Our Work : Mobile China
Mobile China is Giant Ant's multi-year public research about Chinese youth and technology trends. With half a billion mobile phone and internet users, China's booming economy is shaping virtual and tangible life in the 21st century.
Why Mobile China?
- Trends that begin in Asia impact the world.
- Unfamiliar contexts generate insight and innovation.
- U.S. tech giants have performed poorly in China.
- Mobile phones and technology are badges of identity and change in emerging nations including China, Brazil, India and Russia.
Year Three: Mixed Reality
Year Three investigates how Chinese students abroad use the Chinese internet to adjust to living in the United States.
- Do Chinese and U.S. youth represent themselves differently online?
- What are the specific emotional undercurrents of various modes of communication, including IM, email, bulletin boards, text messages, handwritten letters, phone calls and video calls?
Year Two: Virtual Life
Year Two explored the allure of Chinese internet cafes for entertainment and communication.
- What is the role of online friends among urban youth?
- What are the pleasures and dangers of virtual life?
Year One: Hand Machines, aka Phones
Year 1 focused on Chinese youth's passion for mobile technology and the meaning behind massive adoption of "shou ji" (literally, "hand machines").
- What is the significance of 1,000 monthly text messages?
- What is the role of technology in creating intimate networks and national communities?
- View Video Stories: Mobile phones in urban China
- Download Report: Mobile China pilot study (284k PDF)
- View online article: Academic Review of Customer Experience and Mobile Marketing, co-written with Michael Becker of iLoop, on Mobile Marketing Association website
- View online article: Emotional Design for Mobile Success on UIGarden website
See Also
Blogs
- Danwei.org – Media, advertising and urban life in China
- Massage Milk – One of China's most popular blogs (in Chinese)
- The China Venture – Trends and opportunities in entrepreneurship in China's new media, with a focus on popular BBS and blogs
- China Digital Times – UC Berkeley China Internet Project, School of Journalism
- Textually – All about texting, SMS and MMS
- Future Perfect – Mobile experience blog
- EastSouthWestNorth – Prolific Hong Kong-based blog about China
- Virtual China – Virtual experiences and environments in and about China
- Super Girl Blog – Celebrity blog by Li Yu Chun, winner of Super Girl contest (in Chinese)
- UI Garden – Chinese UI blog (in Chinese)
Language and Arts
- Chinesepod – Learn Mandarin with podcasts
- Beijing Tokyo Art Projects – Gallery in Dashanzi Art District, Beijing
- Oneaday.org – Daily chinese idioms
- Dancing Toasters – Salvaged media and electronics in China
- CAEP – 24 hour performance art, Beijing November 2005
- BadArchitecture.org – New buildings in Beijing
- Wang Wei's Temporary Spaces – Profile of conceptual artist in Beijing
- Factory 798 – Gallery in Dashanzi Art District, Beijing
- Longmarch Space – Gallery in Dashanzi Art District, Beijing
- Techno Orientalism – Review of Takahiro Kaneshima's curated show about future technology in Asia, at Beijing Tokyo Art Projects
Mobile Technology
- Mobile Monday Beijing – Information and networking event for mobile industry in China
- Asentio Design – Innovative industrial and UI design for mobile handsets and services
- Small Surfaces – Gabriel White's blog about design for mobile technology
- Mark Kramer's blog – Mobile learning and lifestyle from multiple perspectives
- Plus 8 Star – Mobile and internet consulting in China, South Korea and Japan
- ZTE – China's largest listed telecom manufacturer
- Huawei – Chinese telecom with over one billion global customers
- Motorola Labs
- Nokia Research Center
- East Asia issue, Receiver Magazine – Vodafone
- Swiss cheese phone cover – Vodafone
Product Design
- UPA China – User-centered design organization
- Apogee, Usability in Asia
- Kaizor Innovation
- UPA Hong Kong
- Philips Research Center
- Sony Research and Development
- School of Design – Hong Kong Polytechnic University
- Dori Tunstall's blog – Intellectual explorations in design, decision-making, anthropology and governmentality
Research Centers
- Microsoft Research Asia – Advanced research lab
- Digital Youth Research Project, UC-Berkeley, School of Information Management Systems
- Incubator for Critical Inquiry into Technology and Ethnography (Incite), University of Surrey, UK
- Human Technology Program, Hanze University in Groningen, the Netherlands
- Xerox Parc, Palo Alto Research Center
- Digital Youth Research Project, UC-Berkeley, School of Information Management Systems
- Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing
- Beijing Case: High Speed Urbanism, Goethe Institut-Peking 2005
- Dynamic City Foundation, investigating the rapidly changing urban environment of China
Books
- Mobile Media Bibliography – Extensive social science bibliography by Nalini Kotamraju, University of California at Berkeley
- Jun Jing (ed), Feeding China's Little Emperors: Food, Children, and Social Change
- Mizuko Ito et al (eds), Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life
- Peter Hessler , Oracle Bones : A Journey Between China's Past and Present
- Rachel DeWoskin, Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China
- Mike Kuniavsky, Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research
