in the mobile phone market and explores opportunities for stronger consumer protections. From the executive summary: “The mobile phone market has transformed in…
The smartphone society
Just as the automobile defined the twentieth century, the smartphone is reshaping how we live and work today. Boston University sociology lecturer Nicole Aschoff explores it aLL. Half way down her leftist criticism of how the smartphone exemplifies and accentuates…
Smartphones are addictive and should carry health warning, say academics
University of Derby finds smartphone users in study spent average 3.6 hours a day on devices, often causing severe distraction from relationships and ‘real life’. Haroon Siddique reports in The Guardian: Smartphones are psychologically addictive, encourage narcissistic tendencies and should…