June 2008 Archives
Incentivised Recycling
Jun 30, 2008
The mental distance between the act of recycling, and what happens with what is recycled. My neighbourhood paper recycling van in Sangenjaya drops off (recycled) toilet paper for customers that recycle paper (above).
And for mobile phones flipswap and its variants.
The process of moving towards upcycled mobile phones.
Auto-Rickshaw Mud Flap Customisation
Jun 27, 2008
One of the sweeter aspects of whizzing between meetings in Ahmedabad has been seeing occasional glimpses of of artistic inspiration fly by - in the form of Bollywood and Gollywood customised rickshaw mud-flaps. There's something just a little GTA about them - a reflection perhaps of the real-life chaos on the roads.
By chance we managed to drop by a cluster of street stalls where they are sold. Cost? Between 200 and 300 Rupees (3 to 4.5 Euros) for an off the shelf design. Add a similar amount if you opt for a truly personalised design based on movie stills of your choosing.
Managed to commission kustom Bollywood style mud flap featuring the research team. Awaited. With. Baited. Breath.
Update: and reader Meena Kadri points to a flickr pool with more designs from the streets of Ahmedabad.
Highly Qualified Small Print
Jun 27, 2008
From the Ahmedabad press. Sort of related - the future perfect of warranties here.
Rickshaw Interior Customisation
Jun 27, 2008
Mostly Bollywood stars, but as design team colleague Duncan pointed out - also surprising amount of shiny red motorbikes and cars sitting in front of white picket fenced houses. Aspirations indeed.
Photo: from last month in Ahmedabad.
Tooth Brush Norms
Jun 26, 2008
From the streets of Ahmedabad, India. And a stall selling more of the same on the streets of Old Delhi.
Inherently Shared Objects
Jun 26, 2008
Instructions for sharing written on the side of this 100% orange juice lolly. The extent that sharing is actively supported, implied in the design. The cultural un/acceptability of licking the same object? The contexts where multiple mouth's touching the same object becomes more acceptable?
Wondering how these practices evolve as we develop a nano/bacterial understanding of the world around us...
Related: the common sharing practice of the half life of food on a plate, why and how mobile phones are shared; and how sleazy punters are sleeping around by supporting multiple networks on one device. Shocking.
Carrying & Interaction Behaviours
Jun 25, 2008The slides from today's Nike Tokyo Design Studio co-presentation with Fumiko Ichikawa on Interaction and Carrying Styles can be viewed above or downloaded from here [PowerPoint, 5MB]. Regular readers will note it's a minor update to previously published research. Thanks to Fumiko Tsuji and Howard Lichter @ Nike for hosting.
Related material includes: an essay on where people carry phones and why, this might interest you; a thread on carrying behaviours around the world; a taster of how we conduct the research and, um, shoes.
Related research can be found here.
Cellphone, Anthropology
Jun 23, 2008
Readers arriving from the New Scientist will probably want to read this thread about life on the road, and peruse the research downloads here.
On a side note - it's interesting to see how other people label that thing that you do. I'm neither a trained anthropologist nor do I aspire to be called one - but whatever it takes to get on with the job. Ditto - only a small % of the work is related to mobile phones - life is way more interesting than little lumps of plastic and metal.
A Space, Lingered
Jun 21, 2008
This corner of Mishuku, fairly close to my home where the taxi driver's pull up their rigs, take a pee in the nearby pubic lavatory, catch a smoke and Japan being the home of passionate baseball fans and diligent teams - watch the game.
Why, as a service designer spaces-to-linger might interest you - in this Tokyo pachinko parlour and extrapolated to this Ahmedabad shopping mall.
Public Spaces, Seating Norms
Jun 20, 2008
The seating offered to passengers waiting at Kagoshima airport - include raised tatami mats.
Mobile Phone Airline e-Ticketing
Jun 20, 2008
The scanner at the JAL ticket gate, Yakushima airport for reading the QR bar code of the e-ticketon the mobile phone display.
Personalised Apology in a Group Context
Jun 20, 2008
A member of the ground crew (left of picture) stands with head bowed, apologising to passengers for technical delays. For every culture and/or industry: whether customers expect an apology; whether it is forthcoming; the form it takes; and the effects of that acknowledgment of [guilt] from calls for compensation to soothed anger.
After an earlier canceled flight, manage to narrowly avoid an extra day on the island. Back in Tokyo in time for izakayas.
Japanese Restaurant Condiment Norms
Jun 20, 2008
Default condiments on this Yakushima restaurant table: Tabasco, soy, chili powder (for soba/udon), goma (sesame) salad dressing and toothpicks. Compare to a UK UK caff
Nudity in Context II
Jun 20, 2008
And continuing on the thread of nudity in Japanese society - the now outdated practice of pixelating pubic hair in pornographic videos. More information on its history here and a dissected pixelated photo still from a porn movie.
Channel surfing in the hotel since you had to ask. But you had to ask, right? Tsk.
Nudity in Context I
Jun 20, 2008
I've got an hour before the next transport trundles by, so it's off to the local onsen - where the pool just so happens to be situated a pebble's throw to the beach on the outskirts of Yudomori - and is for mixed gender bathing. For the record m'lud - onsen are normally the least sexual places you can imagine. My only other gender-mixed onsen experience (um, in Japan) was by co-incidence also situated next to a beach - this time on the Izu peninsular. Not quite knowing what to expect I unwittingly ended up knee to knee in the pool with two Tokyo porn starlets and a good dozen otaku.
Yakushima is dotted with geo-thermally fed onsen - public and private pools where both locals and visitors to the isle strip, wash and once cleaned, bathe. Only a heathen would sit in their own dirty water, right? Here in the sticks the onsen functions as a social hub for the elderly - a neutral place where one can unwind, chat and slowly get into a state-of-mind to move onto something else. Or not - island life is slooow. Yeah, the experience is not a million miles from a bathhouse in Iran or its many equivalents in Finland.
Onsen are often sold on their unique attributes and if you happen to be in Yakushima - the JR Yakushima Hotel has an onsen with water so soft it feels like you're gliding through a pool of aloe and stepping out is as refreshing as having your your body licked by a perfectly minty tongue.
Most public onsen are gender separated but, as with today, on occasion you can find men and women sharing the same pool. It's fairly normal to take a rest from the intense heat of the pool by perching pool side - one leg dangling in the water, but I couldn't quite figure out why in my Izu experience these two attractive women would every so often rise out and stand at a right angle to the pool before turning their head to gaze out to sea a maneuver that, as you might expect, contorted the body to give an all too perfect bodily profile. I'm all for new experiences but this one I couldn't quite place - everyone seemed to know each other, but they weren't talking like friends.
It turned out that it was a informal porno package tour - the guide / pimp who introduced himself in faltering English drove a mini-bus down from Tokyo with paying punters and the aforementioned starlets. With a couple of bemused locals and the token white guy making up the 'pot. Every so often one of the gents would haul a small waterproof-cased camera from the pool and snap the ladies in situ, and after a while they kindly offered to take a photo of me sandwiched between the two ladies in a seating position that revealed their freshly shorn hooves. Pretty sure that had I accepted - that the photo would have been used as an advertising lure to pull in foreign punters for the next tour.
Context is everything. Especially when it out of context.
Two-handed Interaction Styles
Jun 19, 2008
Interaction style on this musical instrument of unknown origin of a Zimbabwian Mbira - ably demonstrated by the owner of the Green Shower cafe, Yudomori.
Ta Carsten.
Texture Leak
Jun 19, 2008
The inherent character of spaces. The extent to which the notion of inside and outside becomes mute. Photos from a traditional Yakushima house with sliding walls and a large veranda - allowing the island to touch and gently affect everything in the home.
Some place exude the positive. Deep sigh.
Youthful Abstractions
Jun 19, 2008
Kids paintings are the supermarket's keep-the-kid's-occupied/mum-happy medium of choice - from the A-Coop in Onoaida. Somewhat surprising? The volume of facial hair sported in many of the pictures - Japan is generally a clean shave society.
Brands as Intergral Part of the Neighbourhood Landscape
Jun 19, 2008
The National Panasonic logo has a particular significance in the landscape of urban Japan - where many neighbourhoods host one of it's petit electronics stores. I'm guessing that they've been hit hard by widespread available of (price/competitor) information - you can't survive on selling light bulbs and offering neighbourhood repair services, or can you?
For every neighbourhood - the brands that take a generation to fade.
The store supports the recycling of spent fluorescent light tubes, and a similar recycling option elsewhere on Yakushima.
Objects That Bridge
Jun 19, 2008
The humble role of the welcome mat.
Mystery Objects, Expected Use
Jun 19, 2008
A timer left by the previous tenants in the bathroom of this Yakushima home. For timing younglings toothbrush activities.
Call 119
Jun 19, 2008
Given the extensive use of emergency phone numbers in un/popular culture - the extent that it's easier to remember the emergency number from another country?
A comprehensive list of emergency numbers here.
Design team colleague Fumiko mulls on the (mis) use of emergency numbers in Japan, including the introduction of a fast-track emergency number here, and Younghee touches on the report-a-North-Korean-spy number in South Korea here.
Bamboo Cushion
Jun 19, 2008
With a surprisingly comfortable give, since you ask.
Lunch / Read
Jun 19, 2008
It's fairly typical for neighbourhood restaurants to supply a range of weekly manga for customers.
Puri Kura'd
Jun 18, 2008
The conceptual distance between an activity (photography) and the use of content and materials created through that activity. Like doodling on the cover of a sketchbook.
Key Varients
Jun 18, 2008
An awkward mixture of wood, carbon fiber and RFID to turn on lights - in this Yakushima hotel room. For all the freedom afforded by having a tray on which to place key fob, it was only practical to place it in one position and have the RFID tag read.
The designer had a choice whether to adopt international practices to control the master power for the room - place room key in slot by the door / have a master 'light' switch. For frequent completed tasks - introducing a new way of doing things can be the right solution but for occasional users - most guests would stay one or two nights in their life-time, introducing a new form of interaction is the wrong choice.
Electrical, Natural Trails
Jun 18, 2008
Iwatani Primus
Jun 17, 2008
Ah, the brands we know and love - the comforting yellow glow of an Iwatani Primus cannister - pleasantly reassuring given the backdrop of nature with it's uneven surfaces and earthy colour palettes, and purpose for which it is used - hot grub after a day of gaining altitude, and overflowing rivers.
Blood is for Suckers
Jun 17, 2008
Manage to pick up a number of new friends on the trail, or to be perfectly accurate - negotiating a storm swollen river whilst trying to keep my pack lofted out of the water. Their discovery comes in the mountain hut when I'm pulling off my boots and trying to figure out why my socks are soaked in blood. Leeches are messy little buggers once they've had their fill - the bore hole continues to gush red goo for a minute or so after detachment. In a sense the blood is a positive sign that the gorging is complete and l'd imagine significantly less painful than having your teat sucked by a hungry youngling. Spend 10 minutes checking remaining clothing for wayward specimens. If they're still there - how long before they reattach for seconds?
There's something hypnotic about discovering you've made new parasitic friends, something that overcomes the basic instinct to recoil and react. I'd put it on a par with a ring side seat to a scalpel slicing through your own flesh. Or for the more pro-active the temptation of putting a hand into moving machinery.
Thought for today as a sound of rain hitting the forest canopy sends me to sleep - is fresh fried plump leech the culinary equivilent of incest?
Slightly Less Mild
Jun 17, 2008
It's raining hard by the time I manage to find the start of the trail, tantalisingly located next to the local onsen. Two old dears, cooling off on a wooden bench after a morning's bathe stare, and once eye contact is confirmed they look up to the skies and back at me with the body language that asks the Japanese equivilent of 'you're sure you know what you're doing?' I wave. They wave back. Our mutual acknowledge of each other's presence, my heavy pack and the fact that I'm dressed head to toe in full rain gear is an outward affirmative. They are still staring in my direction as I turn away to start climbing the narrow trail. The rain kick it up a notch and the thunder rolls in.
A country where the population is largely squashed onto whatever flat land exists - take two steps off the beaten track and it's just you, the mountain and whatever hopes and fears you start out with.
And so it is for the day.
Into the Mild
Jun 16, 2008
Today's Monday morning commute takes me past the southern tip of the Japanese mainland to the island of Yakushima with a heavy back-to-back agenda of, doing nothing for a week.
Well OK, maybe a little bit of something.
Still need to become heat-of-the-moment comfortable with a newish camera and certainly in need of some mental space to day-dream. Freebasing for the mind so to speak. Plus there's the little matter of the back-country to explore.
Time + energy = bliss.
Decompression
Jun 10, 2008
The red-eye from Mumbai lands in Singapore early morning and the next red-eye leaves for Tokyo late night. If you thought jet lag left you permaphucked, try sleeping two consecutive nights in 74H.
Ah, but what to do with a long stop-over in Singapore? Visit the temples of consumerism? Nah - laps at the otherwise empty Four Seasons pool, lunch overlooking the city and a chance to dirty fingernails in the otherwise squeaky clean city state with a Malay and a stroll through Geylang. Decompression, indeed.
Next week? A few days in Tokyo, then a switch from the concrete jungle to, well, jungle.
Business in Entertainment Class
Jun 10, 2008
Surprising level of support for StarOffice - changes the backseat display on the Airbus A340 from a entertainment and information portal to something a little more business. The console interface is highly unsuitable for pointer based interaction, so don't expect to see a lot of people using this. But how does it affect the traveler's perception of the flight as a space where they are in control of what they do? What their colleagues expect them to do?
More on how formal infrastructure changes our expectations of what is socially acceptable, in this Tokyo cafe.
The Warm Feeling of (Someone Else's) Design in Context
Jun 10, 2008
Last day in Ahmedabad - and an opportunity to push a little and see what gives, heading out into the Old City with design team colleagues Duncan Burns (co-author on the recent Street Hacks presentation) and Josephine Gianni. (A fourth team member from our LA design studio Tom Arbisi is here in spirit in the form of appearance models, we left them safely secured at the hotel). India is the kind of place where the 'not from around here' is a passport into most situations, including any number of work or boy-its-hot-here sweat, shops. Along the way we walk into a plastic bag print works.
A pleasant surprise was in store - the owner owned two mobile phones including one industrial designed by Duncan .
When you work for a big-corp it's challenging to point to a "I did that' on what is shipped out the door - so many people being part of the process. I can imagine it's especially grating for employees of companies that play on the cult of personality or project the notion of the star designer in that even if you can point to something you created, someone else steps in and takes the credit. But back here in the midday heat of Ahmedabad - I'm standing next to a glow of quiet satisfaction.
To be honest it was surprising to find such a business looking phone in this very manual workspace. I don't know whether his profile matched the market segmentation model for an expected consumer, but I doubt it. Whilst the six degree of separation and its shorter variants have been well documented for human relationships there will be a day when the nth degrees of separation are measurable for a wider range of objects. The implications are significant: for some it will place an increased value on the notion of the 'new'; others will want to play up the reused or upcycled ; there will be a shift from our current idea of what constitutes 'ownership'. Bear in mind the backdrop to this is the gradual shift from selling a product to selling a product + service + service upgrades. Newness redefined.
Ten+ days on the road. It's time to head home.
Take Away Norms
Jun 09, 2008
Bag of chai and three plastic cups.
Sports Variations
Jun 09, 2008
Hoop not bails.
Motivations for Urban Annotation
Jun 08, 2008
Boundary line for street cricket.
Significant Numbers
Jun 07, 2008
For every culture, an equivilent.
Portion Norms
Jun 07, 2008
Water offered by the bottle for 5 Rupees (0.07 Euro) or one-time stomach full per person for 2 Rupees.
Whether anyone has come up with a business model where the cost of food or drink is subsidised by charging for (inevitable) toilet services?
When Crowds Form
Jun 07, 2008
An adventure playground built around Ahmedabad's 10 Acres shopping mall - including such crowd forming pursuits as climbing a rope ladder. Why as a service designer understanding the cultural nuances of how crowd's form it might interest you.
Tasks, Hands
Jun 06, 2008
Now try that form of multi-tasking with a touch screen device.
Contextual Understanding
Jun 05, 2008
Homeward bound and one of our local crew ad-hocs his way along the train. Me? Just along for the ride. And yeah, we're in the upper deck seating until something came available at ground level.
Mobile device and service designers are often asked to consider commuting as a prime use case - to what extent does commuting differ around the world? For example for Mobile TV in South Korea - check out slide 32 onwards in the presentation below for a breakdown of contextual factors affecting adoption for commuting in Seoul.
Rewards and Learning Curves
Jun 05, 2008
Passengers of the Ahmedabad to Mumbai train getting to grips with the the highly intuitive and instantly gratifying photo browse on the iPod Touch/iPhone. For every product or service - what level of gratification is achieved in the first 5 seconds of use? What is the learning curve for more complex features? The only down side in this rosy situation - the interest in the product and the need to maintain a bright display soon killed the battery.
One of the questions we've been trying to get my head around this past week has been the extent that rural populations i.e. much of India, have an awareness of different types of technology and services. Without going into what we've learned fair to say it challenged our assumptions.
By the way, the gent in the top photo was using a stylus to navigate his own (smart) phone prior to handing him this piece of fruit.
Custom? Efficiency?
Jun 05, 2008
Customisation of this grain weighing station weighing machine. Whether customisation is desirable or not and to whom? Sort of related: presenting prices with a flourish in this Tokyo snowboard gear shop.
Body Scars
Jun 05, 2008
The extent that wearables and embedded technologies will find a natural home in (sub) cultures that already include these practices. How does this related to this photo? Check out the ears. Click on photo to enlarge.
Today's Commute
Jun 05, 2008
The journey to today's office is a little saltier than usual, as the extended team heads out and spreads out for rural interviews++. Our eight-strong team silhouetted on a commuter train trundling out of Ahmedabad
Temperatures nudging the high forties.
Familarity, Protection, Comfort, Acceptability
Jun 05, 2008
Faith, Location, Belief
Jun 05, 2008
Three complimentary cultural artifacts on the wrist of one of our research crew.
New Media
Jun 04, 2008
Poison Packaging Norms
Jun 04, 2008
What Wears Out First
Jun 04, 2008
The availability of dust/dirt free flat surfaces affecting whether laptop user's are likely to use an alternative input device, such as - say, a mouse. Cultural differences in preferences of input accessories and how this affects wear and tear on the main device?
Ad-hoccing in Ahmedabad.
Text, Aligned
Jun 03, 2008
The practice of using guidelines to write signs in Hindi compared to say Japanese or American English.
A Hotter Cup
Jun 03, 2008
Use of foil in Ahmedabad (above) - I suspect to reduce the risk of spillage on the rough and ready local roads - and a plugged spoon in Tokyo (below).
Clothes, Pegged, Pegless
Jun 02, 2008
Clothes washing services on the banks of the River Sabarmati, and a pegless way of hanging.
Hardly unique I'm told. Must get out more.
Collective Sighs
Jun 02, 2008
A late night visit to the airport.
Equipment released a few hours before our first interviews start. Time for bed.
Search Strings
Jun 02, 2008
A water gauge on the banks of the easily flooded River Sabarmati.
In a world of improving image recognition and augmented image manipulation (and the widespread adoption of personal devices through which it's practical to augment) - the water scale is a search string waiting to happen. A simple and contextually relevant way to discover media - be it photos, video, newspaper headlines related to the water at different levels.
Extrapolate for every recognisable form in the cityscape. Evolve the quality and modes of interaction over time.
And when the practice of object manipulable search heads towards mainstream - how does it change the way that the city is both measured, notated? The blurring of the digital and physical.
Textures of the Court
Jun 01, 2008
Death by Paper, Weight
Jun 01, 2008
A daunting foray into the Indian legal system in the form of the Bhadra Session Court. Our goal? To obtain the documents required to prise our equipment from Ahmedabad airport customs.
Dismounting the auto-rickshaw we pass through a narrow stone gateway that opens out into a courtyard dominated by a huge banyan tree that shelters and smothers the assembled practitioners of the court and ultimately most visitors of this legal outpost. A stern looking gent, the only person present wearing a full western style suit sits with his back to the tree, arms resting on a desk. I follow our local fixer through a moat of parked mopeds - drawn in part by the pull of his authority and in part by the need to start somewhere with someone and he being as good a place as any. Explaining our predicament – he introduces himself as an advocate and his nonchalant grimace turns to a nonchalant smile.
The courtyard is a feast of sights of sounds – worthy of more than a mere bit part in our field study: layers upon layers of signs advertise legal services; crows squawking overhead only to be overruled by the whine of a distant rickshaw; the chai seller announcing his trade by tapping a handful of saucers with a cup; typewriter’s perched on suitcases bearing the languages that are proffered - mostly Gujarati and English. The small grey suitcases serve the cross-legged typists well – being of the right size and sturdiness to support the light use of a heavy typewriter. Clack, clack, clack, ting. The 'desk' brings back memories of our field study in Ghana where a luggage shop displayed a row of suitcases - it took a few home visits to confirm that the luggage was indeed largely used in the home as furniture – a relatively robust cupboard, certainly cheap and, should the reason arise - portable.
One of the trick's to what we do is about having just enough process to be able to get the job done (in the worst case scenario without screwing up) and not so much that it takes the team's energies away from more interesting pursuits. It's fair to say that the Indian legal system is process-heavy: every little thing handled by a different person; everything in duplicate or triplicate; stamps that are not valid without counter-stamps. Today, the advocate is our homeboy and barriers melt away.
If technology is everything that was invented after you were born, then technologies that have been superseded are historical artifacts. Except here in this time warp of a courtyard – where the ancient typewriter continues to be nothing less than a computer with a built in printer and an unlimited power supply. Oh, and it sings with a clack, clack-clack, clack, ting.
Kid Koala, eat your heart out.
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