Latitude

This week, we began publishing results for our open innovation study (in conjunction with Shareable.net), “The Interactive Future of Food.” We’re posting one topic per day, revealing study results, to the homepage of Shareable.net. We encourage you to jump into the discussion there!

You can also download a PDF summary of “The Interactive Future of Food” study findings here.

We want to thank all of our participants who contributed such rich, thoughtful narratives about their own food and food-purchasing experiences. (“The Interactive Future of Food” is a narrative analysis study.) Their participation pushed us over our goal, and we’re happy to say that Latitude recently donated $500 to The Hunger Project (a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger), as a result of their time and creativity. Sincere thanks for all the valuable contributions!

Below is an interactive data visualization containing some demographic and basic technology profiling information (general location, age, gender, smartphone usage, tech adoption, and referral source) about our US study participants. (See further down the page for a world map visualization.)

To view the visualization at full size, click here.

To view a world map visualization of all participants across the globe who participated in “The Interactive Future of Food,” click here.

Lead analyst on “The Interactive Future of Food”: Marina Miloslavsky.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude’s 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Explore life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.

Header image courtesy of vintage85′s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.

Today’s cartoon is inspired by our Latitude/ReadWriteWeb open innovation study on kids & Web technology. Click here to participate in the study. (You can read more about Latitude’s open innovation privacy policy here.)

Cartoon by Jessica Reinis.

Jessica is an analyst for Latitude Research with proclivities for creative doodling and human-centric technology projections. She is the leading analyst on the current Latitude 42, an innovation study on Web technology featuring children ages 12 and under (read more on this study). Currently, her other focus areas include digital content access and new payment models, as well as next-gen advertising.

Today we posted on “Aardvark & Google: The Efficacy of Social vs. Traditional Web Search.”

At Latitude, we’re avid users of Aardvark. As researchers, we’re also very excited by their recently published paper: “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine.”

Popular social applications—especially those with real-time capabilities, location-awareness, or both (Aardvark, FourSquare, Brightkite, Blippy—and scores of others) are a veritable gold mine of user-generated information about everyday human behavior—social, physical, economic.

It takes someone to view creatively, organize intelligently and make transparent the aggregate results, but this information should be used to manifest and explore latent ideas that have real implications for the way we live.

Latitude, “Aardvark & Google: The Efficacy of Social vs. Traditional Web Search”

Oh. And did we mention we’re kind of addicted to Aardvark?

Cartoon by Jessica Reinis.

Jessica is an analyst for Latitude Research with proclivities for creative doodling and human-centric technology projections. She is the leading analyst on the current Latitude 42, an innovation study on Web technology featuring children ages 12 and under (read more on this study). Currently, her other focus areas include digital content access and new payment models, as well as next-gen advertising.

Cartoon by Jessica Reinis.

Jessica is an analyst for Latitude Research with proclivities for creative doodling and human-centric technology projections. She is the leading analyst on the current Latitude 42, an innovation study on Web technology featuring children ages 12 and under (read more on this study). Currently, her other focus areas include digital content access and new payment models, as well as next-gen advertising.

Contributing editor: Kim Gaskins.

This cartoon was inspired by a new TV prototype from MIT’s Media Lab that achieves “a level of interaction that nobody’s ever been able to do before.” (Chris Grayson brought to our attention that Apple had actually patented something similar in 2006.)

The concept is “an everyday LCD screen [that] has been modified to ‘see’ the world in front of it in 3D” and respond to it accordingly. (Gestures are the new remote!) Gestural interfaces, of course, constitute a core foundation of MIT’s SixthSense technology, and are being incorporated increasingly into everyday personal electronic devices.

Cartoon by Jessica Reinis.

Jessica is an analyst for Latitude Research with proclivities for creative doodling and human-centric technology projections. She is the leading analyst on the current Latitude 42, an innovation study on Web technology featuring children ages 12 and under (read more on this study). Currently, her other focus areas include digital content access and new payment models, as well as next-gen advertising.

Jessica Reinis is an analyst for Latitude Research.

She doodles a lot in meetings. At the behest of her coworkers, she now posts her artistic exploits online for all to enjoy.

Header image courtesy of mmoosa’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved; cartoon created using Bamboo Pen & Touch.