Abstract

Over almost three decades, the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has produced a rich and varied literature. Although the focus of attention today is naturally on new work, older contributions that played a role in shaping the trajectory and character of the field have much to tell us. The contributors to HCI Remixed were asked to reflect on a single work at least ten years old that influenced their approach to HCI. The result is this collection of fifty-one short, engaging, and idiosyncratic essays, reflections on a range of works in a variety of forms that chart the emergence of a new field.

An article, a demo, a book: any of these can solve a problem, demonstrate the usefulness of a new method, or prompt a shift in perspective. HCI Remixed offers us glimpses of how this comes about. The contributors consider such HCI classics as Sutherland’s Sketchpad, Englebart’s demo of NLS, and Fitts on Fitts’ Law–and such forgotten gems as Pulfer’s NRC Music Machine, and Galloway and Rabinowitz’s Hole in Space. Others reflect on works somewhere in between classic and forgotten–Kidd’s “The Marks Are on the Knowledge Worker,” King Beach’s “Becoming a Bartender,” and others. Some contributors turn to works in neighboring disciplines–Henry Dreyfuss’s book on industrial design, for example–and some range farther afield, to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Taken together, the essays offer an accessible, lively, and engaging introduction to HCI research that reflects the diversity of the field’s beginnings.

Or in the words of John Thackara:

BED-TIME STORIES FOR GEEKS
Tom Erickson has published a collection of 51 short, personal essays and reflections on the story-so-far of human computer interaction. Each text reflects on a piece of work – book, paper, demo – that’s at least 10 years old. Tom tells me he thinks of it as “bedtime stories for HCI geeks”.

Nicolas Nova: The future of urban computing [5:25]
Nicolas Nova is researcher at the Media and Design Lab at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne and one of the editors of the annual LiftConference in Geneva. An expert on user experience and interface design, his research focuses on urban computing, so on how people use technology infrastructure in cities and in urban environments. He says that the future of cities it is not about technology but about human needs, an about what citizens want. In this interview he explains examples of the intelligent use of urban computing, like “Real-time Rome”, an MIT project realized in the Italian capital.

Alberto Alessi: Why real innovation is a question of systematic failure management [12:55]
The Italian design factory ALESSI is a representative example of how Italian design companies, like Artemide, Flos or Kartell, have been able to constantly reinventing themselves without loosing focus: exploring the imaginary of people by ignoring prescriptive marketing research in their product development. For this video interview we travelled to the Alessi headquarters in Crusinallo near Milan where chief design manager Alberto Alessi spoke about his theory of contemporary design management, the ugliness of cars, how Philippe Stark’s lemon squeezer came to life and why the egg is the most singular object ever “designed”.

Tom Kelley (IDEO): What has innovation consulting to do with film-making? [6:37]
Tom Kelley, general manager at IDEO and author of books like “The Art of Innovation” and “The Ten Faces of Innovation” is a globally recognised authority in innovation consulting. In this video interview he describes the fundamental changes in the innovation business, the importance of radical collaboration and design-based thinking, explains what IDEO’s innovation projects have to do with film-making and why shareholder value-obsessed CEOs won’t keep their jobs too long.

Younghee Jung (Nokia): What a Nokia product designer thinks about the iPhone? [4:47]
Nokia, the leading mobile phone producer, uses exploratory design research in an almost anthropological approach to study user behaviour in order to get fresh ideas for new products and applications. We talked to the product and interaction designer Younghee Jung, leader of one of Nokia’s global research teams, about the difficulties of exploring future trends in the mobile communication, the importance of local user behaviour and she finally confessed that the iPhone was actually, a positive thing to happen – both, for Nokia and the entire mobile phone industry.

Emile Aarts (Philips Research): Innovation by creating products that are “easy to experience” [5:14]
Emile Aarts is the vice president and director of the scientific programme at Philips Research. In 1998 he created the Ambient Intelligence Vision and in 2001 he founded the Philips HomeLab, two two initiatives that shaped the way in which the largest electronics company in Europe currently creates its new products.
“We have ensured that the separation between different departments is not as strict as before. We adopt a programmatic vision on innovation processes, which means that we have created truly multidisciplinary groups.”

In this interview she shares her thoughts about teaching person-centred and innovative thinking to business managers, about using virtual environments or Web 2.0 tools to backup learning experiences, and about people-centred learning.

Read interview (pdf)

“Consumers seek meaning and a brand they can trust. They are busy at work on Web 2.0 platforms creating ways to cut through the noise in search of products and services that resonate with integrity and transparency; in a word, authenticity. That quest for authenticity is a call to action for any company intending to be relevant in the 21st century.”

“As the marketplace has shifted, so too must design. A single, beautifully designed product is nothing more than a beautiful object without the focused intent of a company that has taken the time to understand three things: the deep-seated desires of its customers, its own DNA, and the sweet spot where the two overlap.”"

Read full story

“Welcome to the weekend Web, where people are spending a bigger slice of time online via wireless devices—and using a different set of sites than during the workweek.” [...]

“Of course, most Web surfing still happens via PC, but M:Metrics’ research shows that when it occurs by way of mobile, much of it takes place on the weekend.” [...]

“Lots of U.S. cell phone users flock to a different set of sites via handheld.”

- Read full story
- View slideshow

“Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy,” says Brown.

“Edison’s approach was an early example of what is now called “design thinking”—a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered design ethos. By this I mean that innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported.” [...]

“Put simply, it is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.”

Read full story

(via Noise between Stations)

< “It's about women helping women because it is not going to happen if we wait for the men in these countries to do something. They just get another wife. It's no big deal for them.” [...]
It's hard to see how the Freedom from Fistula Foundation could emulate the commercial success of the orphanage, but Gloag's compassionate capitalism has found a way. While they are in hospital, the women are given a basic education and taught how to sew and use a mobile phone.

“We give each of them a mobile phone and when they leave hospital, they become the phone-booth for their village,” says Gloag. “The first $40 they make, they pay us back for the phone and we buy the next one. Then they make a profit. We basically give them a business.” Gloag sees women as the key to change in Africa.

Women are making a difference indeed and not just in Africa. A women’s cooperative in Paraguay has formed to purchase food in bulk thereby stretching their household budgets as prices rise. Unemployed Bahraini women will be trained to set up small entreprenuerial ventures as fashion designers and seamstresses after numerous textile firms went redundant in the recent past. Meanwhile in Ghana, plans are in place to launch a women run bank for rural farmers, in sub Saharan Africa 80% of the food is grown by women but they have access to only 7% of the assistance and 10% of the land.

Rising costs of fuel and energy are driving mobile service operators to seek sustainable solutions across emerging markets as mobile phones increasingly become a critical part of the regional infrastructure. Ericsson, Motorola and Grameenphone are some of the companies with established pilot programs in countries like Namibia, Bangladesh and Indonesia while individuals like the ‘Mad Austrian’ demonstrate the endurance of their vision in South Africa.

Numbers and growth are an overwhelming part of the conversation around the developing world and emerging markets. Whether its FON founder Martin Varsavsky’s dreams of scaling up his subscriber base in order to create a wireless worldwide web or Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen’s attempt to put the 3 billion or so mobile users around the world into context, the fact remains that emerging markets like the Middle East and Africa will be the engines of growth in the future.

Expanding into these markets, however, will not be easy as developing nations pose their own challenges as firms like Vodafone and Motorola are discovering. Entreprenuers in Egypt are hampered by culture and lack of capital even as South African’s deal with their nation’s current meltdown. But China seems undaunted as this Fast Company special report seems to say. A snippet to peek at the secret of their apparently undigestable success?

“Let China sleep,” Napoleon famously remarked, “for when she awakes, she will shake the world.” Today, China is not only roused, she is devouring the world for breakfast. In just a few years, it has become the world’s top consumer of timber — as well as zinc (with 30% of global demand), iron and steel (27%), lead (25%), aluminum (23%), and copper (22%), along with nickel, tin, coal, cotton, and rubber. The entire sub-Sahara currently uses one-twentieth the amount of steel China does. And although China is the planet’s second-biggest consumer of oil, behind the United States, it’s gaining fast.

This must be an example of the rise of the rest that Fareed Zakaria talks about in his much acclaimed new book, The Post American world. For as China bans plastic bags to protect her environment, Middle Eastern consumers are enamoured with cutting edge home appliances. Palestinian girls accept mobile phones from prospective male friends and the Ethiopians decide to license their coffee to Starbucks. Even the “dollar a day” limit of the international poverty line has been upgraded to a buck and a quarter. Surely signs of triumph of the entrepreneurial spirit, as articulated in the book “Lessons from the Poor” (synopsis)?

Researcher Carolyn Wei’s literature review found that most studies of cell phones’ influence on youth culture have taken place in the West, while studies elsewhere focus on purely economic uses, so she undertook a study of the role of the mobile phone in facilitating and maintaining romantic relationships in Bangalore, India. Noting this snippet,

“What Carolyn has done it take this really interesting element of youth culture — courtship — and identified how mobile phones interact with those pre-existing patterns of interaction,” Kolko said. “Technology doesn’t trump culture, it doesn’t change culture on its own, but it is a force that pushes against cultural patterns.”

we take you on a whirlwind tour of the role of the mobile phone in courtship among Palestinian teenagers, Bahraini youth, Saudi Arabian romantics as well as Egyptian singles. All is not roses however, as this young Kurdish lady discovered, but still women in conservative cultures try to learn all they can to maintain a life of dignity and respect.

EMweekly (previous editions) is a compilation on Emerging Markets news by Niti Bhan and David Tait (of the Emerging Futures Lab).

EMweekly focuses on a wide ranging selection of news, links and articles as well as analysis and in-depth stories from the developing world. You can read it on Putting People First, or receive the EMweekly via rss or email.

The emerging market news update reflects Experientia’s extended research and experience design capabilities in emerging consumer markets in developing nations such as in Sub Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia etc.

This new offering is founded upon a recent structural collaboration between Experientia and three emerging market specialists — Niti Bhan (based in Singapore), Claude Martin (based in France), and David Tait (based in South Africa) — and an extensive research project in Africa we just completed for a major technology company.

Product Experience summarizes research on the emotional and cognitive experience of using products. The book explores product experience in terms of aesthetics and design, ergonomics and usability, product facilitation of human capacities and skills, entertainment value, and how product experience extends beyond the product itself to brand association, the shopping experience, and product packaging.

The book contains perspectives from a variety of disciplines in psychology, business, art, and engineering to fully understand the many components important to product experience. Product experience begins with judgments of aesthetics and value that are mitigated by environment and use, and then further altered by memory, association with brand, and the relationship one forms with the product.

In contrast to other books, the present book takes a very broad, possibly all-inclusive perspective, on how people experience products. It thereby bridges gaps between several areas within psychology (e.g. perception, cognition, emotion) and links these areas to more applied areas of science, such as product design, human-computer interaction and marketing.

Intended for researchers with an interest in human-product interactions, the book will appeal to psychologists, engineers, and business professionals interested in fully understanding product experience. With coverage of human factors, affect, perception, industrial design, engineering, information processing, ergonomics, industrial-organizational psychology, environmental psychology, business and marketing, communication, and product innovation, the book contains a wealth of information on a topic too broad to easily grasp via primary research in one discipline. International in scope, the book includes research from the US, Canada, UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Japan, and Germany.

Contents

Preliminary, TOC, Preface, Introduction (H.N.J. Schifferstein & P. Hekkert)

Part I: From the human perspective

IA. Senses

1. On the visual appearance of objects (Harold T. Nefs)
2. The tactual experience of objects (M.H. Sonneveld and H.N.J. Schifferstein)
3. The experience of product sounds (R. van Egmond)
4. Taste, smell and chemesthesis in product experience (Armand V. Cardello and Paul Wise)
5. Multisensory product experience (H.N.J. Schifferstein and C. Spence)

IB. Capacities & skills

6. Human capability and product design (John Clarkson)
7. Connecting design with cognition at work (David D. Woods and Axel Roesler)
8. Designing for expertise (Axel Roesler and David D. Woods)

Part II: From the interaction perspective

9. Holistic perspectives on the design of experience (Gerald C. Cpuchik and Michelle C. Hilscher)

IIA. The aesthetic experience

10. Product aesthetics (P. Hekkert and Helmut Leder)

11. Aesthetics in interactive products: correlates and consequences of beauty (M. Hassenzahl)

IIB. The experience of meaning

12. Meaning in product use – a design perspective (Stella Boss and Heimrich Hanis)
13. Product expression: bridging the gap between the symbolic and the concrete (T.J.L. van Rompay)
14. Semantics: meanings and contexts of artefacts (Klaus Krippendorff and Reinhart Butter)

IIC. The emotional experience

15. Product emotion (P.M.A. Desmet)
16. Consumption emotions (Marsha L. Richins)

IID. Specific experiences and approaches

17. Product attachment: design strategies to stimulate the emotional bonding to products (Ruth Mugge, Jan P.L. Schoormans, and Hendrik N.J.Schifferstain)
18. Crucial elements of designing for comfort (Peter Vink and MIchiel P. de Looze)
19. Co-experience: product experience as social interaction (Katja Battarbee and Ilpo Koskinen)
20. Affective meaning: the Kansei Engineering approach (Simon Schutte, Jorgen Eklund, S. Ishihara, and M. Nagamachi)

Part III: From the product perspective

IIIA. Digital products

21. The useful interface experience: the role and transformation of usability (John M. Carroll and Helena M. Mentis)
22. The experience of intelligent products (David Keyson)
23. The game experience (Jeroen Jansz)

IIIB. Non-durables

24. Experiencing food products within a physical and social context (Herbert Meiselman)
25. The mediating effects of the appearance of nondurable consumer goods and their packaging on consumer behavior (Larry Garber, Eva M. Hyatt, and Unal O. Boya)

IIIC. Environments

26. Office experiences (Christina Bodin Danielsson)
27. The shopping experience (Ann Marie Fiore)

Closing reflections (H.N.J. Schifferstein and P. Hekkert)

Abstract

Mobile communication has become mainstream and even omnipresent. It is arguably the most successful and certainly the most rapidly adopted new technology in the world: more than one of every three people worldwide possesses a mobile phone. This volume offers a comprehensive view of the cultural, family, and interpersonal consequences of mobile communication across the globe. Leading scholars analyze the effect of mobile communication on all parts of life, from the relationship between literacy and the textual features of mobile phones to the use of ringtones as a form of social exchange, from the “aspirational consumption” of middle class families in India to the belief in parts of Africa and Asia that mobile phones can communicate with the dead.

The contributors explore the ways mobile communication profoundly affects the tempo, structure, and process of daily life around the world. They discuss the impact of mobile communication on social networks, other communication strategies, traditional forms of social organization, and political activities. They consider how quickly miraculous technologies come to seem ordinary and even necessary–and how ordinary technology comes to seem mysterious and even miraculous. The chapters cut across social issues and geographical regions; they highlight use by the elite and the masses, utilitarian and expressive functions, and political and operational consequences. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate how mobile communication has affected the quality of life in both exotic and humdrum settings, and how it increasingly occupies center stage in people’s lives around the world.

About the author

James E. Katz is Chair of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University and director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies. He is the author of Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life and coauthor of Social Consequences of Internet Use (MIT Press, 2002).

The book contains more than 30 contributions, including chapters written by Jan Chipchase (Nokia Research), Jonathan Donner (Microsoft Research India), Howard Rheingold, and Carolyn Wei (Google).

“The idea of “user involvement” covers simple consultation with service users at one end of the spectrum through to “user directed” or “user driven” services at the other. User driven services are those where people actually have some kind of managerial, or more often financial, control of service delivery (such as individual budgets in health and social care), or even participate in service provision themselves.” [...]

“The Committee concluded that achieving high-quality, responsive public services means empowering and engaging with service users as much as simply addressing their needs. It urges the Government to foster a public service culture of working with people to ensure that personalisation results in excellent public services.”

- Read press release
- Download report (pdf, 420 kb, 37 pages)

Set up as a series of events – a top-class conference, seminars and workshops – PICNIC will be held in Amsterdam from 24 to 26 September this year and will attract thousands of creative minds from all over the world.

Over the next months you will see regular PICNIC related content on this site, all of which you can also find on this special PICNIC page on our blog.

Obviously I will be going to Amsterdam then and I look forward to meeting some of you there.

She filled it with “anthropological advice” about how to approach the world like a fieldwork project.

“But I am suggesting a different kind of openness and vulnerability. One that engages you and decenters you, requires you not to be at the center of attention or a social network. This kind of vulnerability, or humility, brings with it grace.

Maintain your ability to be surprised – this takes work but is another important part of how to be in the world and another piece of anthropological advice I would give you. Experiencing surprise is a really good thing as it marks the moments when we encounter the stuff that doesn’t fit into our world views. It is when our assumptions are most clearly revealed, allowing us to move past them.”

Download the text of her speech (pdf, 9 pages)

The result is a series of podcasts that further examined the issues that the sessions revealed.

The podcasts include interviews with Richard Anderson (editor-in-chief of Interactions Magazine), Björn Hartmann (editor-in-chief, Ambidextrous magazine), and Michael Recchiuti (about chocolate and user experience), as well as a round table with with Adaptive Path and Boxes and Arrows (Chris Baum, Brandon Schauer, Sarah Nelson, Henning Fischer, and Ryan Freitas).

Design anthropology seeks to answer the question how do the processes and artifacts of design help come define what it means to human. It explores a wide range of interests related to design practice: how interfaces can be developed based on values of shared learning versus individual study; how the adoption of technologies can lead to greater social equality and inequalities over time; and how not just the words but the meanings behind words change as you design for one culture versus another. These are all issues of the human context that has grown more complex. Design anthropology is the field to help you feel confident in your design decisions by showing you the global ramifications of past, current, and potential communications, artifacts, and experiences as they affect the human context.

Design anthropology does not place separate emphasis on values, or design, or experience, which are the domains of philosophy, academic design research, and psychology, respectively. Rather, design anthropology focuses on the interconnecting threads among all three, requiring hybrid practices. The outcomes of design anthropology include statements providing some deeper understanding of human nature as well as designed communications, products, and experiences.

Read full story

(Check also this article by John Thackara on design and the future of travel.)

Ethnographic researcher Stuart Henshall spent a week in Mumbai, India recently with fellow researcher Dina Mehta, studying mobile culture in India. Dina has collated a selection of Stuart’s observations during his time there. In particular, the Emerging Indian Middle Class and the influence of the China phone are worth the read. Also in the news, Indian ethnographic research firm CKS has just released the Emerging Economies report covering not only India but as also emerging markets in developing nations such as Indonesia and South Africa.

Mobiles and their influence on the social and economic development at the bottom of the pyramid in emerging markets have been globally noted. Released this week by the UN and the Vodafone Foundation is a report titled Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use covering 11 case studies of innovative uses of mobile technology by groups working to achieve the Millenium Development Goals. Also released this week is Going wireless: Dialing for development (PDF) by David Lehr. Unlike the previous report, this focuses more on sustainable business models for mobile phone use and looks at “social entrepreneurs; technology innovators; economic development agencies; incumbent service providers and emerging commercial ventures.”

Micro is the topic du jour in emerging markets. An excellent opinion piece on NextBillion.net quotes CK Prahalad’s latest book, The New Age of Innovation (review),

“today, instead of a small group of people sitting and thinking about innovation, you can have three billion people not only being micro-producers and micro-consumers, but micro-innovators…everybody has an opportunity to contribute to innovation.”

meanwhile The World Bank predicts mobile banking will transform microfinance, creating excitement for entreprenuers even as debates on the topic move The Economist to ask us “Is it acceptable to profit from the poor?“

Business models meant for emerging consumer markets are either being designed for the conditions and constraints inherent in the region or modeled on those that have organically emerged. In 2007, Nokia Siemens Networks launched Village Connection, a cost-effective network system that allows an innovative business model by which operators can bring affordable mobile phone services to remote areas – it has just been awarded an “Excellence in Innovation” award – with two pilot programs, one in South India and one in Tanzania. Vodafone Tanzania has just announced they will be linking the rural to the suburban for the first time via the test village’s GSM grid.

More emerging business models noted this week include a highly profitable shea butter cooperative in Ghana, a pedal powered mobile phone kiosk in Latin America, bringing cheap and hygienic street food to Calcutta’s streets and to conclude on this topic, a must read is Al Hammond’s five part series on the topic of scaling business models at the BoP.

Asian social networking? Overlooked by the buzzmakers, these sites have been making waves in their home countries with innovative websites and features, says Norman Lewis, while the BBC points us to the lucrative opportunities in India. In the meantime, China Mobile is seeking Nokia Siemens Network’s help with their user experience in order to stay competitive in the booming Chinese wireless market. A quote from Norman Lewis’ article underscores the need,

It is important to acknowledge that Asian entrepreneurs were driven to recognise these opportunities through necessity rather than conscious planning. Asian operators have a lot in common with their Western counterparts. Just as mobile operators never envisaged texting becoming a revenue-generating service in the West, but learned to find ways to make the most of it, Asian operators have been forced to come up with solutions that required some innovation.

The key was developing platforms for micro-payments. Necessity was the mother of invention. The deep-seated behavioural impulses behind young people’s engagement with digital media in Asia were captured and monetised in ways few imagined would work. The fact that a Chinese instant messaging company can show operating profits of $245million a year in a country where 75 per cent of internet users earn less than 2,000 RMB/month (less than $300/month) shows how powerful this desire for self-expression, acknowledgement, status and communication actually is in Asia.

If there is a lesson to be learnt here it is that if the user’s needs are placed at the centre of services, and this remains the focus of innovation, viable businesses can be built for the future.
[...]
But even though Asian service providers stumbled upon their business models and innovations by accident, their experiences are important for the future evolution of such services around the world.

Another interesting example of a social networking site, this time on the mobile platform that has caught the eye of buzzmakers is Singapore’s very own BuzzCity with their myGamma. Newly emerging mobile social networking sites are being seen as serious challengers to incumbents like MySpace and Facebook. Of course, they’ll have to plan their iPhone strategies soon! Take a look at where myGamma’s growth is coming from – only the USA stands out in their top ten countries as NOT being an emerging market!

Overall, the network’s top ten markets served two billion ads, which represented annual growth of 800 percent. Here’s where the US fits in to BuzzCity’s world market:

1. Indonesia : 654 million (+ 13328%)
2. India : 577 million (+ 1522%)
3. South Africa : 426 million (+ 418%)
4. USA : 132 million (+ 917%)
5. Kenya : 79 million (+ 424%)
6. Romania : 57 million (+ 446%)
7. Bangladesh : 53 million (+ 305%)
8. China : 37 million (+ 6053%)
9. Brunei : 35 million (+ 221%)
10. Pakistan : 35 million (+ 814%)

EMweekly (previous editions) is a compilation on Emerging Markets news by Niti Bhan and David Tait (of the Emerging Futures Lab).

EMweekly focuses on a wide ranging selection of news, links and articles as well as analysis and in-depth stories from the developing world. You can read it on Putting People First, or receive the EMweekly via rss or email.

The emerging market news update reflects Experientia’s extended research and experience design capabilities in emerging consumer markets in developing nations such as in Sub Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia etc.

This new offering is founded upon a recent structural collaboration between Experientia and three emerging market specialists — Niti Bhan (based in Singapore), Claude Martin (based in France), and David Tait (based in South Africa) — and an extensive research project in Africa we just completed for a major technology company.

The book, which has the tentative title “Future High Tide of High End” and will be published by Wharton School Publishing, provides a socio-cultural and people-centred understanding of the concept of luxury — more specifically prestige products for the masses (which they call “High End”) — with the aim of delivering insights and guidance for future business development in this sector.

Made possible by about seventy conversations, contributions and interviews with industry experts, thought leaders and opinion makers, the book is quite unique in its approach, and bound to become a must-read for anyone conceiving, developing and marketing higher-end consumer products and services.

A focus on the intersection of social trends, designer visions, and deep people understanding, allows the authors to propose a series of original insights, including a new, experience-based concept for the future of the industry, as well as a toolbox from which to create and understand new “High End” product and service offerings.

To understand what the soul of the High End is going to be in the near future, the authors also introduce an experimental method, the Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE) — with people having to evaluate pairs of future scenarios, with those data then statistically analysed to find out which underlying ideas are the real drivers. They then present the results of an original experimental study based on this method, that was conducted in four countries (US, UK, China and Italy) with more than 500 end-users, all from somewhat higher income brackets.

The book, which is currently in advanced editing (partly on the basis of our feedback), is bound to be published before the end of the year. The authors told us they will soon publish some more material on their website (such as an abstract, a table of contents, a sample chapter, etc.), so that also our readers can contribute their own insights and suggestions.

A small endnote is one of pride: this is the first public piece on the upcoming book. Marco said he would be happy if it came from his hometown (Torino, Italy) and so are we.

Allan Chochinov on the Dumbest Smartest Design Problem
At the PSFK Conference New York 2008, Allan Chochinov (Core77) gives an object lesson in strategy and creative thinking. People often assert that real value isn’t in the answer we provide, but in the question we ask. Well, what happens when we ask a supremely stupid question in the hopes of driving innovation? A lot, actually.

Grant McCracken on Pattern Recognition
At the PSFK Conference New York 2008, Grant McCracken (MIT) explains the importance of inspiration, providing a framework for which to gather, monitor and react to trends and ideas in culture and business.

Hugh MacLeod on Wine 2.0
In this 28 minute video, from the PSFK Conference London 2007, among many other things, Hugh MacLeod describes how a small South African wine company shook up an industry with a web 2.0 approach.

Regine Debatty on What Happens When Artists Mess Around With Technology
In this 28 minute video from the PSFK Conference London 2007, Regine Debatty of We Make Money Not Art describes how today’s artists explore electronics, digital bits and even the so-called “emerging technologies” such as biotechnology or nanotechnology; and explains why it should matter to us?

Jeremy Ettinghausen on How To Build Innovation Into A Brand
At the PSFK Conference London 2007, Jeremy Ettinghausen of Penguin spoke on the challenges of reinventing a traditional brand for a digital age.

Mike Butcher on How Digital Media Screwed the Media Business
This 20 minute video from the PSFK Conference London 2007 presents journalist Mike Butcher as he talks about how media owners are on a race for survival against technology companies that put the power to publish in the hands of the ‘audience.’

Niku Banaie Gives Twenty-Five Signals for Change
At the PSFK Conference London 2007, Niku Banaie from Naked Comminications talks about how an understanding of the basic human needs can keep your employees, customers and friends happier, fresher and healthier.

Timo Veikkola on a Vision Of The Future
This 20 minute video from the PSFK Conference London 2007 shows the presentation given by Timo Veikkola, Future Strategist at Nokia, on a Vision of our Future. As design is the reflection of society, how can we envision the future through trends, observation and informed intuition. What values, attitudes and behaviours of today will shape our future?

George Murphy on Brand Experience
At the PSFK Conference New York 2007, George Murphy (Fitch) spokeon creating environments to develop valuable interaction between consumers and brands.

Allan Chochinov on The Perfect Storm
At the PSFK Conference New York 2007, Allan Chochinov (Core77) speaks on whether the ability of the web to share ideas forced a sudden shift towards the consumption of the idea of a product rather than a product itself? How does this impact design and product development?

“The transformation of our social lives and the increase in surveillance and technological innovations have led us to believe that privacy is in the midst of a very public death. But privacy is not dying, nor can we let it do so.

Privacy protects a set of deeply significant values that no society can do without; it is about the lines, boundaries and relationships we draw between and among ourselves, communities and institutions. Privacy appears threatened because our perception of what it means has radically changed. This collection argues that we get the privacy culture we deserve. Our appetite for a connected society means we have yet to determine why we still care about privacy.

These essays explore the underlying challenges and realities of privacy in an open society, and argue for a new settlement between the individual and society; the public and the state; the consumer and business. To achieve this, we need collective participation in negotiating the terms and conditions of twenty-first century privacy.

The collection includes contributions from Jonathan Bamford, Peter Bazalgette, Chris Bellamy, Peter Bradwell, Gareth Crossman, Simon Davies, Peter Fleischer, Niamh Gallagher, Tom Ilube, Markus Meissen, Perri 6, Charles Raab, Jeffrey Rosen, Robert Souhami, Zoe Williams and Marlene Winfield.”

Download paper (pdf, 580 kb, 184 pages)

Exploiting end-user trends to create value with sticky services – The “Me” network for the “We” experience [12:43]
The communications industry is experiencing the explosion of the “Me-We” phenomenon! Customers want “Me” services that are personalized, easy to use and focused on their needs. At the same time they want what we call the “We” experience, access to their friends and their social communities, such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. So how can Service providers address these new market dynamics and user trends, grow their revenue, create value, and retain customer stickiness?
John Giere, Chief Marketing Officer, Alcatel-Lucent explains how the Service Delivery Environment (SDE) is the answer for creating the “Me” network for the “We” experience.
Read more: Article: The “Me” Network for the “We” Experience

Bell Labs Human Factors [06:33 - Transcript included]
Alcatel-Lucent is committed to helping operators deliver a superior user experience. One of the ways to help is to gain an intimate understanding of end-user behavior and the Bell Labs Human Factors team is one of the many groups within Alcatel-Lucent doing just that. The team is made up of Ph.D.s with an average of 15+ years professional usability experience working to understand the cognitive, social and behavioral influences on communication; to grow a collection of profiles and scenarios that will forecast the needs and habits of today’s young adults and tomorrow’s workforce; and to design and create intuitive, engaging applications, based on the research and understanding of human communication, while seamlessly meeting the needs of users.
Cheryl L. Coyle, Ph.D., leads the Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Human Factors group in New Jersey, USA.
Read more: www.alcatel-lucent.com/usercentric

The Rise of the Millennials [07:42]
Many are considering the “Millennials” as being the next big market for communications services. Connected and aware some 234 million people worldwide known as the Millennials are the next big market segment service providers need to tackle. Millennials have as much clout as Baby Boomers do, and will continue to exert influence in the market for decades to come. Millennials want personalized, flexible services, and they are willing to pay for them. They represent a roughly USD 10 billion market by 2011. To meet these demands and benefit from this market segment, service providers will need a network infrastructure that will deliver next generation IP-based services and offer personalized, blended services. This will help them retain existing customers, attract new ones and increase their ARPU.
In this podcast, Jay Peterson, VP of Global Market Development for user-centric services for Alcatel-Lucent, talks about who the Millennials are, why they should matter to service providers and how Alcatel-Lucent can help service providers address this particular market segment.
Read more: Whitepaper: The Rise of the Millennials

The Alcatel-Lucent website also contains a page with links to research papers that provide detailed insight into the needs and behavior of end users to help operators deliver a superior user-centric experience.

The programme should also result in the development of new products, services, and concepts. Finally, the programme should increase the qualifications of employees to take part in the innovation processes in the participating companies and public institutions.

The programme, which has a yearly budget of DKK 100 million (13.4 million euro or 20.9 million USD) and runs for four years, 2007-2010, is administered by Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, which is part of the Danish Ministry for Economic and Business Affairs.

The activities are grouped in three areas: strategic, regional, and other important areas.

The strategic effort concerns three broad thematic areas: (1) areas where Denmark has particular business skills (e.g. environment and energy technology, construction, health, design and food); (2) cross-sectoral issues relating to social problems with promising market potential (e.g. healthy and energy saving construction, or fighting obesity); and (3) welfare areas, in particular where the citizen interacts with the public sector (e.g. care for children and elderly citizens and the health sector). Fifteen projects are currently running:

• Indoor climate and quality of life – more in Danish
• Service renewal in practice – user-driven service innovation in small artisanal companies – more in Danish
• Accessible packaging for the elderly and the functionally impaired – more in Danish
• Innofood – employee and user driven innovation in value chains – more in Danish
• User-driven mobile community – more in Danish
• User-driven innovation and communication of textile qualities – more in Danish
• The future’s interactive convenience store – more in Danish
• Future waste systems – more in Danish
• Coherent patient process – more in Danish
• A good life for the elderly – more in Danish
• The healthy way – more in Danish
• Lead user-based entrepreneurship (in collaboration with Lego and MIT) – more in Danish
• New product development with lead users (in collaboration with Grundfos and MIT) – more in Danish
• Intelligent utility – more in Danish
• User-driven innovation and strategic design – more in Danish | English

Desinova is the name of this last project, an historic, systematic, and longitudinal study of strategic design and co-creation innovation in services happening now in Denmark. The project’s outcomes are expected to have global implications for innovation in industry and civil society.

The Desinova project objectives are:

• to generate ten successful service innovation projects;
• to make participating service companies and agencies more capable of service innovation;
• to develop a Service Innovation Model that explains how service company personnel, strategists, marketing people, designers, anthropologists and users successfully co-create;
• to evolve policy recommendations for business, education and research.

The regional effort ensures that knowledge of and experience with methods for user-driven innovation is disseminated throughout the country. Regional actors in each of the country’s six geographic regions organise a yearly project in their region:

• Copenhagen Innovation Center (Capital Region) – more in Danish | English
• Handicaps – a knowledge resource to better aids (Central Jutland Region) – more in Danish
• Tele home care – chronic patients and the collaborating health services (North Jutland Region) – more in Danish
• Healthy meals for hospital patients (South Denmark Region) – more in Danish
• Bornholm’s harbour – the hidden treasures (Bornholm Island) – more in Danish
• User-driven innovation in value chains (Zealand Region) – more in Danish

The third area of effort covers applications from projects that work with any other important issues, businesses and institutions, notd covered by the strategic or regional effort, such as the 180º Academy and the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

More info:
- Presentation by Dorte Nøhr Andersen, Head of Division, Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority – (pdf)
- Presentation by Lars Bo Jeppesen, Director, Danish User-Centered Innovation Lab, Copenhagen Business School – (pdf)