Inspired Ideas Surgery

Share your ideas for engaging the Future Users of Cool Technology onto the Inspired Ideas board in the Unsheffield Forum. Have a look at what everyone else is adding, put your comments, and rate the ideas. Champions of the three most popular ideas will go forward to the Inspired Ideas Surgery to get great advice on how to give those ideas wings.

Talking to Future Users

How do we talk about cool technologies in ways that make sense to new users? How do we talk about technology in ways that take account of the realities of those users? And how do the terms we currently use shape up? These are much bigger questions than whether an event is called BarCamp or Unsheffield – and it’s worth standing back and thinking about.
Dougald Hine takes a timely look at the language of disengagement and the uncool of technology.

The Dirty ‘G’ Word

Video games are the dominant medium of our civilization. So why are they not taken seriously? Why are they considered incapable of exploring serious issues in a meaningful way?
Philip Trippenbach examines the prejudices against one of the most engaging forms of technology.

No Future Shock

Okay, it’s rough to criticise the work of Alvin Toffler, nearly 40 years after he published ‘Future Shock‘. But while Toffler’s key premise – that the shift from an industrial age to a post-industrial, highly technology-mediated society would leave us all feeling rather disconnected and over stressed – may have some merit in terms of information overload, it’s perhaps not quite as stressful. We’ve certainly been living a more connected existence in technologically developed societies since the early 1990s.

Joanne Jacobs explores the evolution of technology into the contexts for engagement of Future Users.

Future Users? Cool Technology?

So who are these Future Users we’re talking about? And what do we mean by Cool Technology? Why should the former care about the latter? And why should we care that they care about it? All these questions, and many more besides, are exactly the kind we hope to understand better at Unsheffield.