Rachel Hinman

Senior Research Scientist - Mobile User Experience
Palo Alto, CA

Rachel Hinman is a researcher, designer and a recognized thought leader in the mobile user experience field. Her passion for cultural study, art, and design coupled with the belief that people can use technology to improve the human condition have been the driving forces in her career for over a decade.

Currently, Rachel is a Senior Research Scientist at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, California. There she focuses on the research and design of emergent and experimental mobile interfaces and mobile experiences for emerging markets. Prior to joining Nokia, Rachel was an experience design director at Adaptive Path, and a mobile researcher and designer for Yahoo's mobile group. Rachel's innate sensitivity to people and culture have proven powerful skills in the field, enabling her to successfully lead research studies on mobile phone usage in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Rachel writes and speaks frequently on the topic of mobile research and design. She is the creative force behind the 90 Mobiles in 90 Days Project and her perspectives on mobile user experience have been featured in Interactions Magazine, BusinessWeek and Wired. Currently, Rachel is writing The Mobile Frontier: A Guide for Designing Mobile User Experiences with Rosenfeld Media. Expected publication is winter of 2011.

Research Interests

- Mobile and ubiquitous computing user experiences

- Cultural practices around technology

- Natural user interfaces

- Mental models and metaphors

- Physical computing

- Mobile prototying methods

- Growth market user experiences (Africa and India)

- Mobile money systems

Publications

R. Hinman, J. Matovu. Opportunities and challenges for mobile-based financial services in rural Uganda. In CHI ’10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 3925-3930, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM.

R. Hinman. 90 mobiles in 90 days: a celebration of ideas for mobile user experience. Interactions Magazine, Volume 16 , Issue 1 (January + February 2009), pages 10-13, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM.

R. Hinman, M. Spasojevic, P. Isomursa. They call it surfing for a reason: identifying mobile internet needs through pc internet deprivation. In CHI ’08: Proceedings of the 26th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 2195-2208, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM.

M. Spasojevic, R. Hinman, W. Dzierson. Mobile Persuasion Design Principles. Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change (Persuasive Technology Lab, BJ Fogg, D. Eckles, eds.)

P. Isomursu, R. Hinman, M. Isomursu, M. Spasojevic. Metaphors for the Mobile Internet. Journal on Knowledge, Technology & Policy, Dec 2007, Vol 20, No 4.

M. Spasojevic, R. Hinman. Mobile Web: Design Insights from Consumer Field Studies. Mobile Persuasion Conference, Stanford, Feb 2nd, 2007.

Nokia Research Center

Rachel Hinman

Research Interests

Publications

Presentations