Science & Technology

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 03 mar 2015

In addition to just aesthetics, architects are now applying neuroscience, by studying how brain reacts to various environments through brain scanners, to design schools, hospitals, community spaces etc. Eve Edelstein, president of consulting firm Innovative Design Science, says 'Understanding the power and significance of design is not a luxury. It has a direct impact on wellness issues and a direct influence on activity within that space.' According to Betsey Olenick Dougherty of Dougherty + Dougherty Architects, 'Visual access to sky, trees and landscape stimulates brain function. Providing vistas throughout the facility and particularly in classrooms has been a major strategy in the design of this building (Corona del Mar High School, Newport Beach, California).' Justin Hollander, co-author of the book 'Cognitive Architecture' and urban planning professor at Tufts University, says 'Patterns matter. And edges matter. The research argues that not only do we need order but our brain likes hearing stories...When you go to Times Square, you're told a story. You go to Disneyland, it's a story.' He further adds, 'Humans have a clear bias for curves over straight or sharp lines. Studies have shown that curves elicit feelings of happiness and elation, while jagged and sharp forms tend to connect to feelings of pain and sadness.' Hospitals and care centers are now being designed based on how brains of Alzheimer's patients reacts or how lighting affects patient's sleep cycle. Neuroscience shows light triggers brain reactions far beyond vision. 'It has an impact on heart rate.' says Edelstein. Michael Arbib of University of Southern California Brain Project and the vice president of the Academy of Architecture and Neuroscience, says 'Smart architecture can learn from brain science. To use artificial intelligence to build buildings that can better interact with people...is going to be very applicable to a home.' Read on...

Al Jazeera: Smart buildings- Architects using brain science for design guidance
Author: Haya El Nasser

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 26 feb 2015

Designing for Internet of Things (IoT) is pushing the boundaries for designers and engineers to experiment and evolve out of their specific roles. Martin Charlier, design consultant and co-founder of Rain Cloud, provides his perspective on the future of interfaces and how to design for IoT. According to him, 'Products in today's world, especially, need to be thought about from variety of angles. A designer has to consider both the looks and working of the product while designing.' He stresses the importance of symbiotic nature of interaction design and service design. On working of cross-disciplinary teams, he says, 'Every field needs to know a little bit, have a basic understanding, of the other side... The key, though, is that they started working as one team together, before splitting up into their respective domain areas, so that there was a joined vision.' While discussing the role of human values in IoT design, he suggests, 'Designers need to start thinking about how they change people's behaviors and affect their lives.' Read on...

O'Reilly Radar: Design to reflect human values
Author: Jenn Webb

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 feb 2015

In today's business world driven by social media, mobile and numerous other digital technologies, to seek customer's attention and stand out seems to be a logical digital powered brand strategy. But in the process of jumping on the digital bandwagon are brand strategists forgetting the golden rules of human strategy and customer connection. Umair Haque, author and Director of Havas Media Labs, explains why digital strategy shouldn't focus too much on ephemeral customer attention but on customer relations and not only seek their loyalty but try to be loyal to them and care for them as human beings. He suggests 4 mistakes of digital strategy and how to overcome them - (1) Titillating, not educating (2) Making zombies, not superheroes (3) Infecting, not connecting (4) Communicating, not elevating. Read on...

Harvard Business Review: Your Digital Strategy Shouldn't Be About Attention
Author: Umair Haque

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 12 feb 2015

Recent research by Bell Pottinger Digital suggests 15 top digital trends that are going to change the way brands communicate in 2015. The data is obtained through searching the web (blogs, social media, comments etc) and finding out the most talked about and mentioned trends online in 2014. According to James Thomlinson, Partner and Managing Director of Bell Pottinger Digital, 'While technology will be one of the biggest drivers of marketing change in the New Year, the key focus for brands will be on delivering truly integrated strategies.' The following 15 trends are ranked in order of percentage increase throughout the year 2014 - (1) Near Field Communication (NFC): Increase- 358%, Mentions- 42530 (2) Internet of Things (IoT): 283%, 1126700 (3) Wearables: 220%, 1793574 (4) Internal Communications: 167%, 6597; (5) Storytelling: 145%, 82618 (6) Branded Content: 73%, 165898 (7) Beacons: 64%, 348468 (8) Personalization: 49%, 68443 (9) Big Data: 41%, 5032773 (10) Content Marketing: 41%, 3216165 (11) Augmented Reality: 38%, 400242 (12) 3D Printing: 35%, 1160336 (13) Real-Time Marketing: 16%, 252537 (14) Mobile: 6%, 1433582 (15) Gamification: 4%, 384938. Read on...

Bell Pottinger Newsroom: Infographic - 15 digital trends for 2015
Author: NA

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 07 feb 2015

According to Wikipedia article on 'Digital Transformation', a report published on the basis of a three year study by MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting in November 2011 defined effective 'Digital Transformation' program as one that addressed - "The What": The intensity of digital initiatives within a corporation; "The How": The ability of a company to master transformational change to deliver business results. Altimeter Group defines 'Digital Transformation' as - 'The realignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers at every touchpoint in the customer experience lifecycle.' In Altimeter's recent report 'The 2014 State of Digital Transformation' (by Brian Solis, Jaimy Szymanski and Rebecca Lieb) it is mentioned that '88% of executives and digital strategists stated that their company is undergoing a formal digital transformation effort in 2014. Yet, only 25% had mapped out the digital customer journey.' The digital transformation seems to be still misunderstood by many. According to Mike Sutcliff, Group Chief Executive of Accenture Digital, 'As businesses transform by trying to understand how to deliver better products and services, digital steps in with the set of tools and techniques to get it done.' Mr. Sutcliff provides seven digital business transformation lessons - (1) Mobility is an element of all digital transformation initiatives. (2) Digital business transformation expand beyond marketing. (3) Digital business transformation is a C-suite agenda. (4) Digital transformation is less about technology and more about business outcomes. (5) Data analytics is at the core of digital business transformation capabilities. (6) Balance cultural change from both top-down and bottom-up directions. (7) Business, products and services innovation is a team sport (the eco-system). Read on...

Huffington Post: Accenture Digital: 7 Digital Business Transformation Lessons
Author: Vala Afshar

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 15 jan 2015

In the ever changing and evolving world of technology, it is challenging to predict with certainty what will succeed and fail in the coming times. But researchers and experts apply variety of methods to analyze and understand what technologies will become trends and survive, and keeping businesses and public aware of their usefulness and impact. Amy Webb, founder and CEO of Webbmedia Group, at the end of each year applies a framework to bring out the most important emerging trends in digital media and emerging technology for the year ahead. The framework analyzes consumer behavior, microeconomic trends, government policies, market forces, and emerging research within the context of our continually-evolving tech and digital media ecosystem. Her team uses a core set of five attributes to look for emerging patterns: contradictions, inflections, oddities, coincidences, and inversions. These attributes help to identify a set of likely trends on horizon. Each trend is then put through five questions - (1) Where/how are people wasting their time? (2) Where/how are people having difficulty with technology? (3) Where/how are people looking for information? (4) Where/how are people stuck? (5) How do people want to be perceived? These five questions help in qualitatively and quantitatively assess whether or not that pattern is actually a trend that will stick in the future. Based on this methodology Ms. Webb suggests six tech trends of importance for managers in all industries - (1) Deep learning (2) Smart virtual personal assistants (3) More Uber-type businesses in other industries (4) Oversight for algorithms (5) Data privacy (6) Block chain technology. Read on...

Harvard Business Review: The Tech Trends You Can't Ignore in 2015
Author: Amy Webb

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 12 jan 2015

Technology plays an important role in bringing efficiency to the financial markets. Emerging technologies, public's desire for financial transparency and government regulations that started to favor financial market alternatives after the financial crisis, provided the necessary momentum for the FinTech sector which saw billions of dollars invested and couple of successful IPOs (LendingClub, OnDeck) in 2014. Following are important FinTech trends to keep an eye on in 2015 as they provide both opportunities and risks - (1) Service-based Investing: Term for 'low-cost service-based investing', the upcoming sector of paid services around low cost investing. Example is RobinHood, mobile based commission-free trading brokerage. The combination of paid apps with commission-free investing could result in a combination of sophisticated trading products in an environment that costs less than what one or two trades would cost at a competing online broker. The downside of this business model can be learned from forex industry, where most services are free and getting clients to pay for premium services is challenging. (2) Robo Investing: It is anti-social trading, an opposite of social trading which tends to be democratization of trading where anybody can develop a track record and become trade leaders. With robo investing, users enter information such as their age, risk tolerance, years until retirement and expected savings amount. The platforms then automatically invest funds in ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) that track indexes. This is all done for fees at a fraction of those charged at actively managed mutual funds and professional financial advisors. The fear here is that incumbents like Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Vanguard will enter the market and commoditize robo investing. If this happens smaller players and new firms may find it too tough to scale large enough to become profitable. (3) Digital-based Equity Investing: Combining blockchain technology and equity crowdfunding, decentralized exchanges are being used to create digital stock offerings. Equity crowdfunding itself is an emerging market. The appeal of digital-based equity crowdfunding is that it is easier to create an aftermarket once a sale takes place, as well as marketing the offering around the globe. Regulation is one of the biggest challenge for this model. Another issue is the bitcoin-based buying process for digital shares which presents a stumbling block for someone that doesn't have bitcoins. Read on...

Forex Magnates: Fintech Trends for 2015: Investing Services, Anti-Social Trading, and Digital Crowdfunding
Author: Ron Finberg

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 jan 2015

There are billions of dollars that are being invested in financial technologies (FinTech). 2014 has been one of the biggest year for FinTech and the sector is expected to grow further in future. According to StrategyEye, US$ 2.8 billion were raised in 2014 via venture capital investments in FinTech. While Crunchbase and MarketsMedia calculated that in the first quarter of 2014 alone US$ 1.7 billion was invested in 167 deals. At Money2020 this year a venture capital panel predicted that venture capital deployment in FinTech will top US$ 20 billion in 2015, whereas Accenture recently predicted FinTech investments would reach at least US$ 8 billion by 2018 in New York alone. Brett King, CEO of Moven, provides list of top 10 major happenings in 2014 that made FinTech stand out - (1) Spanish banking giant BBVA acquires Simple for US$ 117 million. (2) Apple launches Apple Pay for NFC-enabled mobile payments (NFC = Near Field Communication). (3) Lending Club became the biggest FinTech IPO in 2014 with a US$ 1 billion IPO. (4) AliPay, the online payment platform of Alibaba Group, raises US$ 94 billion in mobile deposits. (5) London becomes the top city for FinTech job creation with 44,000 FinTech specialists employed. (6) Visa launches Host Card Emulation and Tokenization. (7) Second Market launches the first US regulated Bitcoin Exchange. (8) 5 FinTech giants (Lending Club, Square, Credit Karma, Stripe, and China's RenRenDai) join the US$ 1 billion "Unicorn Club". (9) Four Major global banks (Sberbank, BBVA, Santander and HSBC) joined the US$ 100 million club. (10) Robo Advisors like Betterment, Wealthfront, LearnVest and others, take US$ 16 billion in Assets under Management. Read on...

Huffington Post: The Top 10 FinTech Milestones of 2014
Author: Brett King

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 jan 2015

In 2014, technology became an important consideration for investment banks as they launched incubators and multi-million dollar funds to attract financial technology talent. As technology has pervaded every aspect of banking and financial sector, there is essential need for fintech skills. Capital market technology experts suggest following technology trends that will affect finance careers in 2015 - (1) The rise of the 'offensive' data scientist. (2) The size and scope of fintech start-up investments will accelerate. (3) Automation will be substituted for revenue growth. (4) Cyber security professionals will be very hot indeed. (5) Investment banks' secret sauce is unlikely to be developed entirely in-house. (6) Banks will embrace Agile working methods more enthusiastically. (7) Fund managers will join the tech hiring party. (8) Foreign exchange and rates automation will eliminate more trading jobs. (9) Aggressive use of risk and compliance technology. (10) The rise of the chief digital officer. (11) Could banks finally convert to the cloud? Presently it's on a slow curve. Read on...

eFinancialCareers: 11 tech trends that will shape your finance career in 2015
Author: Paul Clarke

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 dec 2014

User Interface (UI) design is undergoing innovative evolutions and providing effective and efficient machine interactions with humans and better control. In 2014, mobile software tried to balance simplicity and power, connected and networked devices worked more harmoniously with other machines and devices, and touchscreens seemed to have their limitations. Following are some of the best UI design ideas of 2014 - (1) Lollipop's Lock Screen Notifications (Google's Material Design concept) (2) Texting From Everywhere (3) A Smart Touchscreen for Cars (4) Physical Interfaces for Flickr and Google Street View (5) The Death of "Shake to Send Feedback" in Google Maps (6) Inbox Makes Email Saner (7) Instant Hotspot, the Unsung Hero of Continuity (8) A Key Rack That Bugs You Into Doing Good (9) The Rise of TouchID. Read on...

WIRED: This Year's 8 Smartest UI Design Ideas
Author: Kyle Vanhemert

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