Bell argues that “the ways in which new technologies are delivering religious experiences represent the leading edge of a much larger re-purposing of the internet in particular, and of computational technologies more broadly, that has been underway for some time.”

“We need to design a ubiquitous computing not just for a secular life, but also for spiritual life, and we need to design it now!” she claims. “In no small part, this sense of urgency is informed by an awareness of the ways in which techno-spiritual practices are already unfolding; it is also informed by a clear sense that the ubicomp infrastructures we are building might actively preclude important spiritual practices and religious beliefs.”

She adds that, despite the fact “there are few other practices or shaping narratives [as religion] that impact so much of humanity”, there has been up till now “an ideological and rhetorical separation of religion and technology”, which says a lot about “the implicit understanding of the kinds of cultural work” that technology should enable. Instead Bell positions: “If it is indeed the case, that religion is a primary framing narrative in most cultures, and then religion must also be one of the primary forces acting on people’s relationships with and around new technologies – one could go as far as to suggest that there can be no real ubiquitous computing if it does not account for religion.”

The anthropological research the paper is “informed by”, took place in urban settings in India, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Indonesia and Australia. Bell relied on “a range of ethnographic methods and methodologies, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, ‘deep hanging-out, and genealogies of ICTs to explore life in one hundred very different Asian households.”

The paper ends with two short scenarios that she wrote “as part of a
corporate exercise to develop a future vision for user-centered computing in 2015.”

The paper was published in P. Dourish and A. Friday (Eds.): Ubicomp 2006, LNCS 4206, pp. 141 – 158, 2006, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.

Since it is not clear where you can download the paper, but Bell herself sent it out to the public anthrodesign Yahoo! email group with 853 subscribers, I consider it to be part of the public domain and re-post it here (pdf, 216 kb, 18 pages).

“In industry after industry, a shared model for innovation adoption is emerging. The most valuable ‘platforms’ — the tools and technologies used internally to discover, design, and test new products and services — can be creatively and cost-effectively sold or lent to customers, clients, and prospects. Customers get a chance to ‘try before they buy.’ They can adopt and test new ideas and technologies before investing in them. And the purveyors of new technologies rapidly gain insights into the potential value of their wares — insights that might otherwise take years to gather.”

This has lead to a “valuable cultural change: Technological innovators become far more aware of and empathetic to customer needs and constraints.”

The article then continues with a series of examples. Cisco Systems has developed customer design interaction platforms that allow to “conduct collaborative meetings in which prospects literally see and play out the architectural implications of their network priorities”. Procter & Gamble “has begun to share some of its computer modeling and market research techniques with Wal-Mart, Tesco, and other distribution channels.” And the Goldman Sachs derivatives group launched a series of free financial simulators.

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In an analysis of the Schrage article, Renee Hopkins Callahan writes in Corante’s Idea Flow blog that companies could obtain three types of value from such customer co-creation: in addition to the idea value (better design ideas), there is the insight value (a better insight in what customers actually want) and trust value (allowing your customers to co-create with you implies trust and is highly persuasive).

“The capabilities are there,” says Sherry Lassiter, program manager for MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, which developed the Fab Labs. “What we’re trying to do is to give them access to the knowledge and the tools.”

The labs are part of what the Center for Bits and Atoms believes is a trend toward widespread personal fabrication. This is the idea that, not long from now, individuals will be able to manufacture goods at home in the same way they now use personal computing.

The Fab Labs are filled with modern manufacturing equipment [and] show how personal fabrication can empower communities. Once people learn the basics of the Fab Labs’ computers and manufacturing equipment, they can start developing their own solutions to local problems.

In rural India, for instance, inventors at a Fab Lab are developing a machine to measure the fat content of milk and to sound an alarm when that milk is about to turn sour - important for local dairy farmers. In the mountains of Norway, the local Fab Lab inventors are developing a monitoring device for herders to put on sheep, which would give the animals’ location, body temperature, and other statistics. In Ghana, inventors are working on portable, hand-held solar panels to charge appliances such as televisions and refrigerators.

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The survey by Yahoo Inc. and media buyer OMD untangled the overlapping use of the Internet, telephones, text messaging, radio and television during work and recreation hours for more than 4,700 adults in 16 countries, from the United States to Argentina and Taiwan.

According to an in-depth Yahoo! press release on the results of the research, entitled “”It’s a Family Affair: the Media Evolution of Global Families in a Digital Age,” the project “included in-home ethnographies and scrapbooks as well as a quantitative online survey. The in-home interviews and scrapbooks were conducted in New York, Wichita, San Diego, Toronto, Montreal, Mexico City, Sydney, Paris, London and Mumbai. Participants represented some common and emerging family types typical in those cities. The online survey was conducted with a total of 4,783 respondents aged 18+ in 16 countries in Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas.”

- Read Reuters article
- Read Yahoo! press release

According to Robin Hamman: “We talked about the common themes between his books, the differences between mobile phone and social software usage in the UK compared to the US, and participatory media”.

Click here to listen (The interview, which lasts about 10 minutes, starts at 26:30.)

(via textually.org)

The extensive ethnographic youth study was aimed at “helping marketers understand how to reach today’s elusive population of 13- to 34-year-olds, responsible for $600 billion each year in consumer spending”.

The study set out to assess “how young people feel about brands, how they talk about them with friends, and how they take in, manipulate, and redistribute marketing messages”. In addition, the study identifies ‘brand sirens’, i.e. “the super-influencers of the youth market, including who they are, what they do, and how marketers can better reach them”.

Not surprisingly (in light of the sponsors), the study shows that “today’s young people care about the brands they use, talk often with their friends about brands, and like watching real-time television”.

- Read press release
- Go to study website
- Download presentation (pdf, 29.3 mb, 58 slides)

Webcredible states that poor usability, including hidden charges, cumbersome search functions and booking forms that are hard to find, is driving away customers.

The company presents ten key guidelines to help online travel companies significantly improve the user experience and effectiveness of their website.

Though based on the online flight booking process, many of the guidelines are valuable and transferable to other online travel sectors, such as booking holidays, hotels or car hire.

Practical advice and examples of best practice are provided throughout the report.

- Read story
- Go to download page

Her home town paper gives her a write-up here: Wausau girl hits big-time, along with a large version of the Newsweek cover.

(via ValleyMag and SearchEngineWatch)

“Mapping out just how it should function has fallen in large part to Andrea Ragnetti, Philips’s chief marketing officer, and Stefano Marzano, the longtime CEO and chief creative director of Philips Design, a freestanding unit with 450 staffers, a satchelful of prestigious awards, and an estimated annual budget of $250 million. Marzano has been tapped to unify the company through what it calls ’simplicity-led design’. He wants to establish his design principles–the unity of form and function, ease of use, and, in Philips’s world, improving the consumer’s life–as an organizing framework for the entire company, from its corporate structure to the ways departments and executives communicate, right on up to the user interface on every electronic gizmo.” […]

“Marzano’s attempt to overhaul Philips through design is not just some right-brain fantasia. There is a method here, one that draws together the data-driven old guard, the truest of blue-sky thinkers, and everyone in between. Marzano has devoted his career to exploring meta-trends in society and has put that experience at the center of product development at Philips. So, where a company of this scale would typically rely on designers or engineers to generate ideas in-house and then force them into the market, at Philips the process starts out as macrofocused as possible.”

“It starts, in other words, with a mandate not to develop the next iPod but to assess what, exactly, would change consumers’ lives for the better, whether a lightbulb or a music player. Drawing on broad, proprietary sociocultural research, the group– a small army of designers, social scientists, cultural experts, and assorted brainiacs–might identify, for example, an emerging baby boom, a global water shortage, or a growing desire to spend more time at home. It then distills its research into a series of “personas,” each representing a group with like-minded interests, needs, and values–on child rearing, maybe, or the ideal home. Only then do designers and engineers try to imagine and build a series of products such a composite person might want.” […]

“Ragnetti established a new vetting process three years ago in which design, marketing, and technology evaluate each new product idea as a team at every stage of development–both to translate the big think for more-analytical types and to anchor that big think in reality.”

“Philips is also trying to better track the impact of design at the company. Now, design shares its broad-based research at every early meeting to ensure that each proposed product is backed up by a real “validated proposition,” in Philips jargon. This means it’s based not on a hypothesis about what people might desire but rather on hard research that shows what people actually desire. Since March, the company has been tracking the percentage of R&D funds spent on such propositions; products that are now “mission critical,” meaning one to two years from the market, must be tied to research or they will not go forward. And thousands of managers have had to be retrained to understand these new metrics.”

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The Pew report on the future internet surveyed 742 experts in the fields of computing, politics and business.

More than half of respondents had a positive vision of the net’s future but 46% had serious reservations.

Almost 60% said that a counter culture of Luddites would emerge, some resorting to violence.

The Pew Internet and American Life report canvassed opinions from the experts on seven broad scenarios about the future internet, based on developments in the technology in recent years.

- Press coverage: BBC News | San Francisco Chronicle
- Comment by Loïc Le Meur (Six Apart)
- Read press release
- Read fact sheet
- Read report summary (pdf, 80.4 kb, 9 pages)
- Project website “The future of the internet” (Elon University / Pew/Internet)

- View web-optimised presentation
- Download presentation (pdf, 75 mb)
- Read presentation notes (written up by Marnie Webb)

This is the starting question in an article written by Tom Watson, publisher of the free onPhilanthropy web publication.

“Can ethnographers help to create the perfect cause? And if nonprofits want to adopt this increasingly important area of social science to mimic their corporate cousins to design campaigns and causes based what anthropologists tell us what are the implications for philanthropy?”

“Clearly, if nonprofits are chartered to serve the public good, the pure creation of products to appeal to consumer interest runs counter to our mission. Those of us raising funds for nonprofits do so because those organizations do worthy things, not because we need to increase marketshare (as worthy a goal as that clearly is for corporations). The role of the consumer anthropologist in philanthropy becomes clearer, I think, when you peer inside an organization’s ongoing fundraising and communications. Here, within the structure of raising and spending funds for a cause, experimentation has been going on for many decades. Any nonprofit involved in a serious direct marketing program must test new methods of attaining donors, almost by definition. At trade shows and conferences, I’ve seen plenty of really visionary fundraisers talk about envelopes, streaming video, clever giveaways, and a wide spectrum of rewards marketing. Even in major gifts at the top of the fundraising food chain good practitioners create “product” all the time: in the form of naming opportunities, events, giving circles and the like.”

“What every good fundraiser has to realize is that the particular consumer marketplace that philanthropy inhabits is almost entirely aspirational.”

“When we make the decision to give, it is based on a relatively simple checklist of smaller decisions all of which have to do with how we see ourselves in the world. Brand managers in the consumer world have long understood this. Remember the phrase, “you are what you drive?” You can apply it to what you eat, where you live, what you wear, watch or listen to and how you give.”

“When we make a gift, it is less transactional certainly than a purchase. The desire to fund change, to help the poor, to better society is real and it goes beyond the purely commercial. But we also aspire as we give.”

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The presentation pointed out some potential misconceptions drawn from user experience research, and is meant to be “food for thoughts” for designers by triggering some insights and discussion about design problems/solutions and ideas.

Nicolas Nova is a Ph.D. student at the CRAFT (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne) and the author of the Pasta & Vinegar weblog about emerging technologies usage research and foresight.

Download presentation (pdf, 6.12 mb, 45 slides)

Most of the current buzz-words in digital marketing (blogging, podcasting, social networking) and most of the websites being fought over by the big media conglomerates have one thing in common: they are built on user-generated content. […] The web is stuffed full of video and text uploaded by people who want to share what they’re doing with the world.

It’s a shift that is behind the growth of what people are calling Web 2.0 - the second phase of the internet. This time around, it’s not only about the amount of time people are spending online (significant though that is), it’s also about what they’re doing online. And what they’re doing is creating content and sharing it with each other.

According to Nigel Morris, the chief executive of the Aegis-owned digital network Isobar, this change means the media market itself is moving from an old and inflexible model to an environment of infinite flexibility, where content from anywhere can be viewed by anyone.

This might sound scary to a market built around a traditional broadcasting model. But, in fact, it’s also an opportunity for media owners, advertisers and agencies alike. By getting involved in user-generated content, you can get people more involved in your brand than they ever have been before, increase their loyalty, even make them your brand advocates. And you can find out exactly what they think about your product.

For brands, this means a change from traditional marketing methods such as advertising to getting involved in dialogues with consumers. “It’s not about your message any more,” Morris says. “Now, it’s all about whose consumers are telling the best stories about them.”

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Social software consultant and writer Suw Charman wrote a lengthy post on Veen’s talk, which you can download here (pdf, 10.1 mb, 78 slides).

According to Veen, the three things to consider when building a website are feasibility, viability and desirability.

Veen defines user-centered design as “developing an experience based on the patterns inherent in your stuff that empowers users to accomplish their goals”.

“Patterns turns a pile of stuff into a structured experience. This includes labelling and navigation systems that are intuitive to users.”

“Since not all users have the same goals, good design lets many users access lots of stuff so they can accomplish their goals.”

“We don’t even know what else is going on in the user’s life. We make assumptions about their experience which are usually wrong. People multitask and get distracted. So you have to have a sense of overall context. You have to do user research.”

“Successful design comes from two approaches: top-down and bottom-up.”

“The top-down approach involves interviewing and observing users, developing features and matching goals to features.”

“The bottom-up one is based on an inventory of what you have, followed by an evaluation of content and features, an organisation with librarianship, and tools to let the users participate.”

The reason for this strategy is the same one that leads companies across many sectors to play the lifestyle card: a proliferation of competitors peddling largely interchangeable wares. If a bank wants to stand out, it’s fairly difficult to do so with the financial products it offers. It can, however, differentiate the manner in which it sells and packages those products. This is more or less the approach that Umpqua’s C.E.O., Ray Davis, has taken over the past dozen years or so. When he started, Umpqua was just another small regional bank, with about $150 million in deposits. Today (because of acquisitions, in addition to building new branches), the figure has increased to more than $7 billion.

Read full story (permanent link)

“These examples and far more are packed into Massive Change, the multimedia exhibit that made its U.S. debut Sept. 16 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The exhibit is the brainchild of Mau, a Toronto designer internationally renowned for his graphics work. But of all the points the show makes, and it makes many, the most obvious is how far design reaches in our lives, beyond visual expression and product development.”

“The show presents design as a method of creative problem-solving that can be applied to large social problems such as hunger, housing shortages, or energy for the Third World. ‘We have to liberate design from fixating on the visual,’ says Mau. ‘Instead we wanted to think about design as the capacity to effect change.’”

- Read full story
- Massive Change exhibition press release
- Massive Change exhibition feature site
- Massive Change project site

I am quite proud that my interview also launches a new interview section in the newsletter, that sets out to know more about how design is understood and practiced in different cultures and markets.

The interviewer was Enric Gili Fort, who was particularly sharp in the framing of his questions, in part also due to the fact that he is originally from Barcelona and worked in the Netherlands, so he knows the European context rather well. Thank you Enric!

Read the interview (alternate site)

It is against this background that UIQ Technology has started to reveal information on UIQ Technology Usability Metrics (UTUM) the process used to gather usability information as part of the UIQ platform development process. Richard Bloor caught up with Laurent Mauvais, Interaction Architect and Mats Hellman, Head of Interaction Design to find out more.

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ID’s research goal is to ‘develop methods that will help organizations gain a more detailed and relevant understanding of users’ increasingly complex lives, and drive the development of innovative and humane products and business concepts’.

Their work is set in the context of embedding computing into physical products, and the ability to create value by connecting products and services via networks to increase exponentially the variety of offerings a company can create.

‘At the same time, organizations have a decreased ability to predict how consumers will use these new offerings. Twenty years ago it was possible to predict the general patterns of how people worked, learned, played, managed family life, and kept healthy. Today people have many more lifestyle options, making the old methods of market segmentation and demographic studies less reliable.’

In particular, one of the research programmes is Context-Sensitive Design.

Go to the paper download page