« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
To Miss You, Is To Love You
Aibo is gone, but not forgotten
But also not missed
What does that say?
Writing from Tokyo | January 31, 2006 | Comments (7) | Permalink
Device Customisation
Customised iPod Nano encrusted in rhinestones - photo taken during a night out with friends in Shibuya.
Extreme customisation of devices such as mobile phones, iPods and tamagotchi is taking off amongst women (and occasionally men) in their 20's and early 30's here in Tokyo. Mobile phone and nail shops are offering extreme customisation as an extension of their existing services, nail shops being a particularly good fit given the skill set required to carry out the procedure. 7,000 yen (56 Euro) will buy you a glittery off-the-shelf design, whilst 60,000 yen (430 Euro) will buy you front, back, top and bottom fully customised design of your choice. Downside of the process? Losing use of the device whilst it is being customised, and the customisation process can invalidate the warrantee.
For the customer: what drivers for customising?
For the service provider: is it possible to scale up, to offer mass-customisation?
One of my recent side-projects was to document the extreme mobile phone and nail customisation process for two Japanese teenagers, from preparing their phones - removing existing print club stickers and other adornments, sketching desired designs, interactions with the crafts-woman, and then following the customisation process in the shop up until delivery. The research material is not suitable for an academic paper but may put some material together here at a later date.
Working from the UK for the next couple of weeks. What new things to learn?
Writing from Shibuya | January 30, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
The Value of You, Is That You Are Here
This photo was taken on the escalator transporting passengers from the Keio Line exit of Shibuya Station and disgorging them into Tokyo's busy Friday night streets. In close proximity to the foot of the escalator there are 11 people representing 5 organisations hawking free magazines. They are not there because they love to dress up in lime green and red uniforms they are there because someone pays them to be here, someone sees a business opportunity. You can see something similar in urban centers all over the world - but why? What are the properties that make these spaces so popular for targeting pedestrians?
Quantum physics aside, being physically located in one space implies that someone is not physically present somewhere else at the same time. The value to the hawkers is partly based on the rarity value of a physical presence being in that exact location at that time, and from the possibility that that persons consumption behaviour might be influenced by first taking a magazine, then browsing, sufficiently absorbing and using information within it. (I'll resist the urge to write about the level of sensory engagement though its probably relevant here).
At some point in the future automated or semi-automated devices will be moving around these urban environments carrying out everyday chores on our behalf. The first of these are likely to be extensions of today's personal vehicles - who needs valet parking when your car includes a self parking feature? But before long the range of tasks they can complete, and that we feel comfortable allowing them to carry out on our behalf will extend. The view from the escalator will include non-human hawkers and non-human ped-estrians.
If devices are moving around and negotiating spaces on our behalf, what is their value to the hawkers? What happens to a person's value when its based on rarity, when something is maintains a physical presence on their behalf?
And what will the future hawkers be hawking?
Writing from Tokyo | January 29, 2006 | Permalink
Steadying
The properties of the roll of gaffer tape (on the dashboard, click to enlarge photo) making it an ideal cup holder for this Tokyo delivery truck driver.
Writing from Shibuya, back of | January 28, 2006 | Permalink
Exploratory User Research Presentation
Slides from last nights short Pecha Kucha presentation on Exploratory User Research at Super Deluxe can be downloaded from here [3MB].
Related research about what people carry where, why and how can be downloaded from here and here.
[Thanks BH for getting the material uploaded so swiftly]
Writing from Tokyo | January 26, 2006 | Comments (5) | Permalink
Postcards From The Future
Had the pleasure of cycling down to Shinagawa this morning and getting Japan entry-permits transferred to my new passport. The new permit design includes an unsettlingly unfriendly 2D-bar code a poor substitute to the rich and more human-readable tapestry that was previously used by the immigration services. Will this enable Japanese customs to process me more efficiently? Perhaps. But the travels of the last few months have made me appreciate the finer subtleties of the various visas. Mongolia is a personal favourite, partly because it has a hologram of what I think is a flying pegasus, but could equally be an emasculated yak, and partly because its, well, Mongolia. Applying for entry visas is a bit like sending one-line postcards to oneself.
Our team spends a lot of time working on concepts 3 to 5 years ahead of what appears on the market. I spent one year working on ideas up to 15 years ahead of where we are now - it's quite a tricky mental space to visit though fun when you get there. You know those wonderful visions of the future where everything is white an uncluttered? Trust me, the future will be messy, and wonderfully so. I'm reminded of these things because in everyday life it's rare to come across bridges between where we are now and 10 years in the future - and my new passport says it is valid until 2015 (I expect to fill it by 2009). But where will I be in 2015? Where will you be for that matter? What will the world be like? Will there be re-entry permits in 3D? 4D even? Maybe the whole idea of an entry permit will have changed, based on a lack of privacy (by today's standards) bought on by continuous and seemingly ambient data exchanges. It will be taken as a given that you know that you don't have the right to travel somewhere without having to apply because you have the information at your fingertips. And they know you're heading there before you arrive, before you even left home. In fact they calculated the probability of you traveling there soon after your friend bought you a travel guide for your birthday, cross referenced this data with your credit report (enough saved for a trip) the analysis of phone call logs (excited tone of voice when discussing destination keywords), and half a dozen related purchases (though the system missed an opportuntiy to remind you to take stronger sun block because its been a particularly hot summer). All these information exchanges and status updates happening in real time, naturally. Lets be thankful for those in-store loyalty cards shall we?
Tonight I'm finalising some thoughts for a short presentation on Exploratory User Research for a design orientated audience of Japanese and English speakers. The format is pretty simple - show 20 slides with 20 seconds for each slide, and up to 20 presenters in one night. No chance to waffle, or to hear other people waffle. I'll post a link to the slides when I'm done.
Outside the sun dips behind Mt Fuji. In 3 months or so it will be climbable again.
[And the sun is rising over Algiers - safe travels SC]
Writing from Tokyo | January 24, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Barriers to Market Entry
You buy and sell second hand phones. What steps do you need to take before deciding whether to purchase a second hand device? How easy is it to check that the device works? And given that, what is the minimum infrastructure you need be able to operate? What are the barriers to entering the market?
A sign, a display case, somewhere to sit and something to sell. Photo from the extensive mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu.
Writing from Tokyo | January 22, 2006 | Permalink
Checked, Validated
You want to get your mobile phone repaired via the grey market (photo Ulan Bataar, above), rather than via more formal repair shops certified by manufacturers. How sure are you that the repair has been properly carried out? What recourse do you have based on formal or social agreements if it turns out not to have been repaired properly?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
The Value of Traces
How long do you want the digital traces of where you've been to last? Who should be able to see them?
To what extent does seeing traces of prior movement and interaction influence your own movement and interaction?
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | | Comments (3) | Permalink
Touch & Go Reservation, Payment
Advertisement in Harajuku station showing passenger of a Japan Railways Green Car (first class carriage) using mobile phone touch and go interaction to pay for a seat. Passengers normally have to queue to get a seat so one of the perceived benefits is in by-passing queueing. Mobile phone is equipped with Mobile Suica.
Writing from Harajuku | | Permalink
Appropriate Behaviours
A neon sign at the bottom of this stairwell commands people walking up to only use the far left lane. The recent addition of bright red and green lines acknowledges that commuters ignored the sign and provides additional guidelines for what appropriate behaviour. A less formal version of traffic lights perhaps, but with a degree of authority never-the-less. Attitudes to authority changes according to contexts and cultures (cultural differences are well covered in this book).
Today street signs show up-to-date status information for many things including the number of empty parking bays in car parks (Brighton+), the length of time left before the traffic lights change (Bangalore+), to which is the least congested route into the city (Tokyo+). How will the way we navigate spaces change as manufacturers find cost effective ways to embed status indicators into everything from fabrics to wall papers, hand-rails to stairwells, pavements and roads?
Writing from Shibuya | January 21, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Considered Consumption
Recycled ash tray + plant = plant pot.
Components from D & Department Tokyo Project's warehouse store, a purveyor of everyday household, surgical objects and contemporary Japanese furniture (though used furniture doesn't appear on their web site). They specialise in re-cycling, re-furbishment and re-use. They also make a rather fine English/Japanese bi-lingual hotel-lounge 'please turn off your cellphone' sign.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Homes & Offices
Today's office is an office.
Situated on the 17th floor of a modern building located in a fairly non-descript part of the city. The view of Mt Fuji lies straight ahead but is usually shrouded in clouds even if you can see it through the smog, to the left in the far distance Yokohama, far left the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo bay, and on the other side of the building a view towards the shopping meccas of Roppongi Hills, Shibuya and, in the near distance Shinjuku.
When I'm in town the places and spaces with emotional meaning start about 10 minutes bike ride from the research lab. So many strangers that are sufficiently familiar to not be strangers, but sufficiently unfamilar to be not friends or aquaintances. The anonymity of large cities.
Our research lab used to be located in Akasaka, an area known for its office complexes, being close to the Japanese parliament and packing a staggering amount of small bar and restaurants into an area about 500 m square and 6 stories high. If you happened to roll into work around 6 or 7am you would see very drunk salary men staggering out of the many drinking, singing and schmoozing bars looking for somewhere to freshen up, grab a bowl of stand-up ramen before heading to another day at the office. On a few occasions at that time of the day yakusa, or at least wanna-be-yakusa trying to walk four abreast on a narrow street, tattoos showing through open shirts under white vests, dodgy suit jackets slung over shoulders and on the arm of the wanna-be-boss, what most of you would probably describe as a moll. Yes I know - stereotypes, stereotypes based on experiences. Its hard to have serious attitude when you're very seriously wasted. I recall once being warned off trying to interview a yakusa gentleman for one of our user studies. (Sometimes during ad-hoc research studies team members like to interview the hardest looking person we can find - thus far its works out fine - you just need to pick the right starting conversation topic).
One early summer's morning a salary man in a suit was lying fast asleep in a semi-fetal position on the pavement, his head snuggled up to his briefcase, shoes off his feet and placed perpendicular to the curb. I like living in a city where he perceives that sleeping on a curb is a safe enough thing to do. I like that the reality is close to the perception.
One more week at home before the next study begins.
Writing from Tokyo | January 19, 2006 | Permalink
Custom Electricity Socket Layout
It's easy to get used to the default format of everyday objects such as electricity sockets. From where you are sitting take a moment to look around you... what objects are less than perfect? What level of skill, and what degree of motivation is required to customise these everyday objects to your individual requirements?
Photo of work shop bench taken in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Topping Up
How you top up credit for an online game if you have no credit card? Scratch cards available from internet cafe about 60 km from Beijing (above) and a wider selection from an electronics market in Beijing, below.
Whilst topping up game credits by mobile phone is possible (it may even already be offered by the game companies - I've not researched the topic), it is a less compelling proposition where most people in the market are using pre-pay.
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Drawing on User's Prior Experience?
Above, wireless ordering device from a restaurant in Beijing loosely based on mobile phone user interface. Below, push button fixed line phone spotted in Seoul adopts rotary dialler for key pad layout.
Lazy design or smart design?
Update: Reader Jeff Howards points to an article on the original AT&T TouchTone Keypad Layouts [PDF 632k]
Writing from Tokyo | January 18, 2006 | Permalink
Perception of Weight
This Skype phone is on sale in Japan. The space which in a wireless phone would house a battery is filled by a removable metal weight - seen standing upright on the desk. In our smaller/faster/cheaper future we have the option of making today's objects lighter.
What is the ideal weight of a mobile phone? How will the perception of the ideal weight change over time? And what factors will affect that change? Should a gold coloured phone weigh more than silver coloured phone?
(And which will fall faster in a vacuum?)h
Writing from Tokyo | January 16, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Alternatives
Writing from Tokyo | January 15, 2006 | Permalink
Textures
Writing from Ebisu | | Permalink
Smart People, Dumb People
This person is smart. She owns a mobile phone and she's using public infrastructure to make a phone call. But why? A mobile phone lets her communicate when she likes, with whom she likes, from where she likes, pretty much how she likes (ok, as long as its voice call or text message).
Whilst the mobile phone offers the key benefits of personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication people often opt to use and will go out of their way to use public infrastructure because its simply cheaper. Some of you are reading this and thinking 'so what?' But if you work in the telecoms industry (which a number readers of this site do) you are likely to be out of touch with most people's reality. When is the last time you looked at your phone bill? Most people consider the cost of a call, of sending a message weighing up the pros and cons of the available alternatives. Economists call this utility maximisation. Utility maximisation is most obvious in highly price sensitive markets such as India, China and Mongolia (photo below shows privately operated public phone kiosk in Ulaan Bataar) but in the study of communication habits, you can find it in any part of the globe.
We found a subtler form of this behaviour in a study of public call offices (PCOs) and STD booths in India. A STD shop (photo below) is often made up of a couple of phones on the counter, with additional phone booths somewhere inside the establishment. The phone booths offer a higher degree of privacy and some form of seating yet in many cases customers opt to use the phones on the counter. Why? They are opting for convenience over privacy. Their conversations can be overheard, the noise from the street will flow into the conversation but it simply doesn't matter compared to the money that can be saved.
Lessons? Owning a device is not the same as use; carrying a device is not the same as understanding what it does; carrying a device will not necessarily lead to use; and when use occurs it will not necessarily be what you expect it to be. When a mobile phone is primarily used as a phone book to facilitate kiosk phone calls, how does this change the way the product should be designed?
And who are the dumb people in this equation? We are if we assume that people will not try to make the most of what they've got.
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (4) | Permalink
Tour Bus Ethnography
Looking at my travel schedule for the next few months I'm left wondering what can I expect to learn from the relatively short amounts of time spent the field in different countries? At what point does spending a few days in a culture become nothing more than tour bus ethnography? Hop off the bus, stick a microphone in someone's face, take a few photos and tell everyone back home what a wonderful time that had by all and boy didn't we learn a lot.
One conclusion from a 10 road trip user study in US last year was that almost everything we learned, or ended up using in a meaningful way was gathered in the first 4 or 5 days of the trip. Admittedly this study was a little unusual - 100+ interviews, driving Cleveland to New Orleans, flying to Salt Lake City then continuing the drive down to Los Angeles. Without sufficient time for reflection what could be meaningful data is just noise. So what are the techniques to support documentation and reflection? A proper answer to this question will eventually appear in a research paper. One minor technique is to take photos of local newspapers. These can become a mental time and location stamp and can later be used to communicate a local flavour and issues. As you might imagine the Sunday breakfast chatter in and around Cleveland was no doubt grappling wth the weighty issue of how casual is too casual (photo above).
Given the constraints - what is an optimal and what is a sufficient amount of time to spend in the field? And if your project involves cultural comparisons - how much time is enough to rest, reflect and analyse between field trips?
There are two techniques that enable me to stay on top of things. The first is to consistently process data as it comes in - not always an easy task given the large volumes that are collected from different sources in such a short space of time. In practical terms this means assigning a field data manager to be responsible for all incoming data, scrubbing data to remove overtly private information such as birth dates or phone numbers before the files are circulated within the team and before they start to appear in internal reports. (Field data processing would make a good short paper or workshop if anyone wants to recommend a suitable conference). Another technique is simply to have a naming strategy for all files to that documents, images videos can be identified without having to open an application. Well catalogued data will be usable and can maintain its relevance weeks, months or years after its collection.
My second technique? Don't worry about the social niceties of staying awake and make sure I get sufficient rest when the body dictates I need it. The alternative is living in a permanent state of jetlag - otherwise known as permalag, or if particularly nasty permaphuck. And that just leads to burn out.
Thanks Ken for reminding me of the names we give to what we do, and to Raphael for reminding me how anti-social I am when sleep depri/aved.
Writing from Shibuya, back of | January 14, 2006 | Permalink
Seasonal Activities as Cultural Time Capsules
Seasonal activities such as skiing and snowboarding often lead to a non-trivial investment in equipment - a new deck, gloves, goggles, jackets, boots, trousers, hats, bags and so on. Most people don't (perceive the) need to, don't want to, or can't afford to buy new equipment every year so as a result the places where people gather to carry out these activities are in effect cultural time capsules. Whilst having lunch in a mountain restaurant we sometimes watched in quiet appreciation/awe trying to guess the year when particular colours or styles were in fashion on the slopes.
The snowboard scene in Japan is now being pitched as 95% fashion 5% sport. From a sales point of view it makes sense - the criteria for owning and being satisfied with a sports object changes more slowly compared to fashions which, without fail will change once a year. The North Face shop in Harajuku is a good bell weather of sports-fashion-brand's shift to fashion-sports. An evening shopper is more likely to stumble into a hip-hop DJed spray painting competition than a seminar on the hazards of climbing at altitude (camouflage North Face puffer jackets had some cred amongst the Tokyo hip hop crowd last year).
One regret from last week was not having the time to systematically document people, their equipment and in particular how they custonmised what they had. But it got me thinking about the logistics of setting up a photo studio on the mountain and being with people in one place long enough for them not to freeze. Perhaps this is an activity for the spring?
How long should/do product's last? What can be done to slow down or speed up the replacement cycle?
Writing from Shibuya, back of | | Permalink
Links, Cost of Entry
Links provided on an event flyer from record store in Shibuya include: site, email, drillcast, podcast and phone number.
Price of entry? On door 1000 Yen (7 Euro), with flyer 800 yen, bloggers get in for free.
Writing from Back of Ebisu | | Permalink
Notification
It turns out the markings left on a bike saddle by parking attendants in Chengdu are largely water resistant. And if you manage to leave your bike parked overnight for whatever reason, then the saddle will be marked with the fine needed to pay to get your bike back. Somewhat surprised to find it in one piece.
Writing from Back of Ebisu | January 13, 2006 | Permalink
Screen Polishing
One of those professions that I never knew existed - the hand polishing of CRT TV screens. How long before the shift to other display technologies kills this profession?
Have not yet come across a service for polishing mobile phone or iPod Nano screens, but why not?.
Writing from Back of Ebisu | January 12, 2006 | Comments (3) | Permalink
The Power of Not Charging
Next to my desk at work I have a fine collection of photos of power sockets from homes and offices around the world - the result of rummaging around under desks, peering behind cabinets and following cables to their source. In user studies I'm always intrigued to see how people tackle the problem of keeping their mobile phone charged - after all a phone without power is largely useless as a tool for solving life's little emergencies, and above everything else this is the reason that people consider the phone a mobile essential.
It is possible that technologies such as bistable displays will means that devices will have functionality without power, but for now our daily/weekly rituals include remembering to charge, and once charged - remembering to take the object when next leaving home. But does it need to be this way?
In the near term usage patterns will change when the two or so hours it currently takes to charge your laptop/phone/iPod is shortened to 10 or 20 seconds. That's a sufficiently short time to be able to pause a conversation and top up power if it were applied to a communication device, for example using fuel cell or capacitive charging.
The challenge of keeping electrical devices powered up can be tackled from a number of different directions. It's possible to make a mobile phone which has sufficient power to last as long as the device itself. The obvious (but wrong) starting point is a massive battery/fuel cell pack - it would make the product impractical to carry and the consumer market impossibly small. The opposite approach has potential - shortening the lifetime of a mobile phone to last as long as today's battery life. This is not as far fetched as it may first seem considering use cases around mobile phones bought from vending machines, a method for storing personal data off the device, combined with a system for recycling and re-circulating 'used' products to new users. As with most tasks (except entertainment and bodily functions) delegation is another solution - simply delegate the act of remembering to charge a device to someone or something else. Asimo needs something to do whilst you're sleeping right?
Usage patterns are currently constrained (or in some ways anchored) by the need to leave a device in a fixed location for a length of time. As that length of time is drastically shortened, or indeed eliminated our current notions of how we charge objects will all seem rather quaint.
Writing from Shibuya, back of | | Comments (3) | Permalink
Emotional Charging
When is the last time you smiled inserting a plug into a power socket? What would it take to make that happen?
Writing from Tokyo | January 11, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink
Elegant Thread
Writing from Harajuku, back of | | Permalink
DRM In A Different Age
What are your mental triggers to remember where you've been? What you've done? With whom?
In Japan stamps are a common way of providing proof of having been somewhere. Train stations, mountain huts, sea ports, and airports often have a work bench where you can add an additional stamp. The designs are often simple and perhaps because of the format have an element of 'classic' about them - the stamp for Chitose Airport, Hokkaido shown below.
The tools to take photographs are widely accessible. But what are the properties that make physical and digital photographs so accessible to communicate experiences? As more and more about how the human brain works is understood what will be the next major content format shift? Can and will experiences be piped more directly into and out of the brain? Assuming people will want to carry tangible triggers for those memories, what form will they take? Why? What is the essence of an experience to be captured and communicated? How will the essence change as the tools to communicate the experiences change? And in a world where this is possible is the ultimate DRM the ability to totally remove or add memories of experiences to enable us to have that first/most recent experience again and again?
Giving away (implanting) content/experiences for free may not seem like a great way to enforce DRM, but if the value of an experience is in doing something for the first time for example a watching a cliff-hanger movie or perhaps falling in love, users may well be willing to pay to have those experiences removed.
Writing from Tokyo | January 9, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Visualisation
2D/3D visualisation aided by unique characteristics of what is communicated. Perspective in poster below.
Writing from Hokkaido | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Insights From Lack of Knowledge & Assumptions
In an exhibition in Chitose Airport highlighting road safety - mobile phone as trigger for accident. Whilst the artists were certainly given direction what can young children teach us about how the future turns out? What do we overlook because of our in-built assumptions, domain knowledge? What leads are missed for fear of asking 'dumb' questions in front of peers?
Chitose devotes a huge amount of space to retail activities - the entrance hall is more like a supermarket in Shinjuku than an airport. Kind of similar - cinemas that are in the fast-food business and the showing-film business, and McDonalds probably makes more money from financing franchisees or property rental than selling hamburgers.
Writing from Chitose | January 8, 2006 | Permalink
Welcoming
Mechanism for welcoming guests to room - the name of the arriving party is clipped next to the door. Suitable for displaying other status or preference information?
Writing from Hokkaido | | Permalink
Over Specification
Writing from Tokyo | January 7, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Acceptable Boundaries of Use
Today's office is a guest house half way up a mountain in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. I'm here with a research colleague to catch up on the last year, figure out where we want to go in 2006 and in between discussions make the most of what the mountain has to offer. In the village outside it's minus 10 and for the third night in a row it's dumping it down. The building we are staying in was initially a disappointment - semi-industrial in a run-down-damp sort of way, but after 3 days the room starting to look like home. It helps that that every evening the staff leave a thermos of hot water in the room (we happen to have some decent freshly ground coffee), that there is a spacious open air onsen 5 minutes away, and that someone nearby has left their Wi-Fi unsecured, bless them.
I'm tucked up in bed, and on the floor to my left a digital camera has been broken down into its composite parts and is (hopefully) drying out after being covered in snow. I'm familiar with the challenges of capturing data in difficult conditions - but tonight presented new hurdles. A combination of the cold - around minus 18 on the mountain, horizontal in-your-face winds, the need to remove outer glove-wear to be able to properly handle equipment, and the constant heavy snowfall meaning that after 20 seconds or so a new snow-drift has built up on the edges of the lens. Realistically the only way to clear the camera lens of snow flakes was to lick it whilst avoiding having my tongue stick to its metal frame (to the Finns reading this, yes, I know the solution to removing frozen body parts from metal I'm just not sufficiently physically agile, and am certainly not prepared for my colleague to do the deed). Earlier tonight I learnt that the frozen residue left by my tongue can serve as an OK if somewhat inaccurate soft focus lens filter (top photo). In all I'm satisfied that the camera continued to work and that photos and memory card survived the cold.
User experience practitioners often use personas and scenarios to understand and communicate how a product will be used. But what happens when use falls outside acceptable limits? What are acceptable limits? Is it reasonable to expect a camera to function in these conditions? Is it reasonable to expect your phone to work after being run over by a car? Is it reasonable to carry your iPod Nano in your pocket without it scratching?
It's telling that on my last visit to Yodobashi Camera (one of the largest general electronics stores in Japan), consumers buying iPod products were handed a crudely photocopied sheet explaining whom to call in the event of it breaking. This is hardly a show of faith in the products they are selling and I presume is a result of fielding so many consumer queries related to perceptually faulty iPods. (As a comparison I've bought dozens of other mainstream electronics from the same store none of which included similar information). The law-suits over scratched iPod Nanos shows there is an obvious mis-match for acceptable boundaries of use between (some) consumers and the manufacturer.
There are two trends that are likely to considerably shift consumer perception of what constitutes acceptable use: miniaturization; and the availability of flexible componentry. Once objects reach a certain size the range of places that they can be comfortably carried and stored increases - making it feasible for it to be carried without significant extra burden for the user, comfortably placed in a pocket or tucked in amongst other objects in a bag. Objects will be carried and stored in locations and used in contexts which did not previously need to be considered in use cases. It is more comfortable to carry a flexible object next your (soft, fleshy, human) body than a hard object. Smart use of flexible components will increase the range of objects can be comfortably carried in pockets or next to the skin - expanding the range of use case scenarios for many products and along with it, user expectations.
Writing from Tokyo | January 5, 2006 | Comments (11) | Permalink
Gaming Services
Location based services will use proximity interaction to identify users, and in some cases the implications of being in a particular place at a particular time or with a particular frequency will lead to 'rewards'. To what extent will location based services that rely on proximity interaction be gamed? By whom? By 2010 proxy-proximity interaction services will be available to carrry out proximity interactions on your behalf, much like the developing and selling of characters in online worlds today.
Hmm, will these kinds of scenarios will be covered in this book?
In research into what people carry, I spent time interviewing people about so-called 'loyalty cards'. A summary of their comments is that they had a vague perception that using the card provided 'benefits' but were mostly unable to articulate what the benefits were. It highlighted how easy, and with relatively little cost it is possible to get a (branded) card into a person's wallet and for it to be carried at least for a few weeks.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Icon, Frivolity
Sweet icon on tumble dryer, used by (multi-cultural) members of the public. Whilst its common to see badly designed and inappropriate icons, it's relatively rare to see cheeky icons make it into physical product design. (Yes, all three categories are not mutually exclusive)
Writing from Hokkaido | January 4, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Ideal Height
Simple mechanical design to optimise the height of the top-most tray.
Writing from Hokkaido | | Permalink
Information At The Tips Of Your Fingers
Today her finger nail is a means of expression, decoration, drawing attention.
Finger nail decoration machines already exist to allow a customer to choose a design, then automatically decorate and dry those nails. Embedding digital information on those nails would be a relatively trivial step (though generating a critical mass of device to read what is on the nails is non-trivial). If you could store and communicate information through your finger nails what would you want to store and what would you want communicate? Is one kind of infomration more suited to thumbs or particular fingers than others? The number of digits is one natural parameter, combined with issues such as biting nails, locations where finger tips can and will end up, and how long users would expect a finger nail design to last before being refurbished offer interesting user interface possibilities and forms of interaction.
The broader issue is - what is possible without going down the routes of embedding technology under the skin, personal area networks or alternatives like bone induction?
Writing from Hokkaido | January 3, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
Or browse the Future Perfect archives by keyword