Category#data

Mobile Consumer Behavior: Day 5 in Japan

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Today we started in Kyoto and ended up in Tokyo. In the morning, we visited the Kiyomizu-dera and Sanjūsangen-dō. We started to see more and more of the selfie sticks. (I guess the choice between genetically engineering people with longer arms or having them buy selfie stick, the stick makes more sense.) Also, when people take selfies in the US, they seem a little self-conscious. In Japan...

Mobile Consumer Behavior: Day 3 & 4 in Japan

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We conducted 12 qualitative interviews at Doshisha University over the 3rd and 4th. Each interview lasted roughly one hour and had two students, one translator and one interviewee. We worked hard to help interviewees relax since they were outnumbered 3 to 1. Luckily for us, it seemed as though everyone knew one another – translators/interviewees – and that seemed to help. I’ve...

Mobile Consumer Behavior: Day 2 in Japan

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It rained. It rained copious amounts. This is not something Coloradans are used to. We get snow but it’s sunny 387.2 days a year. We were supposed to do a tour today of Doshisha University, but it was raining too hard. We would have needed a submarine. We also missed the Dean. But we got to meet Yu and he’s a great asset. Very attentive and speaks/writes three languages. Chinese, Japanese...

Mobile Consumer Behavior: Classes

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This may be the longest post in the history of the Internet. It may break it. Ideally this would have been done the day I taught the class but this quarter was exceptionally busy. In fact, the last time I was that busy was during grad school while working a full time job. I was a human piñata this quarter. But below is an outline of what material I covered during the class. Intro – The first...

Mobile Consumer Behavior: The interviews

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This was a challenge. It is relatively easy to interview people to get them to answer simple questions. Qualitative interviews are more than that. The goal was to get people to open up about how they used their smartphones and then get them to think about – and then convey – why they used them in those ways. This is no small task. The biggest hurdle for most is to get interviewees to...

Get creepy

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I arrive in Denver at 3:32pm on flight 1431.  I need to get to Boulder by 7pm for a dinner meeting. I get off the plane and make my way to the main concourse. I receive a text that Uber will be at door 8B on the west side as usual. I reply back; “I’m hungry but don’t know what I want. ” They message back, “We’ll take care of it.”  I make my way to the...

Her

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No. This is not a post about an ex-girlfriend. And I’m not sure if a spoiler alert is needed. :) So I finally got to see the Spike Jonze movie Her and I have to tell you, they did an amazing job! You start by thinking, “How could anyone fall in love with an OS? That’s stupid!” and when I first saw the commercials, I felt the same way. But I’m here to tell you...

Wall-E + EVE = JIBO (video)

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So . . . this is very interesting. They wanted to raise $100,000 and with 23 days left, they’ve raised $1,104,109 on Indiegogo. As Google expands it’s data-based business, expect it to acquire this company quickly. Nest is a joke compared to this when it comes to data collection.

Big Boulder 2014 (video)

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Once again, I was fortunate enough to attend Gnip’s (now Twitter’s) Big Boulder Event. This is an amazing event overflowing thought leaders in the data industry. I’m going to post some thoughts later. Until then, enjoy the video! Below are some of the tweets I sent on while attending. T.R. Newcomb of @tumblr We have users that change their username every week. #bigboulder —...