“I was recently asked to comment on ‘the street of the future’; a response for a quango responsible for the built environment and a government department responsible for transport, roads and so forth. Which means it’s really the street of the near-future. I didn’t have enough time to write something short, so I dashed off the following, and I’m really posting here as a note to self, rather than an attempt to deeply discuss the everyday informational street circa 2008. Still, I hope you find it useful or engaging. The photos don’t relate directly but create a kind of composite illustrative city nonetheless.

It’s deliberately grounded in the here-and-now, more or less, so it will seem rather old hat to some of you. Which in a sense it is. And in another sense, it isn’t. But either way, this was a better strategy for the task-in-hand, and in imagining the scene below, via a kind of narrative, it’s still remarkable to even sketchily consider how much data is already around us, and is near-invisible to traditional urban planning perspectives. And I’d suggest that this data beginning to profoundly affect the way the street feels. Some quick analysis follows the narrative, raising a series of questions for governance, legislation and the public-private partnerships that also constitute the contemporary street.”

In this interview with Charles Torre, Buxton talks about design thinking, experience design, and how design, technology and business interlink together focusing on end users.

(via UX Connection Canada)

The conference took place at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, 30 August - 1 September, 2007, and was organised by the International Science Shops Network, Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, International Network of Engineers and Scientists for global responsibility, Centre for the Sociology of Innovation of the Ecole des Mines, and the “Social and Political Transformations related to Life Sciences and Life Forms” (TSV) research Unit of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).

Darren Sharp of Smart Internet CRC (Australia) was there to present an academic paper drawing on his organisation’s research on user-led innovation, Web 2.0 and participatory media from an upcoming report.

His paper titled “Citizen Innovation: using participatory research for knowledge discovery”, discussed how user-led innovation provides new concepts and methods capable of extending the field of knowledge about participatory research. It explored how practice-based methods such as Participatory Action Research and Community-based Research have facilitated the rise of Citizen Innovation which provides opportunities for citizen empowerment; supports the co-creation of new public-sector services and scientific knowledge discovery; and utilises knowledge that is embodied, experiential and collaboratively produced. The presentation also canvassed pathways for public-sector organisations to leverage the participation of citizens and amateur scientists in the interest of co-creating new forms of knowledge.

In his blog report on the conference, Sharp also mentions his meeting with Eric Seulliet, a Paris-based foresight consultant and founder of La Fabrique du Futur (The Factory of the Future) and their talk on his interesting new book project on user-led innovation.

The 4th Living Knowledge Conference will take place in Dublin, Ireland in 2009.

- Read full story (alternate link)
- Watch conference video

The first item in the menu of this flash-based mini-site are Vodafone’s customers. Ten stories explain how Vodafone has changed the way people work and play. The stories are quite promotional, but they nevertheless clearly emphasise the people-centred approach of the company.

Nice too is that the people featured are from New Zealand, Germany, Australia, Greece, Tanzania, Ireland, Spain, Egypt, UK and Italy, and that everyone speaks their own language.

“Prototyping - whether conceptual or physical - makes for possible contextual scenarios in the foresight-sense to give rise to possible scenarios-of-use in the user centred design-sense. As such, in foresight activities these designs not only help to evoke more in-depth qualitative reflections from stakeholders, they can also give direct leads as to how to take up certain strategic challenges posed by the scenario, thereby co-creating new value(s).

In ways reminiscent of experimental projects by Philips Design as well as the EU research project Designing for Future Needs (see also here), and with a time horizon of about 10 years, industry partners and students at Victoria University of Wellington School of Design in New Zealand envisioned future solutions in an initiative titled Design Led Futures.

Professor Simon Fraser started it in order to challenge students “to step back from the constraints of daily practice, to look beyond the immediate product, to look at it in context, and to investigate the broader issues that surround it - human issues, issues of society, culture and behaviour - including emotional issues that are fundamental to industrial design as a discipline.”

So far three projects have been concluded, in which the focus lay explicitly upon the overall experience rather than the mere object of design :

• Domestic Bliss: students were required to create a new understanding of the role that appliances (such as fridges, washing machines and cookers) might play in the architecture and culture of the home
• Inside-Out: project on the theme of outdoor living and the role that appliances might play in making this possible and pleasurable
• Energising Water: project to explore and create a new understanding of the base material of water by creatively applying existing or new, specifically developed technologies

Check out the fascinating concepts that students developed.”

“I have a group of about 15 other researchers who work with me, and one of the things we’re trying to do is not just look at a brief moment when a human being interacts with a piece of technology – because sure that’s interesting but in some ways it’s not interesting unless you know the bigger picture … we go to a range of different countries around the world, we spend time living off and with people in their homes participating in their daily activities.

“What we’re interested in is the rhythm of life. What people care about what motiviates them, what frustrates them, what annoys them… in some ways the really mundane stuff of daily life, so you know – what do you do when you get up in the morning? Can I come shopping with you? Can I come down to the temple or the pub or the park – I’ve done all of those things, because part of what you want is to get a sense of that much bigger picture of people’s lives.”

- Read full story

- Listen to a discussion with Genevieve Bell on how her job works, how technologies differ worldwide, and how babyboomers are the most tech-savy generation modern civilisation has ever seen. MP3, duration: 13mins 15secs

- Listen to edited version of the keynote by Genevieve Bell at the Australasian Computer Science Conference, beginning with the cultural implications of basic broadband wireless technology in American versus Asian homes. MP3, duration: 55mins 38secs

In this interview with Australian usability consultant Gerry Gaffney, she talks about what it means to build technology with the home in mind, about cultural influences in the use of technology, about the connection between religion and technology, and about sheds.

Genevieve says that part of what people want is for technology to be invisible.

“Computational power is important but what people see is the experience.”

Listen to interview (mp3, 11.6 mb, 25:20)

(CUO is a research department of the faculty of Social Sciences at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, where I have actually studied as well).

“From designing for children to ROI, from accessibility to heuristic evaluation and from conference proceedings to software tools, nearly everything you need to know is right at hand. This [the user experience design resources from Dey Alexander Consulting] is an essential bookmark for everyone involved in UCD!”

Greet Jans, a researcher who also writes for “For Users Only” points to another interesting lead, that I wrote about earlier, but is worth a reminder: Steve Mulder, the author of the book “The User is Always Right: A practical guide to creating and using personas for the Web” has got also a weblog dedicated to personas.

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).

The gave the presentation at the Australian WebDirections conference last week.

It cites a case study for the Australian FOX Sports website and explains how we went through the process of using ethnographic information to help inform and innovate the design of the site.

“As the head of Intel’s user experience group in the US, and the company’s anthropologist, Ms Bell’s mission is to add the vital human element to technology.”

“It’s not good enough to just keep producing technology with no notion of whether it’s going to be useful. You have to create stuff that people really want, rather than create stuff just because you can,” she says.

“Bell’s work has already started to deliver results,” writes Flynn. “Intel recently completed a pilot program in rural India where a single “community PC” provides internet access to entire villages.”

Read full story

(via UPA monthly)

This case study uses a project from the State Library of Queensland, Australia to showcase a human computer interaction-derived design method developed by the authors to ensure a strategic response to community co-creation initiatives. Using a variety of media, the new Multi-Platform Communication Design method has enabled the design of web-based distribution; a community and a facilitator’s training program; and the development of a mobile multimedia laboratory.

This paper details the design method by which these multiple communication platforms were developed and implemented to achieve successful project delivery.

Download case study (pdf, 416 kb, 10 pages)

(via AIGA Gain: Journal of Business and Design)

University of Queensland researchers used a combination of mobile group ethnography, contextual group interviews and participatory activities, to explore current communication behaviour between backpackers engaged in a typical tourist activity.

Results indicate a long list of inconveniences backpackers face, which have translate into a list of 48 user requirements and a table of 35 product ideas.

Read full abstract
Download paper (pdf, 3.5 mb, 71 pages)

(via Mobile Community Design)

It is maintained by Jeff Axup, a Ph.D. student in Information Environments at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and contains some remarkable and detailed comparison charts.

One chart compares mobile research methods, that is methods for understanding mobile behaviour to inform technology design. Another (hosted on Axup’s previous blog) compares usability evalution methods.

kidsonline@home - Internet use in Australian homes [April 2005]

NetAlert and the Australian Broadcasting Authority recognised a need to capture behaviours and attitudes associated with Internet use in the home, particularly among children aged 8 to 13 years and their parents.

Research was undertaken with the objectives to examine patterns of internet usage and behaviour, perceptions of the internet and online experiences, strategies for ensuring safety online, internet safety information resources and needs, and the use of mobile communications.

Download report (pdf, 1.6 mb, 123 pages)

eGeneration Study 2005-2006 [August 2005]

This study into internet and technology usage patterns among Australia’s online kids, teens and their parents revealed that 66 per cent of parents believe their children to be more internet and technology savvy than they are themselves.

The bi-annual study by Nielsen//NetRatings Australia and sponsored by Nickelodeon Australia was based on telephone interviews with 350 metropolitan and 150 rural households

Download press release (pdf, 124 kb, 2 pages)

It uses a schools of thought methodology to develop four scenarios: the Adaptive User Environment, Not The Smart Internet, Rich Media and Chaos Rules. The report includes interviews with global ‘thought leaders’ including Howard Rheingold, Cory Doctorow, Douglas Rushkoff, Mark Pesce, Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman and many others. Specific domains that are discussed include the Open Source movement, Social Networks, Digital Games, Voice Services, E-Health and Mobiles.

Download executive summary (pdf, 681 kb, 34 pages)
Download full report (pdf, 1.28 mb, 170 pages)

(via John Thackara)