Loïc Le Guen's blog

Since the 40’s and the 50’s we agree that design has changed. More that Sullivan’s statement “Form Follows Function” nowadays “Form would Follow Emotion” or “Form would Follow Sense”, this vision of what design is today, is that Fabio Sergio has shared with us in his speech.

Frog design’s team worked according to a method: Immersion, synthesis, concept development, service design and eventually usage scenario.

The project Masiluleke (which means “lend a helping hand” in Zulu) is the best example of how Frog Design considers the project development.

This project is using mobile technology to tackle the worst HIV epidemic in the world in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. After an immersion of several months in South Africa, the designers defined that the main problem is that HIV/AIDS carries a huge social stigma in South Africa, in preventing many from getting tested or seeking treatment. The idea of an individual test which could/can be use at home is proposed. The second observation is that in South Africa people are isolated, but more than 80% of the population has access to a mobile device. The main idea of the Masiluleke project is to broadcast sms in the unused space of the “Please Call Me” (PCM) text messages (a special, free form of SMS text widely used in South Africa and across the continent). These messages can connect mobile users to existing HIV and TB call centers. The sms is also used to remind patients to take theirs drugs.

Design can’t save the world, but it could change it: working on people behaviour, creating interactions full of sense and also with beautiful images. Design is a process, it is a discovery element which generate synthesis and comprehension. It is a creation moment.

Raphaelle & Loïc

This is the scenario wrote by the good big brother team wenesday morning in the workshop: I remember voting for the first time at the age of 16 in 2025.

“I remember the first time I voted, I was 16 years old in Geneva. The main issue was this anonymity of voting in Geneva. The issue emerged when e-voting became a fact.

We needed assurances that our votes were being counted and not tampered with. Voting was to become a matter of public record, just like all other aspects of our privacy: our photos, our friends, our habits, and our taste in music. We all became like members of parliament, our voting records are public.

With e-voting, we now vote anytime we want, and not once a year or 4 years like my grand parents used to do. Voting is therefore less of a big deal than it was so 50 years old, and I guess people are a lot less judgemental about the way we are voting.

I remember that the day we all had to drive to the voting centers, write our votes down on a piece of paper behind a curtain. There was security guards everywere. It was the only time I voted like that, but I’ve been told that’s how the vote always was. I still find it weird that I don’t know how my friends voted that day. That vote was local to Geneva. It was a pilot study for the no-anonymous vote. I guess it was quite successful because there was people everywhere in Switzerland and some others parts of the world. Today everyone vote everywhere, after lunch, about whatever is the issue of the day.”

Raphaelle et Loïc

We are in 2049. In this new society we can vote everywhere at anytime and on any topic; for the construction of a new Mc Donald’s restaurant or for the next president of our nation. We have the tools to do it.

Do we still vote for political partis or for a people? Why don’t we vote for ideas?

One question we debated is to know if the vote should become public, non-anonymous. The public vote is more secure, it ensures you that your vote was validated, cheating isn’t possible anymore. In this case all citizens become members of the parlement. But would the society have to change much to make non-anonymous vote possible? And what about such a change in totalitarian countries?

Is voting important? Yes, of course, but it is the end of a process, the most important which is really what happens before: the debate. New technology could improve the political life. Why don’t we think about some kind of voting period. Our opinions change with time so do our votes.

All this options seem to be interesting and the only way to know if it could work is to experiment. But do we have the right to experiment? When such shifts happen, we can never go back.

Raphaelle et Loïc

Baba WAME is a professor in cyberjournalism and ICT at the Advanced School of Mass Communication (ASMAC) from the Yaoundé 2 University (Cameroon). Baba has a journalist background and worked at the Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) before starting to write, mostly for Jeune Afrique Economie, Divas, Brune as well as sport newspapers.

He wrote a PhD thesis in Information and Communication Sciences «Internet in Cameroon : uses and users, an essay on the adoption of communication and information technologies in a third world country» that he defended in December 12th 2005 at the University of Paris 2. The professor WAME observed the use of the Internet and showed the appropriation of web tools by Cameroonian women looking for a husband online. Baba Wame reveals us the gap beetwen occidental and cameroonian’s uses of the web, economic consequences in Cameroon and consequences in the search of “the white husband” on Internet.