Archive for July, 2008
New Blogs I’m Following
Better World By Design Conference
Brown is having a Better World By Design Conference November 7-9. Also, their Better X Design blog.
FrontlineSMS
FrontlineSMS is a easy to use SMS gateway designed for use by NGOs from kiwanja.net and its founder Ken Banks. Version 2 of the system just went live. The system certainly answer the problem of communication in developing nations.
Coverage: Discovery News, White African, 160 Characters,
The Kiwanja blog and their Social Mobile Facebook Group.
From a NYTimes article, 28 May 2008:
“Africa, where 29 percent of the population owns a cellphone, according to Gartner, is just one of several promising markets. In India, market penetration is 34 percent, well below the United States, at about 70 percent, and Western Europe, at more than 90 percent.”
Essentially, the room for mobile phone growth in emerging markets is huge, not to mention the fact that these markets are huge in comparison to existing markets (the US, Western Europe). This is discussed and understood, but specific statistics are essential in making the argument of how creating an affordable communication system for those living in these markets can, beyond being extremely helpful to individual lives, be economically possible.
“an interesting thing happened today in my gchat window… low bandwidth or a message from God?”
via Filardi
Making a mashup?
Adam Baker, Google, on Google
Google Design in Practice: the Challenge of Simplicity on iTunesU.
Adam Baker works for Gmail and specifically worked on Gchat. He talks about things design (rapid prototyping, scoping, etc.) and how that work in a corporate, engineering environment (Google).
prototype_0
A role prototype about mobile banking. It doesn’t say much more than what is possible with mobile banking right now. You can currently transfer credit via SMS to another pre-paid account. What I’m considering here is how people could use cell phone credit as currency.
I’d really like to pursue some project in mobile banking, but money issues may put research into that beyond the scope of possibilities.
“Problems and dsolutions with interactive devices” - Harold Thimbleby
Available on iTunesU: Problems and dsolutions with interactive devices
In this talk, Harold Thimbleby, of FIT Lab, is arguing that design (and life) problems can be effectively exposed through telling good stories. The story format Thimbleby advocates for is a “dstory,” a video under 2 minutes with still images and voice over.
Dstories have the ability to shine light on problems which are generally accepted or overlooked in daily operation. They use a particular incident to highlight a particular design problem by connecting to people you want to take action.
The Dstory method could be interesting for prototyping. Thimbleby’s talk also highlights how annoying it is to quickly create and store video files.
Site Feed