Digital Content Consumption - through the lens of users

Digital Content Design - building blocks

A major characteristic of digital content that makes it different from the traditional medium is that it can be consumed in non traditional settings. For example PARC has done identified the notion of "micro-waiting" as a new way that users engage content.

We are also exploring the categories/thresholds of "information overload." The obvious implication is how can technology help users find the nuggets of useful information given the constant deluge of data from all sources.

Embodied Interaction Framework

Beyond understanding these building blocks, there are teams at PARC exploring the issue of how to design an embodied interaction framework that leverages natural human behavior to alter system state or trigger interaction. Or, in plain(er) English, create devices/solutions where a user does not need to learn a new "language" to interact with technology. What makes PARC's approach unique is that this explicitly incorporates social science and psychology insight, also areas that PARC has a long history of advanced work, into the technology design.

Moving from Content Creation to Content Consumption

Although nobody would dispute the truism that content creation and consumption are the two sides of the same coin, people don't always think of it that way. Today, there seems to be little understanding of the consumption side beyond aggregate measurements to meet the needs of content creators/providers.

Let's flip the lens around and ask how to measure and deliver consumption pattern in the eyes of individual consumers. If we can make it seamless and nearly invisible, this could ignite the next phase of the digital revolution.

===
P@P

Smart Phones of Near Future and PARC's Migitti Project

New York Times on Smart Phones

Here is an article from NY Times on what the future of smart phone may look like and how key players are pushing the envelop.

PARC's Migitti project was one of the featured solutions in the article. Beyond the technology, we also deployed extensive social science analysis to ensure its usability.

Migitti Project

Activity-Based Serendipitous Recommendations with the Magitti Mobile Leisure Guide

View more presentations from begole.

===
P@P

User-Technology Convergence with Opportunity Discovery

Translating assets and capabilities into new markets and revenues

Companies often come to PARC to develop disruptive solutions for an existing or a new market. From the company's perspective, there is a set of assets and capabilities but internal processes is not always set up to look beyond one year.

PARC's Opportunity Discovery framework has been a favor tool for companies to systematically explore markets and options.

Migitti

Here is a recent project we have developed for DNP of Japan. This should give you a flavor of what kind of work is involved with O/D

Activity-Based Serendipitous Recommendations with the Magitti Mobile Leisure Guide

View more presentations from begole.

===
P@P

Opportunity Discovery

Fail fast fail cheap

This is probably the slogan that best captures the operandi modus of Silicon Valley and, to some extent, to innovation in general. The trouble is that "fail" is a dirty word in most places outside of Silicon Valley but the innovation imperative is not any less.

Over the years, companies have looked to PARC as a partner in creating innovation solutions. And, we have developed a methodology on how to "fail fast fail cheap" without the "fail".

Now, we are talking!

PARC's Opportunity Discovery service

The insight is that while small validations upfront to test assumptions and ability to consider all adjacent applications may add some additional initial overhead, they will yield a more robust and successful result and generally result in lower overall project resource and time requirements.

With PARC's Opportunity Discovery service, or O/D, we have created a systematic framework and a set of tools to unearth market and user insights which provide the basis to design a product/service.

On a per product/project basis, O/D allows the client team to capture and share information for better decision making. At the corporate level, O/D allows the management to feel comfortable that all reasonable options have been actively considered and explored before making a large investment.