Future Platforms’ Sergio Falletti on mobile usability
E-Consultancy interviews Sergio Falletti, director of mobile app specialists at Future Platforms, about the challenges and opportunities of mobile website design. Read interview
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Category Devices
The practice of beeping – making intentional missed calls
Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase reports on just published research from Microsoft Research India‘s Jonathan Donner that explores the practice of beeping – making intentional missed calls. The paper draws on field research from Rwanda in 2004, categorising three different types…
User research informs design of Nokia phones for emerging markets
Nokia announced today that it unveiled two handsets that offer a range of useful features and colours aimed at consumers in emerging markets. Interestingly they have each been designed based on extensive user research. Nokia 2600 classic for personalisation The…
Cellphones bring a :-) to remotest Africa
Stephanie Hanes, a correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, reports on how Namibia’s plucky fix-it industry can handle all manner of disaster with your phone. “Cellphones are in the deepest rural areas in Africa,” says Saadhna Panday, of South Africa’s…
Book: New Tech, New Ties
New Tech, New Ties – How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion Rich Ling The MIT Press – 256 pages – 2008 Abstract The message of this book is simple: the mobile phone strengthens social bonds among family and friends.…
iPhone pushes manufacturers to think again about usability
“The iPhone has pushed manufacturers to think again about usability”, says Jessica Sandin, the head of the mobile practice at Fathom Partners, a British strategic mobile consultancy in an International Herald Tribune article. “Many cellphone makers have lost their way…
Interactions Magazine relaunched
A few weeks ago, I announced the new direction taken by Interactions Magazine under its new editors-in-chief Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko, and now the first issue is out. The content looks very exciting indeed and the editors-in-chief have done…
Samsung on the future of electronic devices
A few weeks ago, I published a summary of a talk given by Donghoon Chang, vice president of Samsung’s Mobile User Experience Design Group, at the recent Mobile HCI conference in Singapore. The summary was originally published in Italian on…
The complete experience, or just more confusion?
From an International Herald Tribune article: Nokia used to be just a cellphone maker. Google used to be just an Internet company. Now Nokia wants to be an Internet company and Google, according to rampant speculation among bloggers and technology…
Zen and interaction design, according to Samsung
Prof. Luca Chittaro, who writes for the Italian innovation supplement Nova, recently participated at the Mobile HCI conference in Singapore and was taken by the user experience design talk of Donghoon Chang, vice president of the Mobile User Experience Design…
Web service lets users try out mobile phones
Information Week reports about a new web service that lets users take mobile devices out for a virtual test drive before they buy. Mobile Complete on Monday launched an interactive web service that lets mobile users test-drive popular phone models…
Mobile services in the developed world are a bit behind
Paul Lamb reflects on the dire state of mobile services in America: In Japan it is not uncommon for people to make everyday purchases using only a cell phones. A variety of secure mobile technologies alowing for easy transfer of…
Cashless in India
Newsweek reports on how mobile banking in India saves the government and banks money and reduces fraud that plagues the public-distribution system. Mobile phones are making life better for people in remote, underserved areas of India. They no longer have…
User-centred design at France Telecom: Lipstick on a Pig?
The R&D labs of France Telecom and its commercial Orange brand cover a wide range of technological research but at first glance they also seem to be extensively involved in user research and experience design: The UK research centre has…
Jan Chipchase at TED conference
The TED conference has published its video of the talk by Nokia’s “user anthropologist” Jan Chipchase in March this year: Nokia principal researcher Jan Chipchase’s investigation into the ways we interact with technology has led him from the villages of…
Nokia predicts that you will control 25% of entertainment by 2012
Nokia’s latest study, ‘A Glimpse of the Next Episode’, predicts that within five years a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups rather than coming out of traditional media groups. Trend-setting consumers from 17…
The mobile web is NOT helping the developing world… and what we can do about it
According to Niti Bhan, Nathan Eagle‘s post on the limitations of the current perception of the mobile internet experience for the developing world are “spot on and the most insightful I have come across to date”. Here is a quote…
Mobile usability for teens who are going mobile
In an article for UXmatters, Hilary Cooldige of Molecular reviews current research on teen mobile phone us, argues for contextual user research and mobile usability studies in the field, and presents some of the results of her own field studies.…
Kitchen Budapest summer projects
2007 Summer at Kitchen Budapest (Paperback) by Bircsák Eszter, Somlai-Fischer Szabolcs (ed.) Kitchen Budapest (KiBu), opening in June 2007, (see also here) is a brand new media lab for young researchers who are not only interested in the convergence of…
Intel’s Urban Atmospheres research project
The Urban Atmospheres project (video) is exploring how people who live in cities might want to use technology, how it could help them develop a sense of community or belonging, or play into their emotional experiences of urban living. “By…