Ashoka at UX Week 2009 and trends

Charlie Brown, Director of Ashoka's Changemakers, spoke this Tuesday at the 2009 UX (User Experience) Week about how the new Changemakers site was redesigned around the Changemakers community. By the way, they are now inviting people enter the Rethinking Mental Health competition!

While I was reading the UX schedule of speakers and workshops, I realized that most of the event's topics are also really hot trends in the social sector: mapping data online, experiential design at events and public spaces, disabilities and design, and mobile literacy.

Regarding illiteracy and mobile technology: this is such a huge area that comes up over and over throughout the work of our Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows and in the tech sector at large. We definitely foresee this emerging issue to continue popping up in the private sector's radar, especially since -- as Ushahidi's Ory Okolloh told me last week -- smart phones are going to be ubiquotous and will be pretty much the next personal computer.

Today Adaptive Path's staff are speaking at UX Week about the research they conducted on illiteracy and mobile technology. I found their video, which summarizes one of their initiatives on the subject (above), really fascinating.