May 2008 Archives
Take Breakfast, Not Lunch
May 31, 2008
It's quite some feat to be first off the plane and through immigration and the very last passenger to clear customs. The silver lining to this storm cloud is that I get to watch an entire airliner's worth of passengers negotiate their way out of the airport - busy execs, returning families, the air crew. A plane worth of body language to decipher.
Just wait half an hour the customs said three half hours ago with a smile. And so there I sit.
This isn't a busy airport - the next flight arriving in Ahmadabad is at 2am from the US and in the intervening hours the airport itself takes a turn to doze. The conveyor belts and x-ray machines are switched off and the hubbub that had echoed across arrivals subsides. Right now - it's just me, my suspect luggage and a range of uniformed them: customs officials in crisp white uniforms that wouldn't look out of place on the bridge of the good ship SS Ahmadabad, a gaggle of young immigration officials. One of the weathered security guys in Khaki looks over and acknowledging the time I've been sitting here offers his water - and I steady my hand to drink from a full bottle and unsteadily my lips brush the rim.
Long haul dog-leg's are the worst. At some point during the journey you're going to sleep and no matter how little rest, be compos mentis enough to remember your gear, clear immigration, customs and start the next leg of your journey. Local taxi driver's are of course renowned for their gentle handling of arriving non-local passengers.
Waking as you come into land is not particularly smart - and the last hour before touching down in Ahmedabad is simply about staying awake, floating in a mental space that is sleep-deprivation-lite. As the plane aligns with the runway my co-pilot Zbigniew Preisner gently glides me into the gate - right now music is my stimulant of choice. In a couple of hours the sun is going to rise over Tokyo and my bio-rhythm energy will kick in but for now I'm down to reserves.
An overly officious bureaucracy and an airport hustle sometimes sit and stare from the same hard bench, their questions certainly start out the same. What are you doing here? How can you prove it? Why do you carry all this equipment? Do you know the local laws? His hand taps a well thumbed copy of the customs rules, ring bound authority. I'm invited into the back office to meet the boss.
The procedure for 'detaining' equipment is elaborate to the point of an institutionalised fetish: a sheet with serial numbers of each item of equipment is taped to the case and the white tape signatured; bound by white string; a candle is brought over to heat the red wax and a flourish a seal is applied.
The gear is incarcerated, the first interviews are set up for Sunday. Need bed, shower, sleep. How was your day at the office dear?
Processes and Responsibilities
May 31, 2008
When People and Places Rub Shoulders
May 29, 2008
Another day, another journey this time to Ahmedabad for a study on [redacted]. Not quite a hand-luggage only trip but nice to work on a scale where the number of assistants can be counted on one hand. With colleagues arriving from Finland, Los Angeles and Delhi the stuff that brings us together eh?
Time to brave the Tokyo rush hour traffic - see you on the other side.
All That You Come Back To
May 28, 2008
One of the late night conversations that seemed to occur with regularity during our Ghana field study was the stuff we do that makes us feel like we're back 'at home'. For one colleague it's surfing the Pacific, for me late night cycling around Tokyo or an occasional visit to a nearby bath house/sento.
These photos are from my local sento in Sangenjaya , a fairly working class district - about ten minutes cycle grind or two subway stops from Shibuya and home to a fair amount of small studio apartments that don't come with good any home bathing facilities. Which helps explain why, whilst sento's are gradually dying out in Japan there are still a number of them dotted around the neighbourhood.
A photo amongst all that nudity? Just prior to closing, when the other punter's have left the building.
Cooling Options
May 28, 2008
A common post sento ritual for many punters involves slumping on a toweled benches that line the changing room or, in winter pacing the outside veranda - either naked of with a towel loosely tied to hips. Wafting a fan gently speeds up the evaporation process and if you're in the mood for the full experience pull a bottle of once-upon-a-time branded drinks from a chilled glass cabinet, sip and chill. It's a building where history stares right back at you.
My regular sento includes a bandai style entrance - where the attendant sits astride of the wall separating the men's and women's changing areas - sometimes a gent sits there and sometimes his chatty/grinning sister. For the latter making use of the fan whilst letting it all hang out is not appropriate.
Lliteracy Plus, Published
May 27, 2008
Those of you who like your mobile phone related research in print may want to peruse Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies edited by James E. Katz. Based on the time and effort it took James & MIT Press to bring this to print - I'm guessing it's a labour of love.
The book contains 32 chapters in sections covering: digital divides and social mobility; sociality and co-presence; politics and social change; and culture and imagination. My own minor contribution comes in a chapter titled Understanding Illiteracy as a Barrier to Mobile Phone Communication. Yeah it is online. The slides that accompany the essay can be viewed below or download here (PowerPoint, 6MB), or you could just watch the video.
Photos from one of the literacy research field studies in Hangzhou, China, 2004, taken by the students working on the project.
When Teens Poster-Bait
May 26, 2008
Posters for local politicians on this Sangenjaya - look carefully at the face of the third poster to see it has been gently vandalised.
In many of the places you see static advertising today you should expect find some form of dynamic advertising tomorrow - South Korea is probably the most advanced culture in terms of 'displays everywhere'. Imagery that reacts to ambient factors such as the time of the day, the weather, who is walking by and of course their purchasing habits, and perhaps also an equally dynamic poster from a competitor.
By 2015 some form of poster-baiting will have entered the arsenal of bored teens around the world - think Google bombing but with the sole aim of tipping dynamic, sensor aware advertising hoardings into some form of errant behaviour. The only thing more fun than a dynamic, sensor aware poster featuring a politician is one at odds with the other sensor aware poster featuring a politician. May the best algorithm win.
The Small Crowd That Lingers
May 26, 2008
Take the Keio Exit out of Shibuya Station and hang a sharp left and you'll soon come across a crowd of spectators watching the monotonously addictive pachinko.
The everyday places that we linger will start to take on a new relevance with the widespread adoption of devices equipped with proximate wireless connectivity - Bluetooth, RFID, WiFi, ..., when the simple act of lingering creates opportunities for meaningful data exchange. And we all know what data exchange leads to.
Right now it's a long way from being seamless, but when it does it will change the sociability of spaces. For every culture, a pachinko parlour crowd.
More on the value of you being there.
Everyone Needs A...
May 26, 2008
... place to hang an umbrella.
Monkeys, Chimps & Bananas
May 25, 2008
Found myself on the other side of the lens this week, the lens of Tokyo based Jeremy Sutton Hibbert to be precise. Photo shoots can be a weird beast - with an intense personal dislike of being digitally captured offset by the opportunity to learn from a pro - for all the photography that our research entails it's a world away from what they get up to. And for now at least the front of camera stuff hasn't yet got in the way of the real work and has certainly created opportunities and opened doors.
The heat and humidity has arrived and Tokyo has kicked it up a gear with far more interesting subject's sauntering by. Monkeys and chimps? That probably makes me a banana.
Related media here.
Absolute versus Relative Wayfinding
May 25, 2008
Street corner signs in Tokyo (above), London and Dubai (below) highlight information architecture norms in each of these cities.
Japan is a country where buildings typically are found by district, sub-district and so on - so finding a specific building is a process of reducing alternatives (or increasingly looking at your mobile phone's map application). In the UK you're screwed without an exact address, and building's are largely numbered sequentially. And in the building frenzy of Dubai new street signs exist but are rarely referred to by locals when giving directions.
Sub*(Liminal Advertising)
May 25, 2008
Object's and orifices.
Tokyo Through a Different Lens, Darkly
May 23, 2008
A short lull between field trips heightened by a visit from an old friend. Summer's arrived and life in Tokyo is pretty simple, ta RB. Blinged pair of Technics? That'll be Shibuya then.
Two nights of ad-hoccing down. One to go.
Signs as Indicator's of Expected Practices
May 23, 2008
Sign on the toilet door of our friendly sancha dive bar. The extent to which "do not" signs trigger behaviours?
Touch Screen Devices, Touched
May 23, 2008
Touchscreen interaction for karaoke selection, posture, hand positioning, support, interaction.
Way Searching, Finding
May 23, 2008
Maps that start with a "here". The ability to automate the same.
Shorter, Smoother, More Comfortable
May 21, 2008
One of the features of an increasingly mobile lifestyle is that you find yourself doing old things in new contexts - and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Photo above from Nagoya subway, waiting for a train to arrive - and playing around with the recently (heh, re-) launched n-gage gaming platform. A typical micro/macro break kind of situation then. In n-gage purchasing a game requires a credit card (at least for me here in Japan, no idea for punters in the rest of the world) - which means that for that impulse purchase you need to be in an environment that's conducive to taking out a credit card, or at least having credit card information to hand. It provides a check box to save the card details after the first purchase, but alas (for me in Nippon) not an option. Simple questions - in what contexts is it sufficiently safe/not overly pretentious to take out a credit card?
For any service - who owns the gateway to consumer billing information? What does it take to set up a new customer?
When everyone carries the tools to purchase what you want from where you want, the key to offering a compelling service is minimising transaction hassles. The current mainstream web best practice is probably Amazon's one-click purchasing, although by now I assume someone somewhere has cut out the actual one-click implemented pre-emptive purchasing - where transactions are executed within set parameters and products you didn't consciously know you needed are delivered just when you want them. Think automated banking transaction systems working at a more personal, micro level, micro-markets perhaps. If you thought LTCM was disruptive, imagine something on a similar scale triggered from the edges of the network by a inappropriately written algorithm. Inappropriate for whom? Golly.
Is it always better to shorten the transaction path? A little side-swipe of this religious icon (above photo) from a Dharavi chai house adds a little faith to the process - blessing each and every transaction. Someone which a penchant for over-spending might appreciate additional barriers to help with temptation management - the equivalent of putting a lock on the fridge door. The last few cents of pre-pay phone credit have a particular value that can benefit from an additional pause for reflection before use. And the pay-for-this-flight button might well benefit from a Dopplr carbon audit. Shorter is always better except of course where it's not.
Ambient Service Expectations
May 21, 2008
From the ticket office in Nagoya station. A mat is a mat right? Sort of... the from around the world and from a sex product store in Akihabara.
Delivery Norms
May 21, 2008
Japanese apartment vegetable delivery norms.
Shared Solitary Serial Experiences
May 20, 2008
Two Tokyoites - on the right of the photo engaged in the same task watching the same television program on their mobile phone each using their own device, with comments passed back and forth.
The reaction, and shared emotions of the people we're with is an important part of the whole TV watching experience - so in some contexts squishing up against the other person and sharing once screen can compromise the viewing experience, but enhances the experience. Can be kinda romantic too.
Shared, solitary, serial experiences. If time shifting content (watching when you like) becomes the norm, add synchronised to this list of s's.
See also: this short essay on ten things you didn't know about Mobile TV or download this presentation [4MB, PowerPoint].
Gilroy Updated
May 20, 2008
Human Flows, Redirections
May 20, 2008
Height Variance
May 19, 2008
The need for ATM's to support local height norms -photo from Helsinki station. The extent to which different cultures have different [height, weight, ...] norms, and the speed at which these change over time?
Another obvious contrast? Obesity levels at the check-in for a US bound flights when boarding from a country like South Korea or Japan.
The white caps? That'll be the student caps then worn for Vappu.
Careers x 2 x 3
May 16, 2008
You've read about what we do and by now you should have a sense of where we're coming from. Maybe its time to join our team? The good news is that we're expanding - with 6 positions opening up for a few talented individuals in our Services and User Interface Design team to be precise.
To see what's on offer and apply you need to head to the job search page and enter the following job codes.
In Palo Alto the positions are for two Interactions Designers [Job code: SAN000000BQ, SAN000000BP] and a Communications Designer [SAN000000BV]. Whilst in Espoo we're looking to hire two Interaction Designers [ESP0000022U, ESP0000022T] and a Communications Designer [ESP0000022V].
Since I'm not handling these positions please do not send queries or resumes to me, you'll need to go through the proper channels.
For those geographically challenged individuals out there Espoo is right next to Helsinki. If you don't know Helsinki...
Based purely on the URL of the job site - it appears to be the work of Taleo who, frankly might consider hiring a decent interaction designers of their own. Or perhaps letting their interaction designer's do their job without compromise - I presume they make it difficult to deep link to individual jobs to avoid harvesters, but in a connected world where every touch point says something about your organisation. this. is. frustration. defined.
Photos: last year's Ghana field study.
A Day in the Life, Simulated in a Day
May 16, 2008
One of the slides from last week’s Behind the Scenes event showed one of Chongqing participants (above) seemingly in a moment of domestic bliss - brushing his teeth. Whilst on occasion we have collected this kind of data through shadowing (stalking with permission) or self documentation this particular photo is staged - part of a data collection method we've been experimenting with called a Simulated Day in the Life.
(Given the intimacy implied by this photo, its worth noting that we have the rights to use it to publicise the research).
The process can take a day from start to finish, ideally with some form of pre-visit to prep their and the team's expectations. It starts with an in-depth interview that maps out 'a typical day' and this information is cross referenced with what we have learned from other data gathering methods, with our local team's experiences, and our sense of what is interesting. Two or three hours is enough time to generate a photo-shoot schedule that simulates a whole day - which then takes around 6 hours to document. At some point, and with a willing co-author, I'll properly document the pros and cons of this method.
A simple question for now - given that your credibility as a design researcher is based on techniques that range from (hands-off) observation to interviews to it looks-real-but-is-actually-staged photo shoot, whether and how to communicate what data comes from which source? In what contexts does it matter that this is a staged photo or the real deal, or as is likely some combination of the two?
Data is not absolute - it's power and effectiveness comes from how it is interpreted, applied. If you are setting out to inform then one metric for success is ensuring the interpretation is close to it's intended meaning. If it's more important to inspire then the opposite might be true - other peoples' reinterpretation and discovery of tangential links is an important part of that creative process. The fact is that once any data is out there you have little control in how it is used and potentially abused. In an age of mainstream content sharing tools how to optimise the likelihood of the former and minimise the latter?
All photos: from a simulated day in the life, Chongqing.
Audio Denial
May 16, 2008
This research malarkey is becoming geekier by the minute.
Collecting audio samples this week the sounds of a train platform in Tokyo above and ambient hotel corridor noise Helsinki below. Feels weird standing still for three minutes in a hotel corridor - them being transient spaces n' all. At 5am not a lot of stirring from within the rooms fortunately, but enough ambient noise to populate a scene from eraserhead or half life.
Tokyo boarding.
Power for the People
May 16, 2008
Frankfurt airport - laptop user's tastefully segregated from genpop.
(Smiley)
May 16, 2008
Sausage Bounce
May 16, 2008
A quick stopover in Frankfurt on the way home means: catching up with relatives via telephone - there's nothing like being within the same national boundaries to trigger a bit of (still remote) family bonding; stocking on top notch German dental products; finding time for a hefeweizen and a cheeky wurst.
Above - the Lufthansa lounge work spaces include these rather foreboding power sockets.
Lolita, Perched on the Bed
May 14, 2008
One of the challenges of running a large scale field study is staying on top of all the incoming digital data that can easily include interview transcripts, ambient audio, video and between 15 to 20 thousand photos that are typically generated per city.
Because the field team can arrive from and eventually disperses to the four corners of the earth the aim is to have everything processed and backed up prior to leaving the location. It's a process that often requires a dedicated data manager and laptops solely for batch processing - a task that, power-cuts allowing, often runs through the night. With a field team of up to 25 people and with much gear flying around its hard to track what equipment should used by whom, hence giving names to otherwise inanimate objects.
The photo above? One of the slides from last week's Behind the Scenes presentation - thats Lolita working away during our Dharavi field study. Laptops = Names beginning with L.
Human Flows
May 14, 2008
Helsinki for the week, and the opportunity to have face to face conversations that will shape the next field studies. Almost as busy as these rush-hour Helsinki commuters.
Under a Thousand Watchful Eyes of Chairman Mao
May 13, 2008
Run a decent sized (two week, 25+ person team) field study in emerging markets it's highly likely that you end up handling a lot of cash. Services need to be paid for, expenses and bills settled. And whilst as a SOX compliant corporation the preference is for subcontracting and invoices the fact is that in some contexts and cultures this simply isn't possible. You don't invoice a taxi right? Extrapolate.
After two weeks in the field most of the field team are a little bit frazzled, the hard work is done and the mind is already drifting towards home. For our locally hired assistants it's the end of, what for many is an intense working and learning experience - their work hours need to be signed off and their ready to re-join the wrap party that usually already underway. If the accounts have been well kept during the rest of the study it takes a long half day to process everyone: settle up and conduct a short exit interview to garner feedback on how we can run things better next time.
Local money changing facilities can vary considerably - in some countries travelers cheques, credit cards and ATM's are fine, in others they simply don't exist without a high risk of fraud - credit card misuse in Ghana for example, or with impractical constraints such as daily traveler cheque exchange limits of two hundred Euros.
So on occasion we end up in these slightly surreal situations in the field office/hotel room with piles upon piles of carefully counted cash, receipts waiting to be signed and with members of our local team knocking, entering and leaving 15 minutes later with kind words and a smile. Easy enough to take out of context that. Collecting enough local currency to settle accounts can be non-trivial: in Rio de Janeiro a city known for its street crime it involved multiple visits to a local bank and shuffling nonchalantly back to the office in flip-flops and shorts trying to look like pockets weren't stuffed with thousands of Euro's; in India carrying plastic bags literally bulging with bricks of cash, in China sorting receipts under a thousand watchful eyes of Chairman Mao.
So now you know.
And since I know you know, it's time to move on.
Related: the ethics and practice of providing blank receipts.
Monday Morning Commute / Emotions
May 12, 2008 | 6 Comments
Once more into the fray - braving Tokyo's Monday rush hour commuter traffic on the way to Narita. Finland for the week. One Monday morning is much like another right? So why the extra feeling of pessimism?
Japan is a country with a significant number of national holidays - in a culture where respect for your colleagues means you're unlikely to take your full vacation allowance, the government stipulated holiday's give everyone a chance to take a few days off, guilt free. Early May includes a string of national holidays - Showa Day, Constitutional Memorial Day, Greenery Day, Children's Day combine to make Golden Week after which there is nothing until late July. Hence the collective back to work sigh known locally as 'go gatsu byoo' - May disease.
Does your culture have an equivalent of 'May disease'? In Finland November is (apparently) the toughest month - it's cold, dark and wet and in Helsinki at least the snow doesn't settle enough to stay firm underfoot. And a long dark winter of the soul awaits.
Thought for today - the extent to which a personal feeling of malaise are generated from the emotions of those around you? Whether newish ways of working - such as telecommuting disrupt the critical mass, and in which contexts? And in a world of time travel the extent that 'skipping May' becomes an acceptable norm?
The Making of, Behind the Scenes
May 12, 2008Last week our London Design Studio invited journalists from around the world for a glimpse of the design process - the story behind the numbers if you like. Younghee and I took the opportunity to present something old, something new and the slides from the presentation (mostly for the benefit of the note taking journos) are posted above and can be downloaded from here (PowerPoint, 7MB).
Some of you may remember Remade - the phone literally made from nothing new. Well, my guvnor Rhys Newman shared some of the thinking behind the project that internally has gone by the name of Homegrown (for it's origins think starting at home rather than something herbal). Read up on the thinking, other concepts and people behind the project here and here and download the Homegrown presentation here (PDF, 1MB).
More on the different threads of Homegrown, no doubt later. Rhys managed to put our permalag into perspective by completing a 24 bicycle race (the team gained a podium place), hopping on plane in LA and upon landing at Heathrow heading straight to the studio to present. Designers? Stamina? More than you think.
Writing a presentation and getting it to flow is more art than science and is that much more difficult when the double in your bill is separated by time zones/rational sleep patterns. No surprise then that 'last minute' edits started at 2am sternly overlooked by head-standing dwarfs in the hotel lobby (nice rooms, crap in-room WiFi btw), continued over a decent full English to be wrapped up as the journos filed into the building. No stress then.
And wrapping up the behind the scenes thread - Fortune has posted a story-lite and some of the faces behind the N810 tablet here. And if any internals reading this have a spare '810, wouldn't mind borrowing one for a bit...
Fur Hoody
May 11, 2008
Unlikely Combinations
May 11, 2008
Sort of related: rational clusters of shops in an Inglewood strip mall.
Transparency is for Suckers
May 09, 2008 | 34 Comments
If, like me you place writing about blogging on a par with staring at your own excrement you’ll want to skip this post.
Future Perfect is a modest little site, but has grown to the point where bandwidth costs are now non-trivial - helped in part by a hosting a fair amount of photos, research downloads and having the occasional traffic driving article. Consequently I’m in the un/enviable position where people place enough value on the site to keep coming back, and I enjoy the privilege of paying for it.
I’ve looked at different ways of off-setting bandwidth costs, including: shutting down; posting material so tangentially up my own posterior to drive away almost everyone except perhaps my long suffering (colonic) irrigator; and have even half-heartedly toyed with advertising - more to get a, um, sense of how Adsense works than to make money, but its enough to turn me off the idea for now at least. If you feel compelled to persistently click on the advertising on this page - it’ll no doubt help me learn how difficult it is to return from click-fraud purgatory. There’s nothing like going out in in blaze of nickels and cents... I don’t have a book to sell and the six figure conference circuit is on hold until I retire.
I’ve recently discussed ways to have my employer underwrite my hosting costs and am caught between wanting to maintain independence in mind and wallet and finding an easy solution. Taking the 's money is not a done deal but neither would it take a lot of pimping to make happen. In many ways my employer already underwrites Future Perfect - showing flexibility in tolerating/ignoring the frank discussion about work related topics that sometimes appears here. In the early days I also had the support of various colleagues (hei TE, HN) to turn my back on the traditional academic/journal publication process and explore ways of bringing research to a wider audience - not an easy or obvious thing within the rigorously scientific confines of the Tokyo corporate research lab.
If like me you're a sucker for transparency this is where I'm at. So where to go from here? Would taking a corporate hand-out compromise the integrity of the site? Ping your missives to bandwidthoffset at janchipchase dot com or stick ‘em in the comments below.
Now stop staring, flush, and don’t forget to wash you hands
Stacks of cash on a bed? For that you'll have to tune in Monday...
Inside Outside Norms
May 08, 2008
A common sight with so many single room apartments in Tokyo - the washing machine outside the home. Helps put this into context.
Accidental Empires
May 07, 2008
Late last week tried to get a sense of the snow conditions on the top of Mount Fuji - the official climbing season starts in July but the pre-season provides an opportunity to beat the crowds and perhaps, heh, catch a little powder on the way down. Whilst 'everything' is only a Google away therein lies the rub for the hurried researcher - you not only want the most appropriate site, but want the data in a sufficiently familiar format - from language to layout. The quick and dirty solution? Search Flickr for Mount Fuji sorted by date.
The point at which content/social networking sites accidentally become sufficiently definitive sources of tangential information.
Photo: Storm drifting over a wintery Lhasa.
I/We Be Here, Then
May 07, 2008
A stamp in the trekking hut at the beginning/end of the Akadake mountain trail (above) and a two Tokyo high school girls annotating a print club sticker (below, photo by my then colleague Aico Shimizu).
The highly evolved practices of gathering proof of where you've been with whom and why - supported by formal stamp treasure hunt in Hokkaido's Chitose airport; walking sticks branded on the way to the summit of Mount Fuji to making and collecting print club stickers relatively common amongst teen girls in a number of east Asian countries.
And how these practices will be reinforced and amplified as life goes increasingly digital - - everything from the way we navigate our urban environments; what we search for; the things we interact with; and the services we pay for.
Life. Is. Short. About to Become Shorter
May 05, 2008
As you climb the bamboo fields become pine forest and eventually rock face, the gravel turns to ice and snow. Golden week here in Japan but ultimately the crowds are somewhere else. About a month before the climbing season starts proper - elderly Alpinista couples lead the way.
Wake up above the clouds, a pretty tough summit for breakfast, aching limbs for lunch. For all of life's digital, it's the physical that has the alure.
Honesty Box
May 05, 2008
The going rate? 100 yen to spend a penny. Why bother compared to the great outdoors? Heated seats.
Related: donations and percepts of honesty in London and Tehran.
Font Erosion
May 05, 2008
Everything Right There
May 05, 2008
Advertising for Japan's CATV gives a snapshot of local TV norms.
Mainstreaming Mobile Payments
May 05, 2008
The mainstreaming of mobile payments - bus tickets in Akadake above, parking meters in London below.
Newspaper Stacked, Displayed & Prioritised
May 03, 2008
The extreme battle for space on this Shinagawa station convenience store dictates that newspapers are either folded and stacked vertically or, in the case of the more popular titles stacked like ice-cream cones. And whilst it’s possible to find more expansive newspaper displays that include clearly visible headlines - it is very much the local Japanese norm.
Compare to the display of full newspaper pages in newspaper kiosks in Milan or Rio de Janeiro (kiosk photo below) or the relatively common practice of posting entire newspapers in China?
To what extent does the Japanese newspaper form effect people's ambient awareness of (headline) news? Are the display norms a reflection of the particularly habitual purchasing behaviour of Japanese newspaper consumers? What attributes of how the newspaper is displayed e.g. densely folded, carry over into how the newspaper is browsed and read? And as with this discarded newspaper from the London underground (above), how does the disposal method affect ambient awareness?
Donning the service designr cap for a moment and given the answers to the above, how does ambient awareness affect the likely adoption of mobile news related services?
On the Way Out, Pull the Door To
May 01, 2008
It's been a stop-go-stop-go-go kind of week bouncing between hotel rooms, meetings, and ad-hoc work spaces - including the calming Espoo design studio, pictured here. Yes thats a lake the sea outside the window. Hei. One thing I didn't count on was the Vappu where a large % of the adult population collectively hit the bottle for one night.
Or four days
Most people plan to take Friday off.
20 minutes before boarding the meatball express for Tokyo. See you on the other side.
Open Studios
May 01, 2008
One of the research methods Younghee and the research team have been experimenting with in the past year of working in shanty towns is setting up Open Studios in an attempt to engage a broad cross section of the community whist offering people different ways to articulate their wants and needs. We used a competition to design your ideal future phone as a vehicle for collecting data and the photos here show three of the 200+ entries from Buduburam near Accra, Favela Jacarezihno in Rio de Janeiro and Dharavi in Mumbai. It's easy to fixate! on! design! sketches! but bear in mind these are but a small part of the Open Studio - a lot of the research value comes through follow up interaction to help understand why participants chose these designs and how their design decisions are relevant in their context.
To browse 15 of the designs plus lite background information on the designers head to this Business Week slide show.
In due course we plan to write up and share the methodology. To be notified of this and other newly published research send an email to subscribe at janchipchase.com.
A full list of acknowledgments to follow when the research is published. Top photo - taken by our studio assistants in Buduburam.
Open Studios Related Research
May 01, 2008Reader's arriving from the Business Week Nokia and Design article by Kerry Capell might be interested in related research from a study conducted in Uganda and Indonesia on how people share objects, including mobile phones. Slides below or download (PowerPoint, PDF, 7MB) and this essay explaining the slides in more detail.
For a taste of life what its like to run these kind of projects take a peek at the thread on today's office and of course Younghee's site.
A full list of publications can be found here.
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