| Posts in category 'Emerging markets' |
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6 January 2009
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29 December 2008
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The January-February 2009 issue of Interactions Magazine has just been launched, which in itself is a celebration of the fantastic transformation of the magazine under the careful stewardship of Jon Kolko and Richard Anderson, now one year ago.
This transformation is never complete of course. With a wink to a recent political campaign, it’s also “time for some change” at Interactions Magazine. Five new contributing editors join the magazine, and I am very proud to say that I am one of them. Here are their introductions:
The March-April issue will feature my first contribution as contributing editor, followed by a number of guest pieces in the issues after that. Although most content is not freely available, you can subscribe to the magazine for 55 USD (less than 40 euro). A bargain. Meanwhile check out the excellent cover story, which is fully online: The washing machine that ate my sari - mistakes in cross-cultural design. |
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20 December 2008
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Last week, the World Bank’s CGAP hosted a roundtable and webinar on the important topic of how mobile phone banking can deliver a range of financial services to poor people and change lives for the better (see also this blog post).
If you missed the presentations, or if you’d like to hear them again, you can now access the archived presentations and video. Presentations: Building Agent Networks & Creating Regulatory Space Video: Introduction and Sessions 1 & 2 and Session 3 (requires RealPlayer) Introduction by Elizabeth Littlefield, CEO of CGAP Session 1: Driving mass market customer usage Session 2: Buildng a viable, motivated network of agents Session 3: Creating and taking advantage of regulatory space Here’s a great write-up of the sessions from Patrick Philippe Meier at Tufts. |
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13 December 2008
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded UC Irvine a $1.7 million grant to create a new research institute focused on the growing use of mobile technology in providing banking and financial services to people in developing countries.
The Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion will be the first to explore how the world’s poorest people spend, store and save money. The institute will study how these habits are affected by the emerging mobile banking industry, known as “m-banking,” which could make financial services and the security they provide available to millions of poor people for the first time. It also will fund research in developing countries, host conferences and provide scholarships to those who conduct such research. An archive on the emerging m-banking industry for use by researchers in the U.S. and around the world also is being planned. [...] UCI anthropologist Bill Maurer will serve as the institute’s founding director. He is widely known for his research on the anthropology of money, finance, law and property. The institute officially launched Thursday, Sept. 18, at the beginning of the “Everyday Digital Money” workshop, that Putting People First reported on earlier. |
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11 December 2008
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I am currently watching a live webcast from the World Bank in Washington on mobile banking in emerging markets. If you are near a computer, you might want to check in too (there is 2.3 hours to go at the time of writing - the webcast runs from 2 to 5 pm, Washington DC time, on 11 December).
Update 20 December: videos are now online. |
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7 December 2008
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| The Tactical Technology Collective, an international NGO helping human rights advocates use information, communications and digital technologies to maximise the impact of their advocacy work, has just released “Mobiles in-a-Box“, a collection of tools, tactics, how-to guides, and case studies designed to help advocacy organizations use mobile technology in their work.
Included are sections on conducting surveys and petitions, mobile fundraising, creating a mobile website, setting up an SMS hub, and more. (via ShareIdeas) |
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7 December 2008
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| If you are interested in bottom-up innovation within emerging markets using mobile phones, the recent MobileActive08 conference (more here) in Johannesburg, South Africa generated a wealth of materials. Below are some videos:
Mobiles and news gathering at Al Jazeera Money, mobiles, micro-business No difference in how Zambian men and women use mobile phones Measuring social impact of mobiles Microsoft launches ‘Midas’ Mobiles and citizen media Banking the unbankables Mymsta - a loveLife conception Gary Marsden, mobile interaction designer Social SMS gets message across Erik Hersman of whiteafrican.com Freedomfone’s fresh look at radio Save sea-life with your cell Burma’s GenX activists Mobile’s ‘Dark Side’ Mobile use in low income areas Mobile phones in rural development and agriculture Here is the full list of videos |
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7 December 2008
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A team at IDEO led by Tatyana Mamout and Jessica Hastings has been working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently to develop a toolkit to help NGO’s apply human centered design methodologies to the work they do with small holder farmers.
IDE, one of the NGO’s supported by Gates, collaborated closely with the team and co-developed the toolkit and tested it in the field. The toolkit can be downloaded here and while it would need to be adapted for use in other categories it may be a useful starting point for others who are working on design problems for the poor and under served. (via Tim Brown) |
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1 December 2008
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We all live in a digital world, although it means different things to different people. In her inaugural public lecture as Adelaide’s Thinker in Residence, Intel’s Genevieve Bell will explore how digital technology is shaping our lives, our culture, and our future.
Dr Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist and ethnographer with both an academic and industry background. Her research has provided considerable insight to the importance of culture in the adoption and adaptation of technology. She is currently the Director of User Experience in Intel Corporation’s Digital Home Group in the United States. Listen to lecture (mp3, 48 min, 16.5 mb) |
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29 November 2008
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Ethan Zuckerman, a researcher on the impact of information technology in developing nations, reports on his blog on a recent panel discussion, organised by the Open Society Institute, on new media in authoritarian societies.
The discussion started from the premise that our understanding of the effects of online media on society “are largely based on research in open societies, especially in the U.S. But there’s lots less work on the effects of new media in other parts of the world, especially in closed societies, and much of the work that’s done is incomplete and sometimes inaccurate.” Aside from Zuckerman himself, panels included John Kelly, founder of Morningside Analytics, who talked about the emerging networked public sphere and presented his maps of online social networks in Iran, Egypt, Russia, and China; Evgeny Morozov, who is writing a book on the Internet in authoritarian countries; and Porochista Khakpour, an Iranian-American writer who discussed how the Iranian diaspora uses the Internet.. (via Worldchanging) |
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23 November 2008
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The Denmark-based Center for Sustainable Innovation (blog) is embarking on a new combined research and consultancy project about People Centred Innovation with Base of the Pyramid.
The project, which is funded by the Danish Network for Research Based Userdriven Innovation - NfBI, will be exploring how to create new products and business models to improve the life of the half of the world’s population that is getting by on less than 4 USD a day (in comparative purchasing power as if they were living in the US), and how to put people first and include their needs and aspirations, and their knowledge and resources in this [which the UN calls Growing Inclusive Markets]. Aside from the forementioned Center, other entities involved are SPIRE - Research Center for Participatory Innovation at University of Southern Denmark, and the Danish company Danisco, that provides bio-based solutions for food ingredients and other stuff and is exploring how it can develop products and business models that will improve the nutrition and income of people in the rural areas of India. According to a blog post by Louise Koch of the Center for Sustainable Innovation, the research project aims are:
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21 November 2008
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A three part series of special reports on Radio France International explored the impact of mobile technology around the world. The transcripts are all online and - if you read French - it is highly recommended reading.
The first programme (alternate site) introduces the essential nature of the mobile phone in Africa. The high cost of using a mobile phone in Africa is the focus of second programme (alternate site). Africans spend between 6 to 10% of their monthly income on mobile phone use. What do they do to afford this? The last programme (alternate site) looks at Africa as a highly innovative environment for mobile phone use, with many mobile services — banking, micro-finance, market information, political activism, journalism — that are still marginal in more developed economies. The series was produced in collaboration with Atelier des Médias, RFI’s participative web community. (via kiwanja.net) |
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21 November 2008
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19 November 2008
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“How can you rob a bank in a world without money?” wonders science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, one of the collaborators of the new foresight project KashKlash.
KashKlash is a lively platform where you can debate future scenarios for economic and cultural exchange. Beyond today’s financial turmoil, what new systems might appear? Global/local, tangible/intangible, digital/physical? On the KashKlash site, you can explore potential worlds where traditional financial transactions have disappeared, blended, or mutated into unexpected forms. Understand the near future, and help shape it! Imagine yourself deprived of all of today’s conventional financial resources. Maybe you’re a refugee or stateless — or maybe it’s the systems themselves that have gone astray. Yet you still have your laptop, the Internet, and a broadband mobile connection. What would you do to create a new informal economy that would help you get by? What would you live on? E-barter? Rationing? Gadgets? Google juice? Cellphone minutes? Imagine a whole world approaching that condition. Which of today’s major power-players would win and lose, thrive or fail? What strange new roles would tomorrow’s technology fill? Besides Bruce Sterling, the initial collaborators are Régine Debatty (of we-make-money-not-art), Nicolas Nova (LIFT) and Joshua Klein (author and hacker), who have been collaborating on initiating the discussion. KashKlash is now opening up to you. You can join and follow the debate of our experts or contribute yourself by leaving a comment on the different matters or fill out our KashKlash questionnaire. This public domain project is conceived and led by Heather Moore of Vodafone’s Global User Experience Team and run by Experientia, an international forward-looking user experience design company based in Turin, Italy. Check the project description for more info. |
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13 November 2008
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Last week, Nokia launched its Nokia Life Tools (backgrounder), a range of innovative agriculture information and education services designed especially for rural and small town communities in emerging markets.
From the press release: Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS, granted it a long article on PC World (copied on his blog) is enthusiastic:
Clinton Jeff from DarlaMack.com, also posted a big write-up. |
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11 November 2008
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Last week frog design and IxDA NY organised Tiger.Blam, a public conversation with Nokia’s Jan Chipchase on effective design research in cross-cultural mobile markets, or in other words, how he ‘designs’ his research expeditions.
No video or presentation download is as yet available, but several bloggers have it summarised. Robert Fabricant of frog design focuses on his personal favourites and is an especially interesting read. Christine Huang of PSFK found especially interesting the principles that guide him and his team members when they’re conducting research in the field. Drew Cogbill wrote a more general summary. Required reading for those doing research in emerging markets. |
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11 November 2008
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Two user experience magazines landed on my desk this week. They are available only to subscribers, both in print and online. But subscriptions are relatively cheap.
User Experience is the quarterly magazine of the Usability Professionals’ Association (membership is a modest 100 USD) and its latest issue is devoted to usability in transportation. Here are the titles of the feature articles and you can find the abstracts online:
Disclosure: my business partner Michele Visciola is on the editorial board of this magazine. Interactions is the bimonthly publication of ACM. Better designed than User Experience, it has become, under the thoughtful leadership of Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko, both profound in its analysis and broad in its interests. At 55 USD for six issues, it is also a bargain. Here is the latest harvest of articles, some of which you can actually find online:
Disclosure: As of next year, I will be a contributing editor to the magazine (and I feel honoured to be in such esteemed company). |
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2 November 2008
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The Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Irvine recently organised a workshop on innovation in digital money, entitled Everyday Digital Money.
The workshop examined this emerging, complex, and unevenly distributed landscape of digital money innovation from cultural, psychological, legal, artistic, technological, and industrial perspectives, in order to identify key topics for future research within and across disciplines; such as:
The workshop blog contains a lot of materials, including the presentation abstracts of each of the sessions:
Some papers and presentation slides are available on various websites, including
Further browsing unearthed additional resources such as:
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31 October 2008
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Nokia Open Studios are a design research method for engaging communities in shanty towns.
According to Nokia’s senior design manager Younghee Jung, they were set up as a community design competition with the theme of ‘design your ideal mobile phone’, hosted in 3 communities of Dharavi (Mumbai, India), Favela Jacarezinho (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and Buduburam (Accra, Ghana).
Or in the words of Nokia’s user anthropologist Jan Chipchase: “Despite what you might assume for a studio, the most valuable output of the Open Studio is not the designs, but in providing an alternative way for people to articulate their wants and needs - within the context of their community.” - Presentation (SlideShare | PowerPoint) |
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27 October 2008
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Experientia news
Over 250 participants are expected to attend the first European regional conference of the ...
(scroll down for images) The Canavese Connexion is a project to promote design by regenerating ...
Three years ago we founded Experientia. It has been a very exciting ride since. In three years ...
The Usability Professionals' Association is proud to announce the first European Regional UPA ...
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