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Designing the political future
From Putting People First

Designing the political future

After technology received so much attention as a key differentiator for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, Cooper Managing Director Doug LeMoine asked Scout Addis...

Are our household appliances getting too complicated?
From Putting People First

Are our household appliances getting too complicated?

Who needs a kettle with four heat settings? A washing machine with a ‘freshen up’ function? A toaster with six browning modes? What happened to the good old days...

Language issues. An Interview with Brigitte Jordan
From Putting People First

Language issues. An Interview with Brigitte Jordan

Last September, social anthropologist Nora Schenkel had the opportunity to interview Brigitte Jordan, described by Cat Macaulay as one of the “godmothers” of design...

John Maeda on our life in 2020
From Putting People First

John Maeda on our life in 2020

In 2020 we might just regain some of the humanity that was lost in 2010, argues John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design. “The software industry...

The user research behind HTC One’s Sense 5 interface
From Putting People First

The user research behind HTC One’s Sense 5 interface

Drew Bamford, Director of User Experience at HTC, explains Sense 5.0 and why the company’s Android UX needed redefining. “HTC radically overhauled the look and...

The Google Glass feature no one is talking about
From Putting People First

The Google Glass feature no one is talking about

The Google Glass feature that (almost) no one is talking about is the experience – not of the user, but of everyone other than the user, writes Mark Hurst in a...

In a world of connected devices, focus on what they do
From Putting People First

In a world of connected devices, focus on what they do

Stacey Higginbotham reports on a the GigaOM Internet of things meetup in San Francisco a few days ago: “All of the participants agreed that the connected device...

How teachers are using technology at home and in their classrooms
From Putting People First

How teachers are using technology at home and in their classrooms

A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project of teachers who instruct American middle and secondary school students finds that digital technologies have...

Future Imperfect: Evgeny Morozov vs. Steven Johnson
From Putting People First

Future Imperfect: Evgeny Morozov vs. Steven Johnson

A couple of weeks ago Evgeny Morozov and Steven Johnson had a very public spat (writers’ favorite kind), prompted by Evgeny’s review of Johnson’s latest book in...

On legitimacy, place and the anthropology of the Internet
From Putting People First

On legitimacy, place and the anthropology of the Internet

In this thoughtful piece for Ethnography Matters, Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) discusses the ways in which the internet has transformed the relationship between...

Computer interfaces: tech’s next great frontier
From Putting People First

Computer interfaces: tech’s next great frontier

Since the invention of personal computing three decades ago, how we interact with computers has remained about the same: monitor, keyboard, mouse. Monitors have...

How ‘Minority Report’ trapped us in a world of bad interfaces
From Putting People First

How ‘Minority Report’ trapped us in a world of bad interfaces

“There are better ways to handle spatial ideas,” writes commercial artist Christian Brown, “ways which are more in line with the way our bodies are built. Human...

The future of lying
From Putting People First

The future of lying

Someone told Intel’s futurist Brian David Johnson that technology could do away with all lying in the future. He was horrified by the idea and wrote this: The Future...

The problem with our data obsession
From Putting People First

The problem with our data obsession

To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov Public Affairs Book, 2013 432 pages [Amazon] Abstract In the very near future...

Isobel Demangeat on the UX of augmented reality
From Putting People First

Isobel Demangeat on the UX of augmented reality

A bit of an older talk, but still quite interesting: Isobel Demangeat, UX researcher at Qualcomm Corporate R&D Cambridge (UK), spoke at MEX in December 2011 on...

Call for Papers for EPIC 2013 London
From Putting People First

Call for Papers for EPIC 2013 London

Since its inception, the EPIC conference has brought together a dynamic community of practitioners and scholars concerned with how ethnographic thinking and methods...

Designing empathy into an open Internet of Things
From Putting People First

Designing empathy into an open Internet of Things

The mobile technology of tomorrow may be real-time, always on and algorithm driven in its characteristics, writes designer Jessi Baker, but there is a real opportunity...

Cultivating empathic design in an analytical world
From Putting People First

Cultivating empathic design in an analytical world

There is an empathy gap in technology development, argues April Demosky on the FT’s Tech Blog. “In the analytic, data-driven world of Silicon Valley, emotions often...

The curious cult of the connected thermostat
From Putting People First

The curious cult of the connected thermostat

Nick Hunn, CTO at Onzo, a “smarter than normal” Smart Energy start-up, criticizes the service model of the Nest thermostat: “A basic programmable thermostat in...

Lean and user experience, again
From Putting People First

Lean and user experience, again

When anthropologist Natalie Hanson was asked last year to contribute to a new book called The Handbook of Business Anthropology, edited by Rita Denny and Patty...
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