Kevin Spacey on MoFilm and content created for mobiles:

Putting movies on mobiles

Switch this to view in HD if you can, as it’s much easier to see (link under video):

Surface improvements

They get a bit techie, but it’s interesting!

Nice article here on design research from Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO (of thoughtless acts? fame).

The different types of design research described, whilst using different terminology, align closely with our current thinking and practices, which is reassuring.

As an aside, this article also mentions Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, a great read on intuition and right-brain thinking, which comes highly recommended.

Innovating for and by users
Edited by Jo Pierson, Enid Mante-Meijer, Eugène Loos and Bartolomeo Sapio
A publication of COST - European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research

Innovating for and by users

Of particular interest are chapters 2 and 3:

2 Confronting video-on-demand with television viewing practices
3 Mobile television: A hype or a real consumer need?

This looks like fun - surfing over the Alps and also using the board to control a Second Life character:

wii-board-surfing

This encompasses a lot of ideas we’ve had in Innovation Club brainstorming sessions and other discussions. Looks pretty interesting, advertising and offering products to users in a mall as they walk around for example:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/tc50-sekai-camera-for-social-tagging-on-the-iphone/

I particularly like this screenshot from the video, given our logo discussion!

Use this post for interesting news from MWC:

Monday 16th opening
- MiFi hotspot from Novatel

BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones - Tuesday 17th
- a good demo of the projector phone, interview with Nokia, demo of new N97

On friday 13th feb Arun and myself went to the RNIB office in London for a workshop on ‘Tools for Inclusive Design’.

John Clarkson from the University of Cambridge Engineering Design Centre did an excellent presentation on Designing a more inclusive world - hopefully the slides should be made available soon so we can share them, it would also make a great Wednesday lunchtime talk!

We also did some practical exercises in groups, using Personas to evaluate the design of some cameras - 2 digital cameras and a disposable camera. The exercises assessed the cameras from a usability point of view (for example one of the personas currently had a broken arm) and according to demands made on vision, thinking and dexterity abilities.

The fundamental message from the day was:

• It’s normal to be different
• inclusive design = better design
• better design = good business

There were some interesting practical examples given, such as: lever taps are much easier to use for people with dexterity issues such as arthritis, but work for the rest of us when our hands are slippery with soap; the same goes for cordless kettles which were actually designed for arthritis sufferers but became the standard for the rest of us.

The engineering design centre have created a number of tools to aid us in thinking about models of interaction from a functional ability point of view (such as vision, hearing, thinking, communication, locomotion, dexterity).

You can find their software impairment simulators in the links and resources section of their website:

http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/

Have most things we do become throw-away? I struggle to remember the last thing I did that became more than just a failed marketing idea. We write documents and no-one reads them, presentations are given once and forgotten. Is this just evolution at work in the industry we’re in? Or is it much easier if things don’t become real - no pesky users, no critical problems to be solved, a much quieter life….

The small companies aim to be purchased by the bigger companies before they have to worry about too many of the hard problems, and the big companies are too sluggish to be able to cope with new innovations, so new ideas disappear into that great black hole, whilst they are desperately trying to figure out what to do with this new company they just bought.

Siftables are blocks that think - great concept!

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html