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Putting People First announces the launch of EMweekly, a compilation on Emerging Markets starting with this week’s issue on the theme of the booming Indian mobile industry.
Compiled by Niti Bhan and David Tait (of the Emerging Futures Lab), EMweekly will focus on a wide ranging selection of news, links and articles as well as analysis and indepth stories from the developing world. You can also receive the EMweekly via rss or email.
Recently Experientia extended its services with qualitative user 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. |
| Posts in category 'Africa' |
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9 May 2008
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3 May 2008
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Here is my selection on emerging markets related papers presented at CHI 2008.
(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available) Re-placing faith: reconsidering the secular-religious use divide in the United States and Kenya [abstract] Asynchronous remote medical consultation for Ghana [abstract] A resource kit for participatory socio-technical design in rural Kenya [abstract] |
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1 May 2008
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Business Week reports on how online aps such as Sports Tracker and Nokia Beta Lab, allow the Finnish handset giant to gather customers’ ideas from around the world, and virtually for free.
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13 April 2008
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Daniel Lende wrote a good annotated summary of the New York Times magazine feature of Jan Chipchase, on the “Neuroanthropology” blog.
He thinks the “world is going to see a transformation through the convergence of four factors: people-driven processes, change for the rest of us, human-centered science, and emerging methods”. |
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12 April 2008
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6 April 2008
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Niti Bhan and David Tait, who are specialised on research and strategy for emerging markets, recently collaborated with Experientia on an extensive ethnographic research project in Africa.
Although we cannot disclose the name of the client nor the type of research, Niti and Dave condensed their broader insights in what it means to design for emerging markets in a long article for Core77.
We are looking forward to collaborate more with them in the future. |
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12 March 2008
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The world of design and innovation has greatly changed in the last decade. The challenges are more complex, more intricate, and more systemic, and therefore require an increasingly holistic and multidisciplinary approach, especially in education.
Or in the words of Richard Koshalek, president of the Art Center College of Design:
Design schools are engaged in various explorations on how to best address this new context. Some bring in new people on their faculty, others start off industry or public sector collaborations; some collaborate with other institutions, others even merge with them (as Helsinki’s art and design school is planning to do). The renowned Art Center College of Design has done many of the above things as well, but is now going for something much more ambitious - it is breaking out of its own physical spaces (be them the Art Center itself, California or the USA in general), and are creating a series of what I would call “open innovation forums” on a global scale, all with the aim of “developing people”. Last week I was invited (thank you, Rudy) to attend one of them: the Disruptive Thinking event in Barcelona. Disclosure: Art Center paid for my trip and stay, on the condition I would write an article. They didn’t say anything more, so I feel free to write what I think. The Barcelona event, organised in collaboration with the prestigious ESADE business school, is the first in a series of global dialogues that Art Center is scheduling in a number of continents, as well as online. It is also the beginning of a wider initiative towards this European design city: the Art Center Barcelona Project. The Art Center Barcelona Project is a joint platform between Art Center and ESADE for postgraduate education, research and business networking in the field of innovation and design. This time the emphasis is on content-based international collaborations, rather than conventional bricks-and mortar “branches” overseas (as Art Center tried unsuccessfully for ten years starting in 1986 in Vevey, Switzerland). The benefits are of course obvious: a local partner has local knowledge, local networks, local staff and local facilities. The foreign partner brings in expertise and insights that will proof to be valuable to the local partner. And the investment for the Art Center is no where in the range of building a new school. Aside from that, there are also the brand implications and opportunities for recruitment and student admissions. In short, a win-win for both. But there is more… A social engagement Art Center has an initiative I really like: designmatters. Launched in December 2001, Designmatters at Art Center explores the social and humanitarian benefits of design and responsible business.
Designmatters, which engages Art Center students, faculty and staff, focuses on four major themes: public policy, global healthcare, human sustainable development, and social entrepreneurship. In the last years Art Center has become quite active in developing countries, and thanks to its designmatters initiative, has become the first school to be designated a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). It also is a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) as a civil society organisation. Designmatters is crucially part and parcel of the Barcelona Project: collaborations with educational, civic and cultural institutions particularly on social and humanitarian issues are a key focus, which is part of the reason why there was such a strong emphasis on broader social and humanitarian issues during the Disruptive Thinking event that I attended. One of the themes the Barcelona project particularly wants to address is the role of design in cities, which “must be redefined according to wider principles of sustainability — not only in relation to the environment, but also in terms of energy production and consumption, economic prosperity, social justice and cultural development.” And that’s how it should be. Trying to think disruptively Thinking in a disruptive way is not an easy thing to do, it requires good ideas and the power to make them stick so that they can actually become disruptive, otherwise they don’t make much impact. The overall themes of the Disruptive Thinking event — climate change, geopolitics, business, science, belief, and design, have of course a history of lots of disruptive thinking. The organisers were courageous: they sought out “‘disruptive’ thinkers and practitioners who — despite the many risks involved — bring vital energy to bear on these issues and push them in new and productive directions for society.” The one-day event was chaired by British journalist Richard Addis, who selected primarily British or UK-based presenters (with the exception of the ESADE dean) to be in charge of each of the six sessions. These six presenters in turn selected one to three guests each, which were of course also primarily from the US (insofar they were not at SXSW) or the UK. There wasn’t much of a presence from the rest of Europe or the world (besides the one courageous Ugandan journalist), and that was frankly a serious gap. Although the guests were very insightful and by times really funny (as only Brits can be), I really wanted more diverse viewpoints than the conference in the end was able to offer. Josh Nakaya, an Art Center product design student did a truly excellent job at blogging the conference, and later upgraded them with responses. Also the video streams are now available. So I will refer to these summaries and videos in my comments below. There is also a webpage with the full line-up of speakers. So let me start with tackling the sessions one-by-one.
In short The event as it happened was not ideal: some of the presenters were not leading their sessions very well, not everyone had valuable ideas to contribute, the match between the theme of disruptive thinking and what was actually being discussed was absent by times, and there was not always a clear sense of direction. It was clear that the sessions were underrehearsed, if rehearsed at all. Too often people went off on their own tangent, with a presenter unable or unwilling to pull them back on a clear path. I also wondered afterwards to what extent I actually had heard new things, or whether the things I had heard I couldn’t just as easily have picked up in a book or a good magazine. The answer is probably yes. But books and magazines are monologues by their nature. This was in concept and execution a series of dialogues. In the beginning of this article I described how this Barcelona event fits into a wider strategy of open collaboration, open communications and social engagement. This is not just a valuable and laudable approach, but also one which is highly relevant and timely in contemporary society. We need more of these initiatives, not less. They have to be fine-tuned and improved, no doubt, but in essence we need dialogues and collaboration between disciplines, between different parts of society, between different regions in the world. The world has become too complex for each of us to figure things out by themselves. And that is what to me these Global Dialogues are really about. I also hope that Art Center will deliver on its commitment to continue the conversation online, to have a continuous dialogue. The event blog is now basically dead, and there have been no comments whatsoever on any of the posts that I could find. So probably this is not the right tool - a new one needs to be developed. What about the US? The Art Center is an American school, its students are based in California. How can they participate in the global dialogues? In fact, many of the Art Center events are also taking place in California: the recent two-day summit on Systems, Cities & Sustainable Mobility (proceedings are already available - the next summit is in February 2009), and the upcoming Serious Play conference. |
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24 February 2008
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4 February 2008
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Nicole Ferraro investigates in a long article in Information Week if cell phones and other inexpensive wireless devices can close the digital divide in the world’s poorest countries.
The article seems to be a synthesis of a longer article “The Internet and the Developing World” that was published on InternetEvolution, as part of a series of eight articles assessing the future of the internet. |
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22 January 2008
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Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase reports on just published research from Microsoft Research India’s Jonathan Donner that explores the practice of beeping - making intentional missed calls.
The paper draws on field research from Rwanda in 2004, categorising three different types of beeping: call back beeps; pre-negotiated instrumental beeps; and relational beeps, and discusses the rules that define the what, why and how. Chipchase continues:
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22 January 2008
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Nokia announced today that it unveiled two handsets that offer a range of useful features and colours aimed at consumers in emerging markets. Interestingly they have each been designed based on extensive user research.
Nokia 2600 classic for personalisation
Nokia 1209 for phone sharing
Nokia now also has a dedicated website devoted to user research and phone designs for emerging markets, with PDF downloads and video material. |
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14 January 2008
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13 December 2007
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Niti Bhan reviews “The White Man’s Burden“, William Easterly’s recent book on foreign aid and economic development challenges in the ‘third’ or ‘developing’ world:
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11 December 2007
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All kinds of things apparently, as described by this revealing story on the BBC, commented on by Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week:
The project clearly suffers from a top-down approach, where “designing for” is the paradigm rather than “designing with” or “designing from”. There was as far as I know no structured needs analysis here, no contextual studies, no ethnography, no qualitative insights. Such an approach cannot lead to anything but unintended consequences and may be potentially undermining the project itself. There are many lessons to be learned here, by the OLPC (”one laptop per child”) team, but also by any company or organisation trying to deliver designed solutions for “end-users” who then turn out to have different needs and contexts that had somehow been anticipated. But of course, we can always blame those “end-users” instead of learning some important lessons, and I am afraid this is definitely going to be part of the debate that will undoubtedly ensue. |
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11 December 2007
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Niti Bhan is a very regular source of inspiration on this blog, on her own site, on Core77, and elsewhere. She is a thorough thinker and has some very valuable insights to contribute on what design in emerging markets really means.
So I asked her to write a short essay for the website of Torino 2008 World Design Capital precisely on that topic. She accepted and wrote a great story. Just a few lines to wet your appetite:
(Thanks Allan for plugging it so quickly.) |
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3 December 2007
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The TED conference has published its video of the talk by Nokia’s “user anthropologist” Jan Chipchase in March this year:
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3 December 2007
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Nokia’s latest study, ‘A Glimpse of the Next Episode’, predicts that within five years a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups rather than coming out of traditional media groups.
- Read full story (MobileCrunch) |
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3 December 2007
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According to Niti Bhan, Nathan Eagle’s post on the limitations of the current perception of the mobile internet experience for the developing world are “spot on and the most insightful I have come across to date”.
Here is a quote from his article on the Nokia Developer’s blog:
By the way, make sure to check out the website of EPROM:
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27 November 2007
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28 September 2007
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The mobile platform is currently undergoing somewhat of a revolution in the developing world — and so are people’s lives — with Africa now more advanced than the rest of the world in terms of mobile banking. The user experience challenges are only beginning to be addressed.
If you want to keep abreast on developments in this field, here is a crop of news stories from just this last week:
Note by the way that all the user research work by Jan Chipchase and others seems to have paid off: Nokia dominates the mobile handset landscape in India with an astonishing 74% market share. |
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