Category: Online Trends
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“Hooked: how to build habit-forming products” (Book Review)
What makes a product or service really stick in your mind? Do you have an app on your phone that you always turn to whenever you’re bored? If you’ve got a problem to solve, is there a specific product or service you tend to use to look for a solution? American journalist and lecturer Nir…
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Why ‘single purpose’ apps are en vogue
As I’m currently investigating how to best simplify the ways in which user discover new content – as part of my day job as a product manager at Beamly – I have been thinking more about so-called ‘simple purpose apps’. The words ‘single purpose’ indicate that the apps focus on a singular user ‘job’ (I’ve written about ‘jobs’…
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What to expect from Amazon’s anticipatory shipping patent?
Earlier this year Amazon patented its “anticipatory shipping” solution, which basically comes down to Amazon shipping products even before customers have ordered them. Amazon will use an algorithm to pre-determine things that people want to buy, based on a mix of data including previous purchases, questionnaires, wish lists, browsing data, demographic data, etc. Even though…
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Ben Essen and The Quantified Self
The other day I heard a few people use the term “quantified self”. Through Wikipedia I learned that the quantified self stands for “a movement to incorporate technology into data acquisition on aspects of a person’s daily life in terms of inputs, states, and performance.” In other words, this is all about quantifying peoples’ lives and behaviours,…
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Gamification – What is it?
I recently started doing an online course on “Gamification” which was lectured by Kevin Werbach, an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at Wharton School, Pennsylvania. In his first couple of lectures, Kevin concentrated on the meaning of gamification and its value. Let’s start with a good definition of what gamification is: “The…
As I learn ... 