On Wednesday 2 July Nicolas Nova (LIFT lab) moderated a session at the World Congress of Architecture in Turin, Italy, entitled “From ubiquitous technology to human context - Technology applied to architecture and design: does it solve problems or create needs?”.Speakers were Adam Greenfield (Head of Design Direction, Nokia), Jeffrey Huang (Director, Media and Design [...]

Today I attended the Frontiers of Interaction IV conference in Turin, Italy, which — with some kind input from Bruce Sterling — has now reached quite an international level. Speakers today were Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford Humanities Lab), Ashley Benigno (Global 3G Handset and Application Group at Hutchison Whampoa Limited), Nicolas Nova (LIFT conference), Bruno Giussani [...]

Some interesting data illustrate the emergence of new consumption patterns in telecoms services in Europe:An EU-wide survey of 27,000 households has revealed the emergence of new consumption patterns in telecoms services in Europe. Technological progress and competition have brought more choice to European consumers; 24% of households have given up their fixed telephone in favour [...]

Today Demos, the UK think tank on everyday democracy, launched a new discussion paper Making the most of collaboration: an international survey of co-design, produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Public Sector Research Centre.In 2006 Demos published Journey to the Interface - an impassioned advocation of the value of collaborative design principles in public services. In [...]

WorldChanging book review:“Authored by two Univeristy of Chicago heavy-hitters, Economist Richard Thaler and Law Professor Cass Sunstein, Nudge explores the policy implications of behavioral economics, a field describing the irrationalities of human behavior. Taking findings from psychology (e.g. people procrastinate; they’re averse to losing money), Thaler and Sunstein propose policies to help us make the [...]