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The Streetz R Mine (For a Little While)

One more night before shipping back to Tokyo. By co-incidence my first proper field study started less than a block away from tonight's hotel, here in downtown San Francisco. Looking back, 2002 was the year of the big break - another corporate re-organisation created a business unit with a brief to broaden the accessory offering and someone with a budget decided to invest in a bit of in-house qualitative field research: carry out a multi-cultural study to explore what people carry and why and use the results to inform and inspire the design process. Easy. And easily enough rope to hang ourselves.

The plan was to meet my then Swedish co-conspirator Per in San Francisco - before embarking on 10 days of interviews, home visits, shadowing and observations. We both had a loose background in user centered design but neither of us were 'qualified' in the academic sense of the word, so we planned the study to death, figures out a spread of data gathering techniques to collect what we wanted to know, did what we felt was right and got on with the job. Some things worked, some didn't, no-one died. The data and our figure-it-out-as-we-go-along way of working triggered a wave of new ideas - which in turn fed into the design process.

After assessing the findings from San Francisco we headed to Milan, Berlin and eventually Shanghai - our understanding deepening to the point where patterns were starting to emerge - similarities and differences across cultures, gender, age. It was the playground of choice for the inquisitive mind: shadowing an architect in a Berlin winter; putting up Christmas decorations at 5am with the employees of a Shanghai bar/brothel whilst listening to tales of business on the streets; unsuccessfully trying to track down graffiti artists in Milan; buying bicycles in Shanghai to negotiate the city. And figuring out that if, on our departure donated the project bikes it brought a hidden intent of our research full circle.

A few steps on a long and continuing journey.

Called to gate and after two weeks on the road looking forward to a place called home.

Writing from San Francisco | April 13, 2008 | Permalink