Intel Technology Journal on “designing technology with people in mind”

The current issue of Intel Technology Journal, the company’s R&D webzine, is entirely devoted to people-centred design:

Foreword

Foreword
By Herman D’Hooge
Senior Principal Engineer
Channel Platforms Group, Intel Corporation

Ethnographic techniques

Sideways glances: thinking laterally and holistically about technology placement in the innovation process
Understand how Intel can build successful platforms by gaining a better understanding of people, their homes, social and cultural practices, and the role technologies play in these spaces. With knowledge about people, rather than users, Intel can create technologies that will support meaningful and valued experiences in and of the home.

Real reality TV: using documentary-style video to place real people at the center of the design process
Using video clips from a study of PC usage and meaning conducted in Egypt, Germany, South Korea, and Brazil by Domestic Designs and Technologies Research in 2006, see how the author demonstrates the power of documentary video in ethnographic research and its usefulness as a means for communicating research findings.

Usage-driven technology design

Intel Usage-to-Platform Requirements process
Delve into the challenges inherent in developing a platform instead of a product and find out how Intel uses a process encompassing research, human factors engineering, use case and requirements processes, and visual conceptualization to build successful platforms.

Usage-based platform design: case studies in thermal design, enterprise manageability, and information access
See how Intel is putting more emphasis on understanding end-users’ needs and integrating user requirements into the process of platform design. Understand how building end-user-focused solutions takes end-to-end effort that applies to products and services beyond Intel platforms.

Bringing the voice of employees into IT decision making
Knowing that understanding end users is critical when designing new technology for customers, Intel looks within the enterprise and finds that researching employees’ IT needs and experiences is critical to the business objectives of a company.

Home PC maintenance with Intel AMT
Can a home or small business PC be repaired remotely? Can those long phone calls to support centers be reduced or eliminated? Here, Intel’s engineers present a usage model to allow home and small-business PC users to solve daily hardware and software technical problems remotely, with minimum effort on their part.

User experience assessment

Technologies for heart and mind: new directions in embedded assessment
Everyone knows that good habits and prevention are keys to health, but most people lack the capability and motivation to constantly monitor their own health. Margaret Morris and colleagues have developed technologies that fit seamlessly into daily life, providing constant but unobtrusive monitoring and immediate, personalized feedback for both near-term appeal and long-term health benefits.

Assessing the quality of user experience
No longer is it enough for a product to have a technical advantage; nowadays, taking the user experience into account when designing a product is the key differentiator in determining how competitive a product will be in the market. Understand the roll of emotions, attitudes, thoughts, and perceptions across the usage lifecyle and development of a product.

Sidebar

Mapping the digital home: making cultural sense of domestic space and place