No more SMS from Jesus: ubicomp, religion and techno-spiritual practices

In a reflective and insightful paper, Dr. Genevieve Bell, a highly respected anthropologist and director of user experience at Intel, analyses the use of technology to support religious practices. Bell argues that “the ways in which new technologies are delivering religious experiences represent the leading…

Fab Labs deliver innovative solutions to local needs [Christian Science Monitor]

Fab Labs are different than the myriad other nonprofit programs working to introduce technology to disadvantaged communities. The MIT professors who came up with the Fab Lab concept believed that rural villagers in India, sheep herders in Norway, and impoverished teens in the Pretoria township…

A look at Mau’s Massive Change [Business Week]

“What do a featherless chicken, Wal-Mart’s (WMT) logistics system, and an economic theory on homeownership have in common? To Bruce Mau, they all demonstrate the power of design-oriented thinking in the innovation process,” writes Robert Berner in Business Week. “These examples and far more are…

Belgian experience design lab getting off the ground

One of the exciting initiaves within the Belgian C-Mine project is a new Experience Design Lab within the Media & Design Academy, a platform with the double function of integrating and transforming the various disciplines of the academy, and enabling the school to reach out…

Living Labs Europe – user-driven innovation environments in the information society

A Living Lab is a city area which operates a full-scale urban laboratory and proving ground for inventing, prototyping and marketing new mobile technology applications. A Living Lab includes interactive testing, but is managed as an innovation environment well beyond the test bed functions. As…

Where to study experience design?

Experience design has become a hot industry theme. Companies are looking to hire experience designers. New consultancies devoted to experience design are being founded nearly every day. Major industry players like Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Philips are increasingly putting the user experience or experience design…

ThinkCycle: open collaborative design

ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative, developed and operated by a group of doctoral students at the MIT Media Laboratory, engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges among underserved communities and the environment. ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open-source design innovation, with…