Signals of Change

Evolving Gender Roles SoC375

Long-standing gender roles are evolving as the recession drives new labor dynamics. Men and women alike are challenging traditional gender roles by sharing in paid work, child care, and household chores in nontraditional ways.

The Future of Food Regulation SoC376

An awareness is growing of how food-production and -consumption patterns and practices directly relate to both rising rates of obesity and increases in greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide. In an effort to tackle these escalating crises, governments may well create new layers of regulatory control dealing with food.

Business Experiments with Facebook SoC377

Companies are trying to leverage Facebook to their advantage through advertising, internal social networking, and other applications. However, caution is necessary in any attempt to take advantage of Facebook because tactics can sometimes backfire or result in unintended consequences.

Consumer Decision Dynamics SoC378

Understanding consumer decision-making processes becomes very important in addressing new consumer needs and the more selective consumers that the global recession is creating. With adequate understanding, companies will be able to present their products more favorably than can their competitors.

Third-World Innovations SoC379

Developing countries are stepping out of the shadows of globalization and are surprising economic partners by staking out upstream territory, including R&D and design functions, in the value chain. Intriguing innovations, novel applications, and new business models are increasingly emerging from countries that observers have traditionally associated with the provision of commodity resources and an inexpensive labor force.

Innovative Alternatives to Layoffs SoC380

Keeping valued talent in place for when the economy recovers is a strategy that many companies have adopted. The practice is especially valuable in highly competitive industries that require skilled workers and where laid-off workers may be lost for good.

Insights

The Emerging Human-Machine Interaction D09-2596

For the longest time, user interfaces were fairly simple—even inconvenient—components that designers attached to a device or appliance at the end of the design process with little consideration of true integration. A wide range of problems such as consumer dissatisfaction, counterintuitive elements in the interfaces, and steep learning curves for consumers who buy and use the products resulted from such interfaces. Despite the fact that interaction and interactivity have become buzzwords permeating the information technology marketplace, almost none of today's systems or applications feature genuine, transparent human-machine interaction. But the way users can interact with machines and the way machines can interact with people are gradually changing, and some intriguing concepts have emerged that promise people truly interactive, even symbiotic, relationships with electronic devices in the future. Considerations of usability drive an ongoing pattern of forces. That pattern is advancing interface design and, in fact, changing the entire gestalt of interfaces, by creating more holistic interfaces. Researchers and product designers have already taken steps in this direction, although the final incarnation of such a design is still elusive. This study outlines types of human-machine—interface designs, positioning them in the context of the constant evolution that characterizes the domain. Author: Martin Schwirn. 14 pages.

Scan™ Meeting Digest: 20 May 2009 Meeting D09-2597

This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 20 May 2009 Scan meeting identified. The digest includes a description of the Scan process for people who have never attended a Scan meeting, a list of the clusters that meeting participants identified, and a one-page description of each cluster's premise and supporting abstracts. The document has active links that allow the reader to access the supporting abstracts for each cluster in Scan's online abstract database. The document also has links to previously published Scan documents relating to the particular cluster. Clusters of abstracts for this May meeting included mining the old for the new, updatable and customizable, rude but alive, solutions to gridlock, old riches build brain mass, conspicuous saving, migration confusion, giving away the store, and office anywhere. Compiler: Aster Peng. 32 pages.

Calendar

Scan™ Abstract Meetings

Scan abstract meetings (in which SRIC-BI [now SBI] staff participate in a free-form discussion of current Scan abstracts) are open for client observation/participation in Menlo Park on:

• 22 July 2009 at 9:00 am
• 23 September 2009 at 9:00 am
• 21 October 2009 at 9:00 am
• 20 January 2010 at 9:00 am
• 17 March 2010 at 9:00 am
• 19 May 2010 at 9:00 am.

Scan also sponsors occasional Scan abstract meetings in Croydon, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. Contact your SRIC-BI (now SBI) marketing representative to schedule participation in any of the Scan abstract meetings.