As they become more common, these machines could also have negative impacts on areas such as surveillance and elderly care, the roboticists warn.

The researchers were speaking ahead of a public debate at the Dana Centre, part of London’s Science Museum.

- Read full story
- Related article in The Guardian

The study, entitled “Life online: The Web in 2020″ predicts that Generation C (C standing for content/ connectivity/ creativity/ collaboration/ communication) will be ‘nicer’, more able to communicate with a wider cross section of people and find common ground across previously divisive differences as a result of proliferation of the Internet, versus the previous generations.

The term Generation X comes from a fictional book written in 1991 by Douglas Coupland in which three strangers distance themselves from society. He describes the characters as “underemployed, overeducated, intensely private and unpredictable.”

In contrast, Dr. Peter Marsh of SIRC says: “…’Generation C’ …will be middle aged by 2020. This generation has grown up under the Web ideologies of open access, co-operation, exchange and sharing of information, as will all further generations. This will have profound implications for our society.”

- Read press release
- Request report (78 pages)

(via Usability News)

“Experience shifting raises all sorts of interesting questions about empathic design, where from an physiological-emotional perspective experience designers will literally be able put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

What are the characteristics of the people whose experiences will define, well, the essence of the experience we wish to design for, to communicate? It can be anything from designing an out of the box experience to learning, knowing what it feels like to walk in a Sao Paulo subway station, the touch of a razor from a Chinese back street barber, and yes, will encompass sexual encounters.

In this world DRM boils down to removing experiences from human memory and the inevitable badly written DRM leaves its host as a vegetable.

A new profession will arise – people whose job it is to experience stuff, and who will be judged on their ability to capture the subtleties of any difference process, task or context. With a distinction between raw experiences and those enhanced though stimulants, or post production.”

Read full story

“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.”

The essay elaborates Eric von Hippel’s concept of the ‘lead user’ into a wider notion of ‘lead market’.

“We should not throw away the benefits of the support we give to innovation through grants, incentives and advice, but complement it with efforts to create ‘lead markets’ – demanding consumers (including the public sector) who give innovators an early customer base from which to develop their products or services and diffuse them ahead of global competition.

In addition, this focus on demand for innovations will give us a tool to tackle one of the UK’s most pressing problems – how to increase the productivity and effectiveness of our public services. Outside of the defence sector, the public sector has lagged behind consumer and industrial sectors in innovation, and yet they have the potential through their purchasing power and the regulatory powers of government to transform the markets for innovations.”

NESTA’s “Provocations” are extended essays by key thought leaders working in innovation. They aim to foster debate and new ideas, and showcase thought-provoking work on innovation.

Luke Georghiou is Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management at the University of Manchester and Director of PREST, a large innovation research centre within the Manchester Business School.

Download essay (pdf, 229 kb, 32 pages)

The academy chose to immediately bolster enthusiasm through a socially-oriented project, focused on care for the elderly, thus enabling the various departments — photography, graphic design, product design, video, and communication & multimedia design — to learn new user-centred approaches through concrete, interdisciplinary and experience-focused activities.

Carefree living for the elderly

The Media & Design Academy started the year with a project that allowed students from various disciplines to collaborate creatively on a social topic: the living conditions of the elderly. This topic is highly relevant as our population is getting older and today’s youth will have to confront an increasingly ageing population both in their personal and professional lives. We therefore need insights in the needs, aspirations and capacities of the elderly.

The school used an experience design methodology to gather these insights: “Rather than figure out how to design for your audience, design for yourself after becoming like your audience!” (Dishman in Laurel, 2002). Objects and services are not seen as static products but as embodied experiences in a context, that differ depending on the person who engages in the interaction. To create a succesful and pleasing experience, the designer needs to learn how to see a context or an environment through the eyes of the user.

(My translation from the project website)

The students first inserted themselves in the environment of the elderly, helped by theatrical improvisation sessions. This lead to a series of innovative and creative designs and future scenarios aimed at visualising this carefree living of the elderly.

A short English-language vision document on design research is also available for download (pdf, 83 kb) from the lab’s website.

Greenfield is the principal of design consultancy Studies and Observations, and author of Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. According to Wikipedia, Greenfield is generally considered to be a thought leader in the information architecture and user experience professions.

Here is Régine Debatty’s introduction:

“His latest book, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing tells about what we can read in all the tech mags: computing without computers, everywhere, all the time and whithout us noticing it. For the first time however, someone who has observed the “ubicomp’d” life on several continents has put into a social, spatial, design and human context the consequences of this recent technology. I should also add that the book translates the working, meanings and implications of ubicomp into a very accessible language.

I still had a series of questions for Adam though. To be sure that i wouldn’t leave too many stones unturned, i asked Nicolas Nova to come to my rescue. Well… that’s the best excuse i could find to convince the guy who writes the only blog i would bring to a desert island to come and use wmmna space. Nicolas and i have both published the interview yet you’ll have to read the both of them to get the full picture: i posted some of his questions but not all of them and god knows what he’s done with mine ”

I personally liked reading his answer to why designers should be involved with ubiquitous computing:

“If ubiquitous systems, products, and services are developed in the absence of careful, sensitive interaction design they fail. And they fail in a way that poses particular challenges and risks to the user’s sense of calm and equanimity, because by and large the interaction landscape of everyday life is very robust, very well-assimilated. We simply don’t expect the constituents of everyday experience to crash, lock up, or perform perversely or incoherently the way digital information technologies manifestly do. [...]

Someone with a commitment to the human being at the focus of these technologies, who’s been trained to weigh that person’s prerogatives heavily in the design of transactions, who has the experience to recognize and account for not merely this single system but the entire context in which it’s operating – that’s the person you want to include on your team if you expect your intervention to succeed. I can’t imagine why anybody serious about satisfying their users and customers would want it any other way.”

- Read interview on Régine’s site
- Read interview section on Nicolas’ site

“I’ve addressed aspects of this in previous blog entries, as have other bloggers. Among the others are Jess McMullin, whose design maturity continuum describes design activity as evolving in companies from the role of styling to making things work better, to problem solving, and ultimately to problem framing to shape strategy. Another is Luke Wroblewski, who recommends that designers use their design skills “for business visualization“. [...]

One business that has gone and is going even further with such work is Wells Fargo, as partly described by Robin Beers and Pamela Whitney in a September 2006 EPIC conference paper entitled, “From Ethnographic Insight to User-centered Design Tools.” At Wells Fargo, ethnographic and related research findings are summarized in experience models, mental models, and user task models, with the latter representing the details and complexities of everyday financial life. User profiles, also developed from research findings, are then connected to the task model via “scenario starter” worksheets that enable all sorts of Wells Fargo personnel, including business strategists, to walk through the experience of different users in different situations in order to develop an extensive understanding of where, when, how, and why the user experience breaks down.

By extending the task model with metrics derived from surveys and other sources, Wells Fargo has developed an impressive user-centered strategic toolkit that guides project identification, project prioritization, business case definition, and much more.”

Read full story

There is a video for each of the four categories, or put more simply different lifestyles, that Nokia focuses on.

The videos are not showing prototypes of actual phones or devices that Nokia is currently working on or plans to launch. They are exploring futuristic concepts and potential new ideas that may or may not be produced in years to come. They are designed to inspire and stimulate discussion around how the mobile device of the future might look and function in our lives.

It looks like these are the same videos that Alistair Curtis, Nokia’s head of design, presented at the end of November at the Nokia World conference in Amsterdam.

Nokia – Achieve: Achieving Together | (on YouTube) (1:50)
Members of an architectural firm work feverishly together to win a competitive new project. Virtual teamwork is made effortless through smart wireless conferencing and remote presentations. Bluetooth audio ensures strong and clear communication. When mobile technology ascends to this level, we will achieve great things together.

Nokia – Connect: Connecting Simply | (on YouTube) (1:41)
We visit a grandmother who is virtually surrounded by her family as she prepares the evening meal. Simple interfaces scale up to wall mounted touch screens for ease of use. A spoken phrase is quickly translated into a large, readable text message to send. To connect simply is to honor what we value most as humans: staying close to those that matter.

Nokia – Live: Inspiring Senses | (on YouTube) (1:45)
What do our devices say about us? We seek new forms of personalization which are fluid and spontaneous, such as using captured images to transform our devices instantly. We exchange electronic business cards with the ease of passing a note. Reinventing personalization will inspire new ways to tell the stories which are uniquely our own.

Nokia – Explore: Sharing Discoveries | (on YouTube) (1:36)
People connect through their passions. An obsession with astronomy has led one man to scale a tall building, rapidly capturing and sorting images along the way. He is alone – and not alone. He is sharing his discoveries with a vast community of kindred observers from all over the world. Explore extends the reach of minds inclined to wander.

(via ExperienceCurve)

Some of the (fairly short) background essays, which were prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, are particularly relevant to the topic of this blog:

Briefing on My Private World?
Online worlds have opened up new vistas for individuals to seek like-minded acquaintances or take on new personalities. Do they give up their privacy in the process?

Briefing on Social Networks
Through social networks and related developments, consumers have the newfound ability to create and share their own experiences. Will they use that power to usurp power from corporations? How might this change society itself?
(Take a look at the charts as well!)

Briefing on Technological and Sector Convergence
Technological advancements have always affected how people work, play and communicate. When consumer behaviours fundamentally adapt, however, does it spell trouble for entire industries?

The research was commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation‘s Horizon Scanning Centre, and complied by futures researchers, Outsights-Ipsos Mori partnership and the US-based Institute for the Future (IFTF).

The papers look forward at emerging trends in science, health and technology. As well as assessing the current state of thinking they also examine the possible implications for society.

SIGMA SCAN

The Sigma Scan is set up as a database of 146 issue papers that provide a brief description of a particular trend or development and a projection of how, given a range of possible conditions, it may unfold in the future and influence the course of events over the next 50 years. The site navigation is rather idiosyncratic and not very user-friendly. But in fact, it is not so bad: you just click on one of the five themes, and on the next page simply hit the “search” button. Here are some of the papers that caught my interest (in no particular order):

• Come together: Virtual communities, multiple identities?
  New forms of communities are emerging, enabled by new technology and drawn together by shared interests from across the globe. As membership becomes more common, we may see people adopting multiple identities in the convergence of virtual and real worlds. The phenomenon has the potential to unleash huge creative forces and foster social capital. However it may also challenge legislators as it permits new forms of criminal behaviour.
   
• From consumer to creator: The content revolution and the rise of the creative class
  Consumers are harnessing media previously beyond their grasp technically or economically to express themselves creatively and to earn money. This has come about through innate creativity; accessibility of equipment (eg digital cameras); means to manipulate content (eg easy-to-use software); virtual sharing communities. Creative content may grow exponentially, spawning a new ‘creative class’. Consumer behaviour may change from plain consumption to customisation or co-production.
   
• The digitisation of knowledge: The wholesale transfer of conventional knowledge media to online sources
  Forms of knowledge and the means of sustaining them for public good are moving online at an exponential rate. The continuation of this online trend may herald radical changes in learning and work. It may or may not imply radically different patterns of knowledge use.
   
• Technology to empower the greying generation
  Currently, we design for a ‘youth-obsessed society’. It is often thought by designers that older people have little interest in design and in many situations the issue becomes not one of tastes but of needs. However, information technologies are becoming ever more essential for participating in modern life. Potentially they provide a valuable means of keeping people mentally active and in touch with friends and family, as well as providing a convenient means of doing shopping and obtaining advice. Yet computers can be very hard for older people to use, leading to their exclusion from this central aspect of society. There is likely to be high demand for significant redesign of user interfaces – for example, the introduction of speech recognition or the improvement of haptic (touch-sensitive) interfaces.
   
• Sensory transformation: life in a cloud of data
  Over the next ten years, increasing numbers of computational devices may be embedded in physical objects, places, and even human beings, that would provide considerable amounts of additional information about their environment. Access to this information may enhance our sensory experience, but also stretch our sensory capacity beyond current capabilities. Information technologies (e.g. ambient displays and so-called “calm” technologies) look likely to play a major role as a medium and mediator of social and professional communication. Also, by 2015 displays and interaction may be ubiquitous and provide rich sensory experiences. High-resolution and haptic (or force-feedback) displays, that allow users to feel and touch virtual objects with a high degree of realism, could become more immersive and lifelike.
   
• Virtual democracy?: Political activity goes online
  Democratic politics may increasingly be conducted online. Ease of access may allow citizens to virtually interact with political representatives eg mass referenda. Vast numbers may be able to register their opinions on topical issues almost instantaneously. This may revive the democratic process but also prompt debate about the nature of democracy itself, increasing pressure for constitutional reform and the creation of new outlets for participation in public life.
   
• The end of ownership?: Ubiquitous leasing of manufactured goods
  Virtually all fixed assets may be leased to businesses and consumers rather than be owned by them. Leasing could extend from property and large machinery (e.g. all vehicles might be leased) to smaller appliances (e.g. computer hardware, furniture).
   
• Innovation communities: Open-source, cooperative R&D
  The information economy allows technology development through global research and development, but high costs for specific applications sometimes make it risky, especially in competitive industries. Private and public sectors may combine resources to develop solutions more quickly, efficiently and mitigate risk. Internet and collaborative tools may facilitate this, with open source model allowing savings in costs.
   
• Technology’s child: the advent of young, tech-literate commercial talent
  The economy may become dependent on those who are highly technologically skilled. While some workers may be immigrants, the majority are likely to be have grown up with the technology and been through a work focused, IT-oriented education. Without re-education or re-skilling, declining demand for unskilled labour may depress their earning potential and prospects. The knowledge economy’s increasing importance may mean increasing inequality.
   
• From information to insight: Intelligent support and the conquest of information overload
  Computer agents equipped with artificial intelligence may automatically scan, filter and process information, reporting it to users in various targeted forms to aid business and personal life. Able to monitor, analyse, learn and understand natural languages in real time, these systems may help people become highly information-literate, process vast information quantities effectively from multiple inputs, and enable faster informed choices. This may boost productivity.

DELTA SCAN

Also the Delta Scan works as a forum for scanning the science and technology horizon over the next 50 years. The forum contains a hundred outlook pages covering a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies. The Delta Scan was produced by the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley think-tank, as part of a project for the Horizon Scanning Centre of the United Kingdom’s Office of Science and Innovation. The database is hosted by the Stanford University Foresight Research group, housed in the university’s Wallenberg Center. Also here a selection of papers:

• Ambient displays at the human-computer interface
  Developments in display technology may increase the repertoire of interactions between users and digital media by increasing the number of sites for ‘ambient’ displays.
   
• Computing on the human platform
  Interaction between personal electronic products, mediated by human skin, may lead to new, and greater use of, invasive applications.
   
• The end of cyberspace
  The concept of cyberspace as a distinct geographical entity has influenced the way we think about information technology, e-commerce, copyright, and high-tech products. New technologies are revealing a more complex relation between data-space and the real world, with consequences in all these areas.
   
• New technologies for cooperation
  New technologies for cooperation and a better understanding of cooperative strategies may create a new capacity for rapid, ad hoc, and distributed decision making.
   
• The rise of proactive and context-aware computing
  Proactive and context-aware computer systems that anticipate users’ needs and perform tasks in a timely and context-sensitive manner may begin to have an impact within the next 10 years.
   
• Human brain: the next frontier
  The next 20 years are likely to witness a revolution in our understanding of the human brain, with implications for virtually every domain of human activity, from mental health to software design and academic performance and real-life decision- making.
   
• Artificial extensions of human capabilities
  A wide range of technologies, from pharmaceuticals to implantable devices, and specialised cognitive or behavioural training (leading to regional brain activation through functional imaging), will enable extensions of human bodies, senses, and capabilities. This will lead to redefinition of various boundaries: natural versus artificial, alive versus dead, individual versus collective.
   
• The rise of applied anthropology
  The rise of applied anthropology is likely to challenge the traditional structure of the discipline.
   
• Studying human behaviour in cyberspace
  Cyber-ethnography, defined as the study of online interaction, is likely to become an important area of anthropological research as more and more human activities are conducted in cyberspace.

TechDigest, a UK-based consumer electronics and gadgets site, recorded it all and posted it on You Tube.

The first scenario, the ‘Live’ video, shows how we’ll be touching each others’ phones to pass messages in clubs in the future.

The second one, the ‘Explore’ video, shows off the way they think the user interface of phones may go, turning it, according to TechDigest, into a “whizzy touchy-feely touchscreen” type affair.

(Nokia has also posted a video on YouTube and their own blog but it is just a poorer quality version of the Explore video.)

(via Freegorifero)

“With 35 million elderly people in America, “the old, old” — those over 85 — are now considered the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population. While medical advances have enabled an unprecedented number of Americans to live longer and healthier lives, this new longevity has also had unintended consequences. For millions of Americans, living longer also means serious chronic illness and a protracted physical decline that can require an immense amount of care, often for years and sometimes even decades. Yet just as the need for care is rising, the number of available caregivers is dwindling. With families more dispersed than ever and an overburdened healthcare system, many experts fear that we are on the threshold of a major crisis in care.”

Miri Navasky and Karen O’Connor, producers of the American investigative TV programme Frontline, investigated the crisis and explored the new realities of aging in America in the 60-minute feature “Living Old”, which aired yesterday evening on PBS (the public broadcaster in the US).

The full programme can be viewed online in Quicktime and Windows Media. The website also contains extended interviews; profiles of the featured individuals and families; an interactive map featuring the demographics of America’s elderly, and the comparative costs of nursing homes, assisted living and home care; facts and stats; special readings; and information where to go for further help.

Frontline’s Living Old website

Read also this interesting reflection by Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times. An excerpt: “What’s distinctive about old age now, and what makes the lives of the so-called old old interesting, is what this generation of 80- and 90-somethings and centurions brings to it. To that end I wish someone had asked the people in this program about Europe, Ellis Island, cars, the Roaring Twenties, cocaine, the Depression, the Dust Bowl, ghettos, the war, the New Deal, polio, civil rights, socialism, washing machines, swimming pools, the Kennedy assassination, the lunar landing. And what, if anything, they make of the Internet.

The report, entitled “A surveillance society”, looks at surveillance in 2006 and projects forward ten years to 2016. It describes a surveillance society as one where technology is extensively and routinely used to track and record our activities and movements. This includes systematic tracking and recording of travel and use of public services, automated use of CCTV, analysis of buying habits and financial transactions, and the work-place monitoring of telephone calls, email and internet use. This can often be in ways which are invisible or not obvious to ordinary individuals as they are watched and monitored, and the report shows how pervasive surveillance looks set to accelerate in the years to come.

Richard Thomas said: “Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us. surveillance activities can be well-intentioned and bring benefits. They may be necessary or desirable – for example to fight terrorism and serious crime, to improve entitlement and access to public and private services, and to improve healthcare. But unseen, uncontrolled or excessive surveillance can foster a climate of suspicion and undermine trust.”

The report provides glimpses of life in a surveillance society in 2016, including how:

• Shoppers will be scanned as they enter stores, their clothes recognised through unique RFID tags embedded in them. This will be matched with loyalty card data to affect the way they are treated as they do their shopping, with some given preferential treatment over others
• Cars linked to global satellite navigation systems which will provide the quickest route to avoid current congestion, automatically debit the mileage charge from bank accounts and allow police to monitor the speed of all cars and to track selected cars more closely
• Employees will be subject to biometric and psychometric tests plus lifestyle profiles with diagnostic health tests common place. Jobs are refused to those who are seen as a health risk or don’t submit to the tests. Staff benefit packages are drawn up depending upon any perceived future health problems that may affect their productivity.
• Schools will introduce card systems to allow parents to monitor what their children eat, their attendance, record of achievement and drug test results
• Facial recognition systems will be used to monitor our movements using tiny cameras embedded in lampposts and in walls, with “friendly flying eyes in the sky” (unmanned aerial vehicles) keeping an eye on us from above
• Older people will feel more isolated as sensors and cameras in their home provide reassurance to their families who know they are safe therefore pay fewer family visits.
• Prosperous individuals will start to use personal information management services to monitor their ‘data shadow’ to make sure they are not disadvantaged by any of the vast quantities of information held about them being wrong or out of date. Others without the resources do this will be forced to stand on the other side of a new ‘digital divide’.

- Go to report download page
- Articles from The Guardian and BBC News

In a related story, The Guardian reports that according to experts “the internet will hold so much digital data in five years that it will be possible to find out what an individual was doing at a specific time and place”.

“Nigel Gilbert, a professor heading a Royal Academy of Engineering study into surveillance, said people would be able to sit down and type into Google ‘what was a particular individual doing at 2.30 yesterday and would get an answer’.”

“The answer would come from a range of data, for instance video recordings or databanks which store readings from electronic chips. Such chips embedded in people’s clothes could track their movements. He told a privacy conference the internet would be capable of holding huge amounts of data very cheaply and patterns of information could be extracted very quickly. “Everything can be recorded for ever,” he said.”

Read full story

“According to Motorola executives, the mobile phone will be at the center of the next computing revolution, but the product will likely look and feel a lot different than it does now.”

“PC Magazine has extensive coverage of the types of new products that Motorola is working on — like a robotic, avatar-based tech support assistant; boxes that light up different colors to reflect the level of interest in products; biodegradable cell phone casings; and new set-top cable/satellite boxes for the living room. Motorola is also working on a version of ‘social TV’ for consumers.”

Read full story

“The Way to Work (pdf, 1.5 mb, 40 pages) is the second report published by the coalition. The first, Organisational Lives (pdf, 1.4 mb, 44 pages), looked at how individuals might be using mobile technologies in the future.”

“The coalition feels the way in which society approaches intellectual property is going to be a key: if large companies maintain a stranglehold on their IP, innovation will be stifled and the workplace of the future will be little more than a cubicle farm.”

“But that is the least optimistic of the four scenarios proposed, with others suggesting a more flexible working environment becoming normal and the line between employee and freelancer becoming ever more blurred.”

“This change will effect what companies are, with the days of reliable blue-chip monoliths being numbered, and even large companies having to become more flexible and less risk adverse.”

“In a survey, commissioned by Orange, over 60 per cent of British workers said IT had given them more freedom over the last five years. For that trend to continue employees are going to have to take more responsibility for their own careers, as well as financial planning, and the report suggests that unions and other professional bodies might fulfill that role.”

“The three-year-old Web site Worldchanging.com has quickly established itself as a source for original, sophisticated reporting on green technology and humanitarian tools and organizational models, among other altruistic topics. The editors’ focus is on how people can cross-fertilize innovative ideas and collaborate on solutions to a variety of international environmental crises ranging from the quest for alternatives to Big Oil to the dearth of clean water in developing nations.

“Worldchanging’s executive editor, Alex Steffen, has now edited a book version of the site, Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, which will be published in November [The foreword is by Al Gore and the introduction by Bruce Sterling]. Part encyclopedia of socially conscious companies and movements, part picture-book (it includes gorgeous color photographs by leading photographers such as Edward Burtynsky), and part how-to instructions on becoming a greener consumer or business, the nearly 600-page volume is an invaluable resource you can use without booting up your computer (and so use electricity) to access Worldchanging.com.”

Reena Jana recently chatted with Alex Steffen about Worldchanging’s concrete goals, the inspiration for the book, and how businesses and consumers might benefit from the examples presented in the volume and on Worldchanging.com.

- Read interview
- View slideshow

The aim of the paper is to provide companies with a better understanding of the four approaches to increased customer focus at the start of the innovation process: personas, ethnography, fan bases (or “lead users”) and participatory design; to help them choose the most appropriate technique for the circumstances present; and to actually deliver the greatest impact.

Thanks also to the examples from such companies as Aviva, BMW, eBay, IDEO, Intel, Lego, Microsoft and Philips Design, the paper provides a quick overview to what is currently state of the art in corporate user-centred design and innovation. It also provides insight in why particular companies focus on a particular approach and what they want to achieve with it.

Download briefing (pdf, 560 kb, 3 pages)

Sali Earls of ITWales indulged in a bit of crystal ball gazing and spoke at length to Ian Pearson, discussing the sometimes dark, often controversial visions for the future brought about by technological advances.

Read interview

(via Pasta & Vinegar and the Pantopicon blog a thousand tomorrows)

“Visitors to the Microsoft Home, located inside the company’s Executive Briefing Center on the Redmond campus, can experience consumer technology innovations that are likely to emerge in Microsoft and partner products over the coming decade. These new technologies are presented through hands-on scenarios that highlight the following themes:

• Place: delivering timely, relevant information to people based on their location, whether inside the home or nearby;
• Participation: several emerging technologies designed to extend people’s self-expression;
• Discovery: intelligently bringing people the content they care about most and at the time when they’re in the mood to enjoy it.”

Read full press release