Don’t Block YouTube

In an interview with F@st Company, Gartner researcher Tom Austin suggests that companies think twice about blocking access to sites like YouTube and MySpace. Instead, Austin suggests companies leverage the social networking media of Web 2.0 to “enhance collaboration and productivity.” Business remains fundamentally about human interactions, and the Internet has skyrocketed the number and speed at which people make connections, and blown-out the distance from which people can work together. Austin predicts that a new breed of Information Technologist will emerge from this change–from “the primordial ooze of Web 2.0″–a breed of Information Technologist more interested in human behavior than in software code.

User Behavior Researchers in the Global Market

According to statistics from the market database Wireless Intelligence, it took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. And figures from the International Telecommunications Union show that by the end of 2006, 68 percent of the world’s mobile subscriptions were in developing countries.

Using human-centered design to crack into the global marketplace, companies have been sending researchers into the field to report back to the company with information to inform product design. This New York Times Magazine article follows Jan Chipchase, a human behavior researcher for Nokia, as he observes how cellphones can give developing economies a boost from the ground up.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Research, All User Experience Design.