Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Putting People First
Design prototypes for Nairobi, Kenya
In 2014, Ericsson and UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) entered a three-year partnership with the intention to collaborate around Information...
From Putting People First
Opportunities for UX innovation in wearables
Until developers of wearable devices get the user experience down pat, the technology will struggle to gain adoption, writes Steve McPhilliamy on Medical Device...
From Putting People First
Automotive sales could grow 24% if retail experience improved
New ethnographic and quantitative research from DrivingSales identifies how the growing gap between consumer expectations and the current automotive buying process...
From Putting People First
The future of loneliness
As we moved our lives online, the internet promised an end to isolation. But can we find real intimacy amid shifting identities and permanent surveillance? A long...
From Putting People First
Podcast interview with ethnographer Tricia Wang
In this week’s Radar Podcast episode, O’Reilly’s Roger Magoulas chatted with Tricia Wang, a global tech ethnographer and co-founder of PL Data, about how qualitative...
From Putting People First
The user experience of the car
John Edson explains why the future of cars is about experience versus ownership. Three major shifts, he says, will move the car from a depreciating asset that every...
From Putting People First
MIT Technology Review special report on persuasive technology
The MIT Technology Review has just published a special business report on persuasive technology, i.e. how technologies from smartphones to social media are used...
From Putting People First
More from Gov.uk on the role of ethnography and prototyping in policymaking
Two inspiring posts by Dr. Lucy Kimbell, a visiting Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellow at the UK-based Policy Lab, an experimental policy innovation...
From Putting People First
Sharp methodological critiques on current Big Data practices
Two methodological critiques on Big Data that caught our attention: In the Financial Times, economist and journalist Tim Harford points out that sampling bias and...
From Putting People First
Gov.uk’s open policy making toolkit – practical guidance on ethnography and more
The Gov.uk open policy making toolkit is a practical guide to techniques that can help you make better policy. The toolkit, which brings together the latest techniques...
From Putting People First
Sensemaking in organizations: Reflections on Karl Weick and social theory
Over the past couple of decades, a small number of psychologists, communication theorists, and organizational scientists have articulated ideas of sensemaking into...
From Putting People First
How would drivers’ habits change in self-driving cars?
University of North Texas students, guided by Professor Christina Wasson and highly acclaimed corporate anthropologist Dr. Brigitte Jordan of Nissan’s ResearchHow...
From Putting People First
Ethnographic research drives IKEA’s global success
In a long Fortune Magazine article on IKEA’s successful global expansion, author Beth Kowitt devotes quite a few paragraphs to the importance of qualitative, ethnographic...
From Putting People First
Presentations online of IEA energy efficiency behaviour workshop
The 11th and 12th of March, the International Energy Agency [IEA] in Paris hosted a workshop on energy efficiency and behaviour in the buildings sector. The goal...
From Putting People First
Doctors are now inviting patients to help design their own medical treatment
In many hospitals and clinics around the [USA], oncologists and surgeons simply tell cancer patients what treatments they should have, or at least give them strong...
From Putting People First
UK report on consumer problems in the mobile phone market
Calling the shots? is the title of a new Citizens Advice Bureau report that analyses consumer problems in the mobile phone market and explores opportunities for...
From Putting People First
Measuring experience
Over the summer of 2014, Northstar, in collaboration with the London School of Economics, conducted an ethnographic study at the Royal Academy of Arts, exploring...
From Putting People First
Design fiction personas illustrate possible impact of educational tech
People talk about the future of technology in education as though it’s right around the corner, but most of us get to that corner and see it disappearing around...
From Putting People First
Design fiction, not science, hints at the future we actually want
The stories we tell ourselves about technology – typically, optimistic ones from would-be innovators, pessimistic ones from their critics – are usually too simple...
From Putting People First