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Tenious, Link
A protester shelters from the noise underneath a Turkish flag to (eventually) make a phone call at a pro-secularism rally in Istanbul.
Writing from Istanbul | April 29, 2007 | Permalink
The (Meaning of) Stuff that Shines Through
Writing from Istanbul | | Permalink
Quiet, Storm
The slides from yesterday's İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi presentation, drew on examples from research on Mobile TV [essay, PowerPoint 4MB]; Literacy & Design [essay, PowerPoint 6MB]; mobile phone street repair cultures [essay, PowerPoint 2MB]; sending money as air time, Sente came from a study of Shared Phone Use [essay, PowerPoint, PDF 7MB], and not least material on exploratory research methods [PowerPoint 3MB]. Yes, that is a lot of links.
Thanks to Özlem Er from the Department of Industrial Product Design for kindly hosting this session and students and faculty for raising questions worth answering.
To receive notice of newly published research email info at jan dot chipchase dot com with the world subscribe in the subject line.
Writing from Istanbul | April 28, 2007 | Permalink
Flags Symbolic of What?
The Turkish flag is noticeably omnipresent - in shop windows, draped from buildings, stretched across streets - to some extent expected given that National Sovereignty and Children's Day recently passed. But its presence and permanence runs deeper than that one day, found in unlikely places like the butt of a riot policeman's pistol. A symbol of the republic, indeed. But whose republic? (Turkey is in the process of selecting a new president)
And the mostly-laid back riot police? The third element of demonstrator-authorities-media love triangle that can be witnessed from Tokyo to Delhi.
Writing from Istanbul | | Permalink
Got Thread? Why Not?
It's not a barbers shop, its a cultural experience waiting to happen.
Yesterday’s Istanbuli barber shop experience: local tunes piped out of an aging stereo; a mirrored view of the room from the chair's headrest; a balding customer carefully attended to on my right; and a plethora of evil eyes mounted on the wall to my left. Admittedly the direction of the conversation between barber and barberee was somewhat one-sided - not surprising given both my distinct lack of Turkish and the fact that I had a razor held to my throat. The shave was as you might expect until, the very end when he reached for a drawer and pulled out a spool, expertly pulled off an arm and a half-length’s of thread, repeatedly twisted to create torsion and with the middle point clamped between his teeth and proceeded to apply the thread like a pair of tweezer-scissors gently plucking the light-hairs-I-didn’t-knew-I-had from parts of the face that-now-don't-have. Elegant. Unnerving. And because his head darted forward with every stroke of the thread - somewhat similar to swan’s mating ritual.
It's not my first encounter with a barber's shop thread. Late last year in the Himalayan foothills, a Gangtoki barber (below) used thread to good effect as a spatula - to scrape liberally applied massage oil from the face. The inherent properties of a simple, universal object put to uses previously outside the scope of my understanding.
Other cultural insights from around the world? Understanding why electric razors are used in rural Uganda - a country known for its power cuts; the use of razor blades to clean ears in Hue; why beautiful in Chengdudoesn't equate to painless; why south Delhi barber's have softer hands than the rest; why, ultimately offering photo studio services as part of the package makes total sense in remote Fujian Province.
Expect more from your next visit to a barber's shop.
Writing from Istanbul | | Permalink
Sugar Serving Norms
Two. And how to encourage greater/lesser consumption?
From breakfast on the bosphorus in interesting company.
Writing from Istanbul | | Permalink
Protect & Serve
Writing from Istanbul | | Permalink
Speed of Learning, Simplicity
A keypad without text or numbers?
The speed at which people learn how to use the core functionality of a device, and the role of visual signposts (such as keypad markings) in supporting that learning. The affect of wear on the learning process versus the extent to which wear and tear suggests that this device belongs to this person? The extent to which wear and tear makes it harder to lend this device for others to use? The contexts and the extent to which a 'lack of lendability' is desirable?
Should touch-screen keys fade the more you use them? And if you lend your 'digitally worn' touch screen device to someone else should the keys appear as new?
From a day well spent in the company of ITU students and staff.
Writing from Istanbul | April 26, 2007 | Permalink
Walletable Objects
An Istanbul travel card using a (rather sizeable) RFID tag, making it far from walletable.
From a fun 'empty out your wallets on the table' session with students. What stood out? The number of cards that include photo IDs. The lack of paper coffee-shop 'reward cards'. And the relatively sophisticated payment options - credit card culture is here with gusto.
Writing from Istanbul | | Permalink
Pockets of Calm
Why is this stool placed exactly there?
What senses were used to decide where to position this stool? What are the factors that could influence this decision making process but are currently outside what our sensory perception? How will your [mobile carried] devices help exenuate your senses? How will the positioning decision process be changed? What will tomorrows pocket of calm look like?
Writing from Istanbul | | Permalink
Urban Guidelines
Guidelines and bollards used to re-inforce the boundaries and 'authority' of parking spaces. Given the ad-hoc/flexible nature of this solution, in which contexts is it useful? For whom?
Taken in Chengdu.
4am in Istanbul with more energy than a field of spring bunnies.
Writing from Istanbul | April 25, 2007 | Permalink
Strait & Bound (& Scrubbed)
Heading to Istanbul tomorrow to learn about what the students of ITU (İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi) Department of Industrial Product Design are up to, and if all goes to plan present material on using ethnography to inform & inspire the design process. Özlem Er is the host if you're near the Bosporus and wish to attend.
Incidentally in Japanese a turkish bath (in Japanese torukoburo) was a euphemism for a bath-house-sex-massage-parlour, until that is the Turkish government protested and pushed through an official name change. The back story to how Japanese 'Turkish Baths' became Soaplands is written up here.
Writing from Tokyo | April 23, 2007 | Permalink
Carrying Position, Culture
Mobile worn/displayed outside pocket with a custom holster - from a skate/street fashion emporium worker around the back of Omotesando. The subtle difference in perception between belt mounted phones (mostly older, unfashionable males) and clips (younger, functional-street males) in carrying styles. Old Duffer vs. Young Duffer if you like.
Its always interesting to witness the differences in brand perception across cultures. For many Japanese buying a Nokia is partly about standing out, and partly about buying into European design heritage. (The gent pictured is wearing an N73 otherwise known as a SoftBank 705NK).
Writing from Omotesando, back of | | Permalink
Surburban Sound Clash
There's an element of battle-of-the-bands on the streets of my neighbourhood this Sunday - the recycling truck that offers to take any old electronics crawls through the streets blaring its sweet, repetitive song coming up against the would-be politicians whizzing around in mini Mitsubishi trucks with a stack of speakers and (usually) young uniformed girls leaning out of the window extolling you to vote for them.
However, the smart money is on the yakiimo (baked potato) truck that sets up in the evening.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | April 22, 2007 | Permalink
Cultural Posture
Do you live in a sitting or squatting society?
And as physiological norms change, affects, say by higher levels of obesity, will more people squat or sit? Given that its an acquired skills, what other tasks/actions are made more feasible by the likelihood that people are able to squat?
Writing from Daikanyama, back of | | Permalink
Action, Correlated Reward
Why would a recycling truck on the back streets of Sangenjaya carry around a huge box of recycled toilet paper?
The recycling company rewards newspaper recyclers with free toilet paper, which is dropped off for every pickup of bundled paper made. An elegant mapping between the action - recycling paper the consequences of that action recycled paper used to make toilet paper+, and a reward for that action - free toilet paper.
Equivalents? Digital equivalents?
Writing from Sangenjaya, back of | | Permalink
Culturally Acceptable Exceptions to the Rules
As many British readers will doubtless appreciate marmite is.
But as much as I might like to think that its unique, every culture has its 'marmite' equivalent - Germany has schmaltz, Japan natto, Thailand is known for its fried insects and China, well take your pick. It's that food that typically provokes either strong for or against reactions amongst locals and something that, for people unable to draw on a childhood's worth of context and conditioning is usually too much to stomach.
So it was with some trepidation that I picked up a jar of Marmite Guinness before leaving London last week - given that it was a hand-luggage only trip, that marmite is a gloop-like dark liquid substance, and liquids and creams of this kind of volume are not allowed through security. Would it make it through British airport security checks?
It turns out that despite the jar being checked at Heathrow it did, but that it was irrelevant but would later get confiscated by Finnish airport security for whom my cultural pleadings fell on deaf ears.
A decent bottle of sake for the first person who offers to ship a decent sized jar of Marmite Guinness to Tokyo. Form an orderly queue at info at jan chipchase dot com please.
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (3) | Permalink
Where You Carry, Why It Matters
(A short essay related this post can be found here).
Gazing into the future you may have already started thinking about concepts built around the idea of a wallet or purse. Everyone carries them, so why not extend their functionality to include, well, other stuff. Seems logical right?
Except that for many of the world’s urban dwellers the wallet or purse isn’t carried because quite simply people don't carry sufficient walletable or purseable objects to make such a container feasible. And even if it was feasible it would not necessarily be desireable because clustering objects in one place instantly creates an easier target for theft. For example in Japan and China wallet and purse adoption ranged from 98% in Tokyo, 54% in Beijing to a lowly 35% in Ji Lin - a sizeable 3rd tier city in China. And it's not that people don't have money - the percentage of people carrying cash is in each of these cities is in the high 90%s, it's simple that our notion of what people are likely to carry is limited by our own everyday experiences.
This was just one of the many snippets that came out of recent Nokia research with data collected from 1549 people in 11 cities on 4 continents: Helsinki, Milan, New York, Los Angeles, Tehran, Kampala, Delhi, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Ji Lin between 2003 and 2006. The full presentation Where’s the Phone: Selected Data co-authored with my colleagues Cui Yanqing and Fumiko Ichikawa is downloadable as either Powerpoint or PDF [3MB]. (A full list of contributers can be found here).
The essay also touches on: where people carry their phone and why; the drivers for choosing to carry an object in a particular location; the extent to which people notice incoming communication; gender and cultural differences; phone strap usage; protective cover use and its implications for interaction; the likelyhood that a phone cover will be personalised. It closes with a few thoughts about what it might mean in terms of what and how we design.
Later this year my colleague Cui Yanqing will present A Cross Cultural Study on Phone Carrying and Physical Personalisation at the HCI International 2007 conference in Beijing, I'll point to the paper when it becomes available.
Writing from Tokyo | April 20, 2007 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Area Codes, Other Codes
The speed at which some information i.e. area codes change compared to other information i.e. country codes.
What the codes represent, what falls outside of that representation? Why stop at countries - why is there no area code for the EU? What would it take to create an area code for Latin America? Or a large local employer? Given roaming charges, who benefits from more area codes? And who benefits from less?
Looking outwards - at what point do planetary or solar-system codes become part of the urban-galactic vocabulary? And looking within, what role do codes play in a world where fine grain information (such as DNA) is more widely accessible?
Related: ISO 3166 Country Codes. The photo of an out-of-date area code for London? From the Yak Hotel, Lhasa.
To what extent is it possible to rely on expert predictions, such as whether a country will disintegrate, and of course require new country codes? The inquisitive can start by downloading the Seminars About Long Term Thinking talk by Philip Tetlock entitled Why Foxes are Better Forecasters than Hedgehogs. Long. Worth while.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Contextual Advertising. Undecided Context
Advertisement / information for long distance calls with AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Bell, 800/collect stuck to the handset of this hotel phone. Given that many of their hotel guests will have mobile phones, in practical terms is the advertisment for use with the hotel phone, the guest's mobile phone or both? To what extent does the speed of adoption for objects e.g. fixed line phones vs. mobile phones, differ from where expect to find information related to services built around those objects? What are the ways in which the differences in speed between adoption and lag be exploited?
And the name of this stylish residence where handsets have ads? Motel 8, a fully functioning crashpad from a hard day in the mountains around Salt Lake City.
Writing from Tokyo | April 19, 2007 | Permalink
Returns Suggesting Popularity
"Please Place Your Books Here After Browsing"
To what extent are personal preferences and choices influenced by apparent popularity? In what contexts are you more likely to take a book from the 'book returns' shelf (in the Thai Creative Design Center, above) than spend time browsing the shelves? Ditto from the 'movie returns' shelf of your local video store. (Yeah, you're right, physically walking into a store to rent videos is so 20th century/over 35).
How will book+ borrowing behaviours differ in the context of a college - where a mass of students might be given the same assignment at the same time, increasing the demand for particular books? How is it affected by the type of product? Or volume of choice? Or for products where many consumers don't know quite know where to start and might feel intimidated like say, wine - to what extent will they rely on the shopping judgements of other people?
And of course which people?
The ever increasing opportunties to trace is slowly being matched with our ability to generate views of those traces in real-time. A simple example - using a mobile device to browse digital 'most popular' lists and overlay (augment) this information over what your camera phone sees. Further out? Books that extenuate the way they've been handled, the pages or passages that were dwelt on, the extent to which content in those books has been cross-referenced out there, on the 'net.
And given that you know all this already, what will the always-one-step-ahead experience designer do to imply the relative popularity of their products and services?
Writing from Tokyo | April 18, 2007 | Permalink
'07 Tokyo, Local Election Poster Layout Norms
Writing from Sangenjaya, back of | April 17, 2007 | Permalink
Push / Pull / Pull
Above, one of many election trucks making their way through Tokyo neighbourhoods broadcasting the election promises and (for many) disturbing the peace. Below, campaign posters include QR bar codes and search strings to pull information about candidates.
The extent to which a techno-savvy electorate may be drawn to gather information about candidates. In a world of ubiquitous connectivity, is it possible for a candidate to run on a platform of real-time voter engagement? 'This is the issue, how do you want me to vote in the local council?'. And what are the myriad of reasons why this wouldn't work?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
TED Talks
Something for inquisitive minds and frequent travellers: TED Talks relaunches today with a brand new site and a lot more compelling content to stream or download to your 'pod. It's taken a while for my (TED) experiences to settle but there are two things that stood out from attending: that whatever your current horizon, you can think that much bigger; and the power of an individual and a simple message. Where to start? Try these two very different talks - Malcolm Gladwell's What we can learn from spaghetti sauce and James Nachtwey accepting his TED Prize.
And what does this have to do with the photos of Lhasa Airport? The talks are my video content of choice for long haul journeys.
Writing from Meguro | April 16, 2007 | Permalink
Keeping Participants in Control
As was pointed out during the recent presentation at Ideo (thanks Tim), one of the slides was/is open to misenterpretation. We don't spend our time trying to keep the participants in control but rather, a lot time and effort does into keeping participants in control of the research process. I'd love to argue the truncated sentence was an intentional bait to, well, provoke debate but it was simply lazy oversight, now corrected.
So how do you keep participants in control of the process? Well, if for example we've spent time with participants in their home towards the end of the study we encourage them to view and delete any or all photos from researcher cameras, the logic being that we shouldn't have anything they don't feel happy knowing we have. And within a month of the study being completed we aim to send participants a copy of the all the photo data we have on them. The feedback loop serves multiple purposes: it reconfirms the boundaries of the study; it helps communicate the respect the research team apply to personal data - that unflattering photos or intrusions into overly private moments are deleted, that senstive information such as phone numbers are filtered out; it can serve as a momento of the study; and knowing the participants will see the photos affects what the researcher's decide to capture in the first place - there is a temptation to document everything, it helps define the boundary of what not to document.
How feasible is it to process field study photos before the team heads back to the office? With Adobe Lightroom the process appears to have become that much easier, though since its just been launched its probably worth reserving judgement until after its been used it on a full scale, photo field study. Having just worked out the field research schedule for the next six months it won't be long before it's properly tested.
The photo above from (the corrected) slide 36 of the Always On presentation were taken by Roger Ibars during the Indonesia leg of the field study into shared phone use.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | April 15, 2007 | Permalink
Powered Up, Always On
Power lines stretching over the Tamagawa River into Tokyo.
The title Always On comes from an interview question posed by Fabio Sergio about whether user experience researchers are ‘always on’ detecting patterns or creating new ones on the go. I reckon yes. but don't think its particularly unique. Regardless of how special you or I might consider our perspective on the world its just one more way of looking at things - its not as if passion in all its shapes and forms has an off switch. You can read the whole interview here.
A tenuous link to Always On the previously published presentation about the challenges of conducting design research for everyware? Probably. Download as PowerPoint, PDF, 2MB.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | | Permalink
Inherent Properties
Beer mat re-designed to function as a chopstick rest.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Words, Cut
Writing from Shibuya | | Permalink
Taxi Dashboard Norms
Faith finding its way onto the dashboard of taxi's in Cairo above, and Bangkok below.
During a recent field study in Cairo we encountered a taxi free from any religious adornments - quite the rarity in Egypt. But why? The driver was having his vehicle assessed for road-worthiness and officially taxis are supposed to be free of religious symbols. Faith is a hot and contenscious filled issue in Egypt these days. Once the test was passed he planned start personalising his car to become a mobile shrine.
Projections of faith strangly absent from the dashboard late night taxi into Delhi (above) though the he had an evil eye (Nazar Boncugu, eye bead) attached to his keyring. Tokyo dashboard, below limited to (a rather fetching) official taxi-driver identity card.
Writing from Tokyo | April 13, 2007 | Permalink
Gender Segregation, Service Opportunity
Gender segregated train carriage in Tokyo.
The demand for women-only carriages driven by: a desire for comfort which relates to; physiological gender differences; the dis-proportionate affect of hyper-crowded Tokyo carriages on women during rush hour compared to men (men tend to have smaller, less senstive breasts, differently shaped butts); and the exploitation of the commuting conditions by (relatively) occassional male passenger to sexually harrass female passengers.
During peak hours the train carriage is female only. To what extent does segregation currently support targetted advertising and services? How will this evolve as the technologies to support more flexible content mature - electronic signage e.g. e-ink and devices like mobile phones? How might this affect the female commuters that decide not to use this carriage during these times?
Another example of commuting segration? Tehran.
Writing from Tokyo | April 12, 2007 | Permalink
Indeed
Writing from Tokyo | April 11, 2007 | Permalink
Election Bias
Tokyo became that little bit noisier today - with loud-speaker wielding polititions entrenched outside train stations extolling would-be voters to could-you vote for them. With the speed at which hurried commuters approach the station and decend into relative calm of the Tokyo rush hour it is doubtful they hear more than a few words of the candidates message. So if the message is not the message what is? The presence of the politition?
Elections billboard's such as this from sakuraesque Naka Meguro have sprung up in every neighbourhood - giving the candidates an opportunity to enter the consciousness of the electorate. Personality and image aside how might voting patterns be influenced by the design of the board: spatial positioning such as left or right as a reflection of political persuasion; loyalties suggested by the clustering of candidates in relation to one another; numbers each candidate is assigned; the number of slots for candidates as a reflection of a democratic society; the actual (low) number of candidates as a reflection of engagement with the democratic process?
The use of left/center/right to describe political affiliations is enough in common in Europe. But what analogies are in use elsewhere?
Writing from Naka Meguro | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Game On
Mobile phone game advertising, Shibuya station.
Writing from Tokyo | April 10, 2007 | Permalink
Augment
The easy way to track dimensions.
With a camera phone, augmented reality, a size reference point, and enough processing power, dimensions are only a button press away. Or are they? In an augmented world - what to measure, acceptable margins of error?
Writing from Daikanyama | April 9, 2007 | Permalink
Context is Everything
A skate shop ad sticker using the b-word. The context? Heathrow's terminal 1.
Signs warning against bomb-related jokes can be found in a number of airports, LAX springs to mind. When does placing a advertisement become an arrestable 'act of terror'?
And taken to the nth degree by WK Interactive, and now viewable in Neo-Tokyo (ta David).
Writing from Tokyo | April 6, 2007 | Permalink
Predictability, Margins of Error, Quality of Life
Think about your daily commute - how accurately can you predict your time of arrival? To the minute? 5 minutes? Within an hour? And in what ways does being able to accurately predict where you will be when effect you and the people around you?
After graduating from college I lived for a number of years in Stoke Newington - a Williamsburgesque neighbourhood in north London made marginally more affordable by not being connected to the Underground network. Transport into central London meant getting on a bike or catching one of the iconic 73 Routemaster busses, with public transport putting the traveler at the mercy of road works and the then frequent IRA bomb scares*. A journey into town might take 35 minutes or then again an hour.
*For a number of years millions of UK citizens were affected IRA transport disruptions and in turn were forced to think about what their government was doing on their behalf outside the cosy confines of the ‘mainland’. In its own little way, changing the predictability of the daily commute bought the war in Northern Ireland home. Flyers in the US may well be experiences a similar pause for thought every time they take their shoes off going through TSA security.
Commuter travel in Tokyo is a very different story - public transport is both frequent and arrives on time (not that I'm unduly affected by it - its a city that is easy to get around on a bicycle). If a train is more than a couple of minutes late Japan Rail issues an apology and on arrival at the destination a queue may form at the station-master’s office to pick up an official late-note. Blaming public transport is not a viable excuse in Tokyo. Predictability encourages just-in-time behaviours and frees up time that can then be put to other uses. The flip side of this - not knowing the time of arrival puts the onus on travelers to maintain awareness of their current surroundings, keep abreast of the ongoing status of the transport as well as juggle destination related parameters - such as keeping colleagues or clients abreast of arrival times. If you have a job where being on time is a necessary component of functioning effectively then the ability to accurately predict where you will be when is also valued. Its a simple proposition - people tend to be willing to pay for stuff they value.
And yes the ability to successfully move millions of passengers, as in the photo of the Tokyo rush hour above, increases the flow of people to the point is literally and figuratively swept along by the crowd.
We are of course in the midst of significant shifts in the way we perceive time, location, and the world around us. Real time status updates are available from an ever wider variety of sources whether its knowing when a bus will arrive to parcel being delivered and yes, the mobile phone is playing an expanding role in supporting both micro-coordination and maintaining awareness of those things we, well, wish to maintain awareness of. Lateness is increasingly relative - when the people and things we coordinate with have sufficient awareness of your whereabouts they are more likely to mitigate the consequences of lateness by using the time for other valued pursuits. For some the concept of being late or early is a twentieth century notion.
But technology is far from neutral and affects us in different ways (the photo above is of a gender segregated queue for a bus in Tehran). What are the implications for being ‘late’ in business or social contexts? Or, bearing in mind societal stereotypes for way finding or map reading - what does it mean if as a woman you turn up late for a meeting compared to a man? Employers or employees? Brazilians or Germans? In the near near future your geo-location is just another parameter to decide to share with others.
Or at least that's the theory. Because many consumers won't fully appreciate what about their location is being shared and with whom - hidden behind deliberately opaque business models or poorly designed interfaces. Or quite simply they won't have a choice about whether to use the technology or not. Which is where the astute and empathic designer comes in - you have the power and with power comes responsibility.
Been playing around with Dopplr these past few days and whilst its too early to judge whether it will become a valued tool for the long distance traveler the signs are there: it requires minimal setup and ongoing maintenance to derive real value, and has a pleasantly neutral weather-forecast approach to informing members who is roughly where and when.
And why these photos from train stations around the world? The photo above is from Seoul Station taken during a study on Mobile TV early adopters [related essay]. Would-be passengers are relaxed and watching a sports event, trains and departure platforms have been announced well in advance of departure so they can switch their attention to other more leisurely activities. The photo below is of passengers in London's Waterloo Station, with only five minutes before the train is scheduled departure the platform has yet to be announced and fellow passengers spend their time intently staring at the screens.
Any (service) design students out there looking for a thesis project? Design a service utilizing mobile devices that helps passengers know where to be when. What would a station or an airport look like if everyone maintained an absolute awareness of their here-now, and there-next?
Writing from Heathrow | April 5, 2007 | Permalink
Gaps Minded
The same message targetted at passengers standing on the platform and those disembarking from the train. Given the semi-random scattering of passengers on a platform versus the limited number of doors on a train there should be more messages facing the train - there were however equal numbers facing both directions.
The role of technology in supporting the delivery of micro-targetted messages. The contexts in which it is likely to be ineffective.
In Helsinki this week - a welcome opportunity to deliver projects, share ideas, fill in the gaps and plan strategies. And the best part? talking though research topics with the team; and figuring out the most appropriate places in the world to conduct the research. Time for something a little more challenging.
Writing from London | April 4, 2007 | Permalink
Jarring Intrusions
When advertising makes its way into spaces that you'd rather it stays out of.
Like? Like the advertising for mobile phones on the hangers of London's Bond International.
Writing from Hoxton | April 3, 2007 | Permalink
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