(small) creative initiatives that challenge (big) traditional ideas
• ( egoistic ) • activistic • architectural • audible • cinematic • conceptual • graphic • strategic • surface • urban • wireless
Jan Chipchase is Principal Researcher in the User Experience Group of Nokia Research Center. A part of his fascinating job is to observe and describe how different cultures use mobile technologies differently - often in ways unintended or unpredicted by the industry that he represents.
He has carried out ethnographic fieldwork around the world, such as in Uganda where access to electricity and mobile phones is limited and the user need thus quite basic.
As a consequence of these limitations, people have developed an alternative solutions and service economies, such as phone-sharing systems and battery-charging services (photo) where batteries can be recharged for a relatively small price.
Documentation of this and other of Jan Chipchase's interesting findings are available for download at Nokia Research Center.
• Street Charging Service Uganda (PDF file)
Anonymous wrote:
I remember working on a website for Samsung UK that used a fact that mobile telephones in Columbia were hired out at a small price by people as phones were few and far between.
That was back in 2002, which suggests that someone was researching this kind of thing before Jan got in on the act.
Interesting that Afica supplies a lot of the raw materials that go into phones, but are rarely paid enough for those materials - or their greedy, corrupt governments keep it.
Nokia will be proud.
sebastian wrote:
from patrick carey's blog
"These phone charging street stations are not unique to Uganda or even the developing world. We have them here in good old New York city."
Contact: Sebastian Campion