counter
Putting people first
DAILY INSIGHTS ON USER EXPERIENCE, EXPERIENCE DESIGN AND PEOPLE-CENTRED INNOVATION

Audience

Business

Culture

Design

Locations

Media

Methods

Services

Social Issues

Children


Disabled


Elderly


Teens


Advertising


Branding


Business


Innovation


Marketing


Mechatronics


Technology


Architecture


Art


Creativity


Culture


Identity


Mobility


Museum


Co-creation


Design


Experience design


Interaction design


Presence


Service design


Ubiquitous computing


Africa


Americas


Asia


Australia


Europe


Italy


Turin


Blogging


Book


Conference


Media


Mobile phone


Play


Virtual world


Ethnography


Foresight


Prototype


Scenarios


Usability


User experience


User research


Education


Financial services


Healthcare


Public services


Research


Tourism


Urban development


Communications


Digital divide


Emerging markets


Participation


Social change


Sustainability


 May 2005
31 May 2005
Philips Design research projects
Research_projects Aside from the many (sometimes older) projects, the website showing Philips’ design research projects also contains an interesting movie on foresight (Delphi movie). It seems that the most recent projects are under “Smart Connections”.

Go to website

28 May 2005
NextBillion.net
  NextBillion.net brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise. Their goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens.

Go to website

28 May 2005
AIGA Center for Brand Experience
Logo_aiga Creative directors, market researchers, brand strategists and experience designers built the AIGA Center for Brand Experience in order to pool their knowledge and skills to educate the business and design communities about building successful and innovative brands.

Go to website

28 May 2005
Nathan Shedroff’s glossary of experience design
Piemonte3s An evolving glossary of experience design.

Go to website

27 May 2005
India firms shift from low-cost to high-tech [International Herald Tribune]
  To some, the notion of outsourcing work to India conjures up stories of American and European software programmers being reduced to stocking supermarket shelves to make a living. To others, it evokes legions of fresh-faced Indians willing to do intense, high-skill work for low pay.

Read full story

26 May 2005
Ian Davis (McKinsey) on business and society [The Economist]
Davis_ian By building social issues into strategy, big business can recast the debate about its role, argues Ian Davis of McKinsey.

Read full story

25 May 2005
Niti Bhan on rethinking the design industry
Seismic The design industry is undergoing a radical transformation with the 21st Century becoming a “Conceptual Age”—a society of creators and empathisers, pattern recognisers and meaning makers, where companies must connect with their customers and offer products and services that resonate on an emotional level.

Niti Bhan ponders in a Core77 essay how exactly designers can evolve and retool your design business, and what designers are doing once they have redefined their role.

“Bruce Nussbaum, design champion and editorial page editor at BusinessWeek observes that design studios at the forefront of this revolution are evolving their “core competencies from drawing to thinking, from styling to innovating, from shaping things to visualizing new business paradigms.” He continues by suggesting that corporations look to the design industry as a “resource to help with the broad array of issues that affect strategy and organization—creating new brands, defining customer experiences, understanding user needs, changing business practices.” [...]

The majority of those reaching out to embrace this trend have their roots in the UI industry rather than industrial design. While traditional product and graphic design practitioners enter the field with a foundation based on design history, emphasis on form, method and process, those in the UI field come from myriad backgrounds such as software engineering, marketing, and brand strategy. Without a common heritage and education, these designers are more comfortable working with disparate client groups and in interdisciplinary teams.

Furthermore, the interaction design and user experience field is such that a successful end result frequently requires an in-depth study of the client’s business strategy, marketing and corporate objectives. Thus, from the very beginning, these design professionals have been closely involved in the tangible manifestation of corporate strategy to a far greater degree than most product designers.”

Read full story

24 May 2005
For all who have never climbed a tree [Christian Science Monitor]
P16a ‘Go out and play’ vs. ‘de-naturing of childhood’

Read full review

23 May 2005
Sensors and pixels everywhere
Accenture_gershman_sec Anatole Gershman, global director of research at Accenture Technology Laboratories, interviewed about Accenture’s vision for the future of technology, which includes interactive grocery carts and the ability for your wardrobe to communicate with stores.

Read full story

23 May 2005
Advertisers want something different [The New York Times]
Ge_virtual_seed BBDO Worldwide in New York, General Electric’s longtime advertising agency, was not getting the message. The agency had been offering G.E. its panoply of traditional marketing ideas, leaning heavily on the standard 30-second television spot. But Judy Hu, general manager for global advertising and branding at G.E., demanded something daring. What she eventually got fit the bill: an online campaign with a virtual sprouting seed that computer users can tend and send to people they know by e-mail.

Read full story

23 May 2005
Television reloaded [Newsweek]
Nextfuturetv_vlwidec It’s a transformation as significant as when we went from black-and-white to color—and it’s already underway. The promise is that you’ll be able to watch anything you want, anywhere—on a huge high-def screen or on your phone.

Read full story

23 May 2005
Television gets a mobile home [The Guardian]
Orange Mobile TV has been talked about for ages, probably since the first mobile phone with a colour screen became available and certainly since the launch of 3G, the faster networks that allow video to be accessed at a reasonable speed. Now, Orange has announced a £10-a-month service offering nine channels to its 3G customers, while NTL Broadcast and 02 have announced the first batch of channels for a service to be trialled in Oxford later this year.

Read full story

21 May 2005
A back-to-basics mobile launched [BBC]
Logo_vodafone_1 Vodafone is launching a back-to-basics mobile phone in response to customer demand for simplicity.

Read full story

21 May 2005
Animal magnetism [I.D. Magazine]
Ted1 A technology conference takes cues from nature.

Read full story

21 May 2005
A breed apart [I.D. Magazine]
Breeding2 Working across borders, designers Reed Kram and Clemens Weisshaar create a new strain of furniture.

Read full story

21 May 2005
A city with drive [The Independent]
Molle Stephen Bayley takes a pit stop in Turin, and finds the hometown of Fiat is fuelled by fast cars and fabulous food.

Read full story

21 May 2005
Office culture [Financial Times]
“So how do you feel about e-mail?” asks Simon Roberts, a social anthropologist. “How has it changed your workload?”

This is not what social anthropologists are usually expected to ask: they observe courtship rituals, try to interpret ancient chants, analyse gift-giving or tribal cosmology.

Simon Roberts, however, is searching for meanings in the daily life of Peter Quest, a senior auditor, who works for the global accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a featureless tower block in central London. Quest, who has spent 32 years at the firm, manifests unease. “I call my e-mails the triffids,” he says, referring to the killer plants in John Wyndham’s 1950s novel. “You can spend all day killing them, then you turn your back for a second and those red things, those triffids, have taken over your screen again! It eats up your day. When I started my career we used to spend lots of time talking to clients and colleagues. Now it’s harder.”

Roberts is patient. “But I have noticed that people here don’t seem to classify e-mail as ‘real’ work. They sit at their desk doing e- mails and then say, ‘Right, now let’s do some work’ – but e-mail is taking up work time. Perhaps that is the problem?”

Read full story

20 May 2005
Seoul machine [Wired Magazine]
Ff_126_samsung1_f Cell phones. Memory chips. Plasma TVs. How Samsung made Korea a consumer electronics superpower.

Read full story

19 May 2005
Korea’s plan for key future technologies and their implications
Korea_future Between 15 and 20 years into the future, Korean people’s long-time wish of living longer and healthier lives will come true and Korea will enter an era of space travel by completing the development of manned spaceship.

Such predictions came from a study conducted by the National Science & Technology Council. The council announced a total of 761 technological tasks in eight areas, namely aerospace, materials and production, information and knowledge, food and biological resources, life and health, energy and environment, security, and territory management and social infrastructure.

Read full story

18 May 2005
Berlusconi ‘miracle’ turns into mirage [International Herald Tribune]
Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi’s unfulfilled promises may trouble Italians – but in Europe they add to the prime minister’s reputation as one of the most unloved continental leaders in recent memory.

Read full story