One Billion Users: Emerging Trends in Emerging Markets : August 2005

August 2005 - Posts

Too lazy to link

The other night I realized that I would like my editor to link for me. That is, I know what I want to link, but I am too lazy to find the actual URL to stick in there. This commonly happens on my own personal blog, when I refer to previous events. I highlight Read More...

Posted Monday, August 29, 2005 12:40 PM by msracid | 1 Comments

Digital StudyHall visits MSRA

We heard Randy Wang and Urvashi Sahni speak today about their Digital StudyHall project . The best thing about their project is that it's attempting to focus on the problem rather than the technology. It's surprising that Randy is trained primarily as Read More...

Posted Monday, August 22, 2005 4:56 PM by msracid | 1 Comments

Designing for Chinese notions of privacy

It's a beautiful Saturday morning in Beijing's early Fall. I'm brushing my teeth and hear a knock on the door followed by a curt common in Mandarin. Assuming one of my roommates will answer the door, I do nothing. A few seconds later the door opens and Read More...

Posted Saturday, August 20, 2005 10:32 AM by msracid | 1 Comments

Good designers are thespians

We're doing some paper prototyping right now and, while sketching some potential ideas, I'm using my 'acting skills' to put myself in the place of a potential user. I'll take some cues from our user interviews, but for small decisions (or to confirm assumptions) Read More...

Posted Saturday, August 20, 2005 10:27 AM by msracid | 1 Comments

The Social Addiction of Chinese Online Games

A misconception that people have about those millions of people addicted to playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role playing Games is that they are loners and somewhat misanthropic. On the contrary, its the need to interact with other people and to be Read More...

Posted Friday, August 19, 2005 10:19 AM by msracid | 0 Comments

Corporate $pam Blogs in China

Not really sure if this is real or not. BlogOriented Essentially, people or companies can buy time or topics on the blog in order to generate buzz or at least search rank linking. What is interesting is that the site refers to itself as outsource blogging Read More...

Posted Thursday, August 18, 2005 10:51 AM by msracid | 74 Comments

So, is there a design culture in China?

The answer is yes. An even better question is to ask is if there is a different sense of aesthetics in Asia in general in regards to how design is approached. The answer may be yes as well but to generalize all of China as fitting under one general description Read More...

Posted Wednesday, August 17, 2005 7:34 PM by msracid | 3 Comments