In Keeley’s Design Planning class, we’re trying to nail the plan for a platform solution that aggregates data, uses some sort of human or computer powered inference engine, and visualizes the data in a meaningful way that is actionable by urban planners, city officials, or business leaders.
The work is part of a project titled 19-20-21 [...]
Archive for the 'Global' Category
Surveys for the Developing world
19Nov07Talkin’ bout my generation
22Oct07The world seems to be a lot smaller (to use a now cliche, flatter?) when it seems that generational peers in completely different geographic regions with different socio-economic circumstances tend to share the same consumer preferences. I could be overstating this point, but my gut tells me there is something here.
This Sepia Mutiny article, [...]
vegetable Napoleon with tomato coulis
flickr credit: Amelia PS
I use a variety of excuses when people ask me why I am vegetarian. Actually, I mostly got asked why I was a vegetarian this past summer when I was in the PRC. One excuse that I used was that it doesn’t [...]
Anglicized monikers
12Jul07At service establishments in China that cater to many expat foreigners, people have name tags that read with familiar, Western names. “Peter”, “Jill”, etc.
You know how sometimes people *look* like their names? When the service people here have anglicized names, it is very rare that people “look” like their names. At the front desk of [...]
Peer to Peer lending in China
11Jul07Springwise just posted about a new P2P lending service that’s starting in China called “ppdai”–> http://www.ppdai.com/. It’s wildly interesting to me how it works, as compared to p2p lending services in the Western world.
In the US, we have the concept of personal credit histories and rankings, but here in China this does not exist. So, [...]
CasePlace.org, which provides teaching modules and case studies for various relevant industry topics has just released a teaching module called “Bottom of the Pyramid”.
It contains three case studies that might be relevant if you’re an educator or just someone who is particularly interested in this space:
Expanding the Playing Field: Nike’s World Shoe Project
Hindustan Lever Re-invents [...]
A subway map on the ceiling of the subway car
Originally uploaded by quami77
Kevin and I keep commenting on how we live in the dark ages in Chicago, as we are walking around Shanghai. There are little customer innovations everywhere, reducing the friction of daily travel, eating, and the rest.
This picture is a great [...]
Bask in this glory: A friend and colleague of mine at ID just sent me the NY Times’s most popular article for today, May 29, 2007, aptly titled:
“Design that Solves Problems for the World’s Poor“
Nice!
It references the Cooper Hewitt (which I visited earlier this year), Martin Fischer’s Kickstart, and has a small gallery that shows [...]
BETTR than my RAZR?
26Apr07Jennifer Kwee speaking to Sriram and John K
On April 24, the Institute of Design hosted Jennifer Kwee, Motorola Product Marketing Manager to host a lecturette about designing the MotoFONE for emerging markets.
For the uninitiated, the MotoFONE is the low price, high design, thin, high battery life, easy to use mobile device that Motorola has [...]
I know I’m late on this post (Sorry Sheel), but I suffered 1 all-nighter and 1-near-all-nighter this week trying to catch up on school work from going to conferences two weeks in a row (Indian business conference and a design management institute seminar)
Interesting lectures/panels at the Indian Business conference:
Professor Jagdish Bhagwati (opening keynote).
Prof. Bhagwati is [...]
Despite the fact that this week has been crazy (Accounting midterm, tons of work due for communication design, sketches for product design, and BOP work piling on, Ido on my case about content for this year’s Design research conference)… I’m excited about getting away for a little bit, albeit for a work-related research conference in [...]
How does “Fair & Lovely” fare?
21Mar07Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Unilever or associated brands. These are just my thoughts on a heated debate.
Sometimes, it’s hard to get people to talk about selling to the Base of the Pyramid and looking to the emerging markets as a source of revenue. I think the latest BoP [...]
Microsoft is going to offer “FlexGo” pay-as-you-go hardware software and applications to emerging markets like India in the near future.
I wonder what sort of cultural considerations MSoft has taken to ensure that this market will actually want to pay-as-they-go. I could be wrong, but the typical Indian consumer (I know, there’s no [...]
I realize I’m really late on this post, but I guess I just found out that the theme during the World Economic Forum @ Davos this year was “The Creative Imperative”, and of course, IDEO was there.
So this is my favorite part… Calling all future potential employers:
“Creative people want to be part of a [...]
As mentioned earlier, last week Kansas City hosted a Global Health Symposium. I was lucky enough to view a host of presentations by speakers from academia, philanthropic organizations, and businesses.
Notable:
1) Dr. Paul Farmer: The founder and driving force behind Partners in Health, an organization created to provide healthcare to the poor. [...]
