Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
A Windows-enabled and Web-connected coffee maker like the prototype in this photo could check online for the proper grinding size of the beans you’ve just bought. Although it seems like an ironic example of design gone wrong, Microsoft thinks this…
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee wants to put the web under the microscope to investigate how it changes our behaviour. Paul Marks asked in The New Scientist him what he hopes to achieve. “Web science is already happening. People…
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…
Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, reflects on the fact that the appearance of most digital products bears no relation to what they do, and what that might mean for future design. “The dislocation of form and…
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…
The number of people using mobile devices to purchase goods and services is expected to more than double by the end of 2012 globally, research firm Gartner Inc. reported. The impact is to be felt most in developing world…
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…
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, researcher director at the Institute for the Future, is working on a book on the end of cyberspace – which he thinks will come as the internet moves off desktops and screens and becomes embedded in things,…
In a long article in The Register, Andrew Orlowski looks at the many problems Nokia faced the other day with the launch of its Ovi Store, and criticises the company for a lack of focus on people’s needs: “Firstly, Nokia…
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…
New York Magazine has published a long article by Sam Anderson on “Twitter, Adderall, lifehacking, mindful jogging, power browsing, Obama’s BlackBerry, and the benefits of overstimulation.” “Free-associative wandering is essential to the creative process; one moment of judicious unmindfulness can…
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.…
Stephen Wolak, the brain behind Vodafone’s Betavine community, has launched a new social change community “where we look at how mobile technology and mobile services can bring about positive social change, particularly in developing countries.” The concept, he says, “is…
Nokia Conversations is reporting on a rare behind-closed-doors Nokia design event dubbed The Inside Story. According to a first post, Alastair Curtis, Head of Design at Nokia, shared the design insight that your mobile is becoming more of a “sixth…
Consumer Electronics 3.0 is the name Intel has chosen for a new concept of seamless integration of internet and television. The CE 3.0 website is rich in content, but more than that, it exemplifies the relevance of a user-centred approach…
Dr Paul Twomey, president of the internet admin body Icann, talks about the net’s potential for change. “The mobile global internet is growing quickly to connect billions of people, devices and things. It offers much greater productivity and lower barriers…