Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
The Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India seeks to address the needs and aspirations of people in emerging-market countries, including those who are increasingly consuming computing technologies and services, as well as those for whom access to…
The session devoted to Design Thinking was my personal favourite of the entire 2009 LIFT conference. Beyond the engineers and business’ discourse about the future, what is it designers can propose? What sort of alternatives are they envisioning? What’s the…
More and more content of Interactions Magazine is becoming available online. The latest March-April issue is devoted to trust and “explores the idea of assurance and the feelings of ease or unease related to relationships of confidence or skepticism”. Here…
The Guardian published a special section on the role of mobile phones in emerging markets: Nice talking to you … mobile phone use passes milestone A UN report reveals that half the globe now pays to use one, with the…
The last day of the LIFT conference started off with a session devoted to inspiring stories from people with extraordinary projects and lives. Designer Matt Webb talked about the relationship between science-fiction and design, followed by Joerg Jelden, a trend…
The Italian newspaper La Stampa reports today on its front page that Venezuelan president Ugo Chávez is launching an 18 euro ‘phone of the revolution’. Because this story doesn’t seem to be reported in the English-speaking press, here is a…
More than half the world’s population now pay to use a mobile phone and nearly a quarter use the internet, according to an ITU report, as reported by Associated Press. Six in 10 people around the world now have cellphone…
Ericsson is getting active in African mobile communications and it’s worth checking out what they are up to (even though they don’t prove much, despite the title of the press release). “Ericsson, the world’s leading provider of telecommunications equipment and…
Microsoft has created a virtual personal assistant that can build a relationship with its user. “Meet Laura, the virtual personal assistant for those of us who cannot afford a human one. Built by researchers at Microsoft, Laura appears as a…
Business Week reports on how a nascent industry involving the likes of Google and Nokia is pinpointing the movements and behaviors of millions of cell-phone users. “Marketers have long dreamed of zeroing in on shoppers, whether in a mall or…
After the project, the collaborative website, the game, now also the booklet. KashKlash is an open forum and web project focusing on alternative economies in a post-money future. What will such a world look like? How will the concept of…
In an interview with Nokia’s IdeasProject renowned cyberlaw scholar Jonathan Zittrain talks about how ubiquitous human computing, which he describes as the ability to treat the human mind as a fungible resource, has enabled companies to attack any number of…
Ethan Zuckerman, a multifaceted thinker whose work focuses on the impact of technology in developing countries, and a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, was interviewed on Ideas Project, the Nokia site…
In an interview with Nokia’s IdeasProject, social media innovator Laura Fitton talks about the most basic of human connections: our immediate physical community. This is the kind of intimacy that is built up over numerous ‘unimportant,’ low-level interactions…with the neighbours…
One of the best sessions of the entire LIFT conference took place on Thursday afternoon. As half of the world is now living in cities, it’s undeniable that the recombination of our physical environment through technological advancements will lead to…
Solidarity was the first afternoon theme of the LIFT conference. One of the subtle change in the last fifteen years revolves around how collective action and solidarity have changed. Ramesh Srinivasan and Juliana Rotich, two speakers from different parts of…
The entire morning of the first day of the LIFT conference was devoted to change. I selected a few presentations here that I found personally most stimulating. Note: this post contains embedded video which might now not show up in…
The other Experientia workshop at LIFT was Lifestream – Visualizing my data. The workshop, which was completely packed, was run by Willem Boijens, Vodafone, and my business partner Jan-Christoph Zoels, Experientia, and set out to explore large quantity information visualization.…
We just came back from the LIFT conference and have lots to blog about. Our LIFT experience started off with the KashKlash game, an action-packed workshop that explored alternative methods of exchange [and I helped prepare]. The focus was on…
Fortune Magazine profiles Dr Genevieve Bell, an Australian-born anthropologist and ethnographer, and the Director of User Experience in Intel Corporation’s Digital Home Group. Part of Bell’s job is to help the company understand quirks of human behavior that could determine…