November 2008 Archives
How We Ward off Evil
Nov 28, 2008
From our research in Mumbai.
FiveDollarComparison:
Nov 27, 2008
They might look like bits of paper but today's fivedollarcomparisons represent hope/luck/irony*, the right to use public transport at some point in time, and social cohesion/reward..
From top to bottom: 13 prize draw tickets at the Llandeilo Graban Fete, Wales (photos by Sarahil) versus five subway trips in Seoul, South Korea (Raphael) versus a single five dollar bill used for tips on a night out (thehawaiianterrorist101).
Participate here.
* Irony? Thirteen tickets in a lucky draw...
Contextual Advertising II
Nov 27, 2008
Similar in spirit to this in Venice Beach.
Contextual Advertising I
Nov 27, 2008
Why has this form of advertising has made its way outside the phone booth in Japan but less so elsewhere?
More sex here. Yeah you just had to look didn't you.
Vertical Not Horizontal
Nov 27, 2008
For every city the cost of building up, out or down. The point at which truly vertical parking lots like this one make economic sense.
Custom
Nov 27, 2008
This office cleaning gent with custom hose-handled boxes cycling between jobs.
This morning I made my once-yearly pilgrimage to an Akasaka clinic for a comprehensive health check-up, a ritual that highlights the best and the best quirks of living in Japan everything from the colour tones of the clinic - muted greens and blues; to the rhythm of the nurses calling out instructions in Japanese for each of the activities "please turn left, breath-in, hold, swallow, pinch, press, suck, ..." to the genuinely enthusiastic waving goodbye from the slightly flirty receptionists who've just handed me a lunch voucher for a nearby cafe - and a couple of laxatives. Not an ironic bone in their body, bless 'em. Expecting a fliud afternoon work schedule
Challenging Service Assumptions
Nov 26, 2008
What does it take to offer a service? What are the expectations of your current and would-be future clients?
A camera-less photo booth from Brazil above and the essence of a Ho Chi Minh City petrol station below.
For any service strip away the non-essential elements or conversely remove the core to explore the opportunities it creates. For every design process a mindset, an ability to see.
Archives can be beautiful things, especially at the dawn of a new day.
Tenderness in Public Signage
Nov 25, 2008
First four - pleasantly nuanced.
Extenuating Behaviours
Nov 24, 2008
Stationary sk8er from Shinjuku above, and Sangenjaya below.
An, ahem, extension of the research detailed in The Body Has a Mind of Its Own - that point at which we move beyond thinking of objects as mere objects.
Bank holiday here in Japan, and a Shimo Kita beckons.
Pocketable Letraset
Nov 24, 2008
Ticket machine at the Shinjuku park entrance 'prints' a time stamp by magnetising part of the card surface. Nice enough in that the card can be re-re-re-used, but technological overkill in that visitors walk a few meters to give the ticket up at the gate.
For every notate-able surface the ease of writing, wiping, rewriting.
For every situation just a little too much technology.
Delivery, Construction Norms
Nov 24, 2008
Shanghai on a steamed up lens.
Micro Payments
Nov 24, 2008
The cost of inflating your own tire, the manner of payment - a coin thrown into the tub of water used to check where the air is escaping from.
Contexts in which it might be considered petty to ask for small amounts of payment, and the social ways to make the exchange of money more palatable.
Related: ever smaller units of goods in Brazil and India.
I Admire Your Energy
Nov 21, 2008
Take a look around your desk - you've probably got a charger or two sitting there all day, everyday plugged into a power socket. You charge your phone in for an hour or two each and every day to top up but that's probably it. Most phone chargers draw power when not in use, and that some chargers draw considerably more power than others. Around two thirds of energy consumed by owning a mobile phone is lost in this way - it's obviously something that all manufacturers can improve on. One step in the right direction is in giving consumers clear and informed choices about what it is they are buying, and allowing them to vote with their wallet.
What about energy use on the phone itself? Turning down the back light can save 15%, and reducing the frequency that your phone checks whether new email has arrived can save another 10 - 15% or power. The cost of 24/7 connectivity eh? Those of you more inclined to hack can try out the Energy Profiler that calculates in real time how much power each feature on your (Symbian) phone uses.
Photos from Washington DC, and road testing the Zero Waste charger (Warning link goes to corporate fanboi cheer leading site - if anyone can point me to a better video source?).
Related: Mobile phone without connectivity as standard?
FiveDollarComparison: Safe Delivery
Nov 20, 2008
Today's fivedollarcomparisons: delivery of (priceless) pieces of art to a nearby gallery in Seoul (photo by Ron Saunders) versus delivery of a relieved tourist on a one way burro ride to the east crater lake Laguna del Quiotao, Equador (Xona808) versus delivery of a human being - a taxi ride within the city limits with an English driver in Kabul - a city with a high degree of kidnap paranoia (your's truly).
Want to participate? Uploading is easy here.
Voice Search: New Sounds in the City
Nov 20, 2008
Want to know what you sound like to others? Cup your hand around your ear and speak. To what extent does knowing what you sound like change what you decide to say?
Been playing around with the new glimpse-the-future Google voice search application for the iPhone, that copes with my Caucasian-male-non-Californian voice with an unnerving mixture of precision and humour. Yeah, voice search has been around for a while - just not quite so accessible.
How do the things that people search for using voice differ from those that are typed in - not only in terms of complexity but in terms of content? It's one thing to type "nearest hostess bar European ending", "full back waxing discount voucher" or "cash in a hurry" but another to say it out loud. You might think that mainstream voice search will be restricted to places where you have a degree of privacy, like say a car or home - but there are a number of reasons why that's not going to be the case: the first is that some of the world's 800+million illiterate people voice is the enabler - it opens up a new window to the world; for some voice will be the dominant and preferred way of searching in a particular context and this preferred way will 'leak" into other contexts. There is a cognitive cost to switching modalities e.g. typing to mouse, touch to voice - which might be summed up as "it feels right" even if socially it's not the kind of behaviour you like to see in other people or expect from yourself. But the main reason why you're going to see voice search finding it's way into the background noise on our streets, playgrounds, cafes and waiting rooms is that it ushers in a whole new way of projecting to people in proximity our aspirations and intent whether it's "Porsche car rental LAX", "yoga retreat in Hokkaido" or "Nike 2010's".
What happens to the recorded search terms? A massive dataset will be needed to improve the service, and will Google (now or in the future) forgo the advertising opportunities that will come from archiving the oral you? There are many ways for those recordings to make their way into the public domain: through surreptitious 3rd party applications on your device; recording the overheard; or simply on the (personal) assumption that everything that passes through the network is monitored by something or someone - the only question is whom, and their intent now and in the future.
In our orally enriched future perfect what new services does a lifetimes worth of voice searches enable? Well for one, that phone call you just had informing you of a new bar opening around the corner sounded just like your ex-girlfriend right? Uncanny that. What message would be best delivered by what voices from your past? From our past?
Can you hear me now? Do you have a choice?
Indeed.
Manga themed photos? There are taboos associated with a suited salarimen reading manga on the train, but it is far less of a problem when the manga is consumed on the mobile phone. For every medium, different levels of public display.
FiveDollarComparison: Live/Dead Meat
Nov 19, 2008
Today's five dollar comparisons: a live chicken from Kabale (photo by Ben Konrath), Uganda versus 228g of Mortadella ham from Rio de Janeiro (William Yau) versus Spicy Duck Necks from Shanghai Airport (ED209uk).
The ham slices are eating at a leisurely pace, the live chicken is as much as can be eaten by a local family in one sitting - a lack of refrigeration for this family in Kabale means that any food left overnight would go off by the morning, and spicy duck necks are souvineers with little likelihood of ever being eaten. Food for thought, eh?
Want to participate? Uploading is easy here.
The Five Dollar Comparison
Nov 19, 2008Photos above taken from the fivedollarcomparson.org site - they make more sense with the notes posted here
You're on your way to meet up with friends and only realise after 5 minutes that you've left your mobile phone at home - what do you do? If you're like me you mutter a curse under your breath, retrace your steps and retrieve your phone. But what the cost of obtaining a new phone was radically different than today, what if you could pick up a new phone at the convenience store or from a vending machine for only $5 - and painlessly sync your contacts and other personal data from the network? Now what would you do?
Today over half the world's population has a mobile phone, and for the remaining 3.3 billion cost is the primary barrier to personal ownership. Advances in technology and manufacturing allow us to imagine a world where the price of a mobile phone is significantly lower than today, and the spread of low cost personal connectivity will continue to have a profound impact on the world around us: maybe for you it becomes a device that is disposable on a whim; whereas for someone else it provides access to a personal bank account for the first time.
To help us understand relative value of things and explore the consequences of that value my colleagues plus plus have started by asking a simple question: what can you buy for the equivilent of five dollars?. We've been sharing our photos online at fivedollarcomparison.org and now we invite you do to the same. It's easy - instructions for uploading your own photos are here.
The photo above? One of a kind auto-rickshaw mud flaps from our recent Ahmedabad study priced at only 250 rupees - five dollars.
And given the sensitivity of the subject matter - a reminder that all the material on Future Perfect is a personal opinion, bears no relation to actual products or services from my employer.
The Status of What?
Nov 18, 2008
Sitting in a café last week appreciating an hour without a set agenda and watching the Shanghai pedestrian traffic drift by. On two separate occasions women walk by with iPhone earbuds pressed into each ear whilst engaged in conversation with friends. Although it's impossible for the mere observer to know whether at that moment they were listening to music it's reasonable to assume from how the ear buds were worn, that their purpose was as a tool to project identity - "I can afford an Apple product therefore I am".
Discussions about the use of the white iPod earbuds as status symbols has been around since the iPod was first introduced (although I've been waiting for the discussion to catch up with the opposite - for some situations where iPods are already mainstream and for audio aficionados the white 'buds are considered pretty passé). It's also recognised that owning the earbuds is a shortcut into the world of everything Apple but is separate from whether you actually own an iPod - the equivalent of having a Porsche keyring but driving a Ford Mondeo. As long as you don't need to handle the device no-one is going to know whether you actually own one - which helps explain why the sales of iPod earbuds in China (reportedly) massively outstrips the sales of devices. What's intriguing about this public status-display that as white 'buds become more mainstream in China whether actual iPod owners feel the need to show or handle the actual device at critical junctures. Thought for today: the role that design e.g. carrying styles or forcing interaction can play in supporting the desire to reveal ownership and patterns of use, particularly as devices shrink and as more of the experience is wrapped up in the service offering.
The re-occurring theme form last last week was cultural interpretation. Whether, how and within what time frame Shanghai can become a global trend setter beyond its own borders. A topic for another day.
Drawing Power
Nov 17, 2008
Recharging an electric scooter in Shanghai, with power cable dangled from home window to tree to scooter. Whilst I've never come across any examples using scooters - whether, and in what contexts its OK to hi-jack someone else's power? And whether you would get away with it?
The benefits/drawbacks of a proprietary charging socket - this takes a standard Chinese 2-pin. (Sinophiles will no-doubt be spluttering into their Monday morning congee - there is of course nothing standard about Chinese power sockets). Thought for today: negative network effects such as the ease at which one can steal power.
Support for Anti-Social Behaviours
Nov 16, 2008
Packaging is nice enough - but more interesting this that this is offered in a cafe. In fifteen years time this'll be the social equivilent as finding a stack of sterile needles and tourniquets in your local bar.
Tokyo Graph
Nov 16, 2008
Ghetto + Tokyo = Fail.
Urban Printers
Nov 15, 2008
Tokyo ticket machine used to print out a travel card travel history. For the most part humans like the physical - even if once they have a physical copy they decide to dispose of it shortly thereafter. If you live in the city lo-fi printers are everywhere - from ticketing machines to ATM's to cash registers - and they're becoming smaller to the point of being pocketable. They're also increasingly connected - which creates a whole world of service design and billing options.
Thought for today on this balmy Tokyo Saturday morning - our ever increasing options to convert the digital to the physical.
Status Symbol
Nov 15, 2008
In many cultures novice drivers are required to carry a 'learner sign' - here in Japan this extends to elderly drivers who are require to display and have the unique sticker, above.
As we slide towards 'displaying' or broadcasting digital information there is scope to display a far wider range of information. What if you knew that the driver in front hasn't had a (reported) accident in the last 40 years? Or that the vehicle in front was being driven by a teen listening to loud music? And you knew he'd just come off playing Mario Kart for the last 8 hours? Or of course that he wanted you to think that?
Waking up a midnight is a bad start to the weekend.
Media Studies
Nov 13, 2008
On the wrong side of the lens unfortunately.
Private Actions in Public Spaces
Nov 12, 2008
She takes the credit card inserts it into the mobile terminal and hand extended, turns her head away. It's time to enter a PIN number. The extent to which mobility - in this case the mobile payment terminal, creates new tensions between stuff we did in (relative) privacy versus what we're expected (by the designer's of the system) to do in public.
Tracking Tasks
Nov 12, 2008
Postures of Use
Nov 12, 2008
Natural stacks and use in Jeju.
Closer Than You Think
Nov 12, 2008
Touch screens in NYC taxi above Shanghai taxi below . Want to see the future of public displays? Head to South Korea.
Everything Just in Time
Nov 12, 2008
Step into taxi, hand driver the phone, have a local friend give directions. Today's ability to location shift questions and answers versus tomorrows ability to tag and then home in on a destination. We're close, but not quite there yet.
Multimodal
Nov 11, 2008
Geographically Centered
Nov 11, 2008
Objects in the hotel room that provide a locational center of gravity, a greater sense that you're here and not somewhere else: Chinese Checkers; the local variant of Monopoly - "advance to Hanyang, if you pass go collect 2,000 Yuan"; and a book of quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung - "to criticize the people's shortcomings is necessary... but to do so we must truly take the stand of the people and speak out of whole-hearted eagers to protect and educate them". Indeed.
Weaving For Profit and Pleasure
Nov 11, 2008
There's no choice but to sit back and relax when your driver weaves in and out of airport to city traffic with skills obviously learned from GTA. Hello again Shanghai.
Late night check in, early morning start.
Disconnected We Stand
Nov 10, 2008
Following on from this post on cell phone jammers, colleague and fellow observer Fumiko Ichikawa has a write up of plans for a bank in Japan to stop cell phone signals near ATM machines in order to reduce the impact of cell phone related crimes. A write up here.
Shanghaid
Nov 10, 2008
Night flight and a couple of days in Shanghai this week. Heaven is only one hour's time difference and a blitz of research ahead.
The Power of (Not) Recording Video
Nov 10, 2008
The video for the Future Social talk at LIFT Asia can now be uploaded from here with accompanying notes and presentation here.
You're hosting an event and invite a number of so-called experts to speak, the talks are recorded and within a month are distributed on the internet.
It makes sense - videoing what the speakers say opens the talk up from the 80 people in the room to a potential audience of millions, and even if only a couple of dozen bother to watch its a couple of dozen more would have otherwise. After a few events the video archive grows and the talks become part of the conference/school/organisation/host's brand - the process of choosing whom to invite and what parts of what talks to show reflects the community they hope to build.
Sometimes talks are videoed for internal distribution only - it makes sense particularly when the organisation is large and geographically spread - properly archived the recording can become part of it's collective memory. It's not a bad thing - every organisation even those darlings of the search world suffer from problems with hand-eye co-ordination short term memory loss - there's no such thing as the perfect flow of information. A recording can allow ideas to linger and sometimes spread.
From recent experience (and this is not a dig at the excellently run LIFT Conference, above) the prevailing attitude of event hosts is that the talks will by default be recorded - something that puts the average speaker in a dilemma. With a few exceptions most public presentations are a work in progress an opportunity to articulate ideas and with instant feedback from the audience, figure out what works and what doesn't. Questions (and the occasional projectile) from the audience highlight what need refining and suggests additional material to be included. Recording every talk is like publishing every draft or iteration of that paper/report/design and expecting people to take away the salient points and to tune into the final version, when in reality they'll have moved on. In an information overload world you only get one shot at engaging, and with the notable exception of gonzo, you can't afford to blow it.
Some so-called experts object to recordings because the relative scarcity of their material helps them maintain demand (take a look at the research/presentations whether and how they distribute online as one indicator of whether they're milking limited ideas for all they are worth). Some are torn between wanting to communicate a message but wanting to maintain a degree of anonymity. For some - every time you press a record button it eats a little of their soul. But mostly its just that not everything is record-worthy.
There's a simple solution, ask in advance, expect no for an answer.
Growth
Nov 10, 2008
Practice Mats
Nov 10, 2008
Money changer, Jeju Airport.
Design Competition: A Future Perfected
Nov 08, 2008
If you (or your class) enjoy a design challenge then this might be for you...
Like an unruly child with overgrown hair and tourettes Future Perfect is growing up to be a tad unmanageable - after 3 years and ~2,000 posts the site is now in need of a hair cut and a gentle guiding hand. The 45mm alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
I'm need help with a site redesign that balances the immediacy of regular updates with content from the considerable archives, all wrapped up in a elegant, future-quirky and efficient design. Whomever takes this on will naturally get access to the site analytics - understanding current usage will be key.
This isn't a paid commission, but there's a decent bottle of sake and not a little appreciation to be had. Think you have what it takes? Send an email to ping at janchipchase dot com to start that conversation.
Ta to the change agent.
Tasks & Space
Nov 08, 2008
Tokyo subway above, Hong Kong urinals below.
Good to be home.
Grounded
Nov 06, 2008
24 hours in the bruised apple give or take. The next 14 hours on a plane to catch up with emails and sleep and personal space. Only 4 more days work travel before the end of the year - sometimes you need to have your feet on the ground to have your feet on the ground, right? Much to do, so little time.
Thanks all for helping make the most of very limited time here, appreciated.
Personality Cults
Nov 06, 2008
Speciality Measures
Nov 06, 2008
For measuring arm diameter - at the offices of UNICEF. A list of their (mobile) initiatives can be found here.
Institutionalising Gratuities
Nov 06, 2008
The effect of digitising the gratuity process for taxi drivers - bearing in mind the everyday bribery practices. Passengers are offered a set of three pre-defined gratuity levels to select, or they can input their own.
Tools for Life
Nov 04, 2008
Related to yesterday's Human Development Forum session at the World Bank: my employer is now offering Life Tools targeted at non-urban/rural consumers in emerging markets - it offers consumers price and availability data on seeds, fertilizer and pesticides, and education services encompassing language lessons and general knowledge questions (would have mentioned it directly, but it was freshly launched in India today). To some extent it overlaps/competes with the Tradenet service in Africa - both are driven by SMS, although Life Tools includes a pre-installed Java application on the phone. Ultimately the success or failure of the market-prices service will depend on collecting timely and reliable information from the field, a non-trivial task.
Photo above of the application in action, being demoed by Jawahar Kanjilal the global head of emerging market services on a recent trip to Espoo.
Spent the last few hours wandering around a pre-dawn election day DC. The streets are quiet and the snipers (on the Whitehouse rooftop) seem relaxed. Ah, democracy in action.
Service Clustering
Nov 04, 2008
A litter bin and ashtray on this DC street. But where are the spittoons, junkie needle drop boxes and squat toilets? The benchmark of service clustering in this Inglewood strip mall, below.
The appropriate/optimal clustering of services becomes more all the more interesting as they are less bound to a specific space, more autonomous. Think relational, dynamic clustering.
Which may sometimes lead to an arms race.
Boundaries of Acceptable Use
Nov 04, 2008
Litter box limited to the disposal of (police dog, K-9 unit) litter.
Contextual Advertising
Nov 04, 2008
Post-its in the rental - works well in a country where people actually use the rear-view mirror. But would it work in countries where the driver is only 'responsible' for what lies ahead and the rear-view mirror is little more than a shrine to the gods of the road?
Reassurance Behaviours
Nov 04, 2008
How you know whether something is really, absolutely working as planned?
And if you're offering a service - how to communicate to suspicious customers that you are actually in a position to offer that service? Hand over a DC toaster above and light bulbs on the front of a mobile phone recharging stall in Kabul.
Prayer Notes
Nov 04, 2008
So much hope and fear in one little note.
There's something quite compelling about the notes left for the parking meter wardens, it's almost as if they're lottery tickets.
DC Graph
Nov 04, 2008
Object Notation
Nov 04, 2008
The cleaning staff of the Lombardy Hotel notate rooms where the guests have already checked out by wedging newspapers in the door.
Tags (Motivations for)
Nov 04, 2008
From SFO.
Road Testing
Nov 04, 2008
Can You Spare A Quarter?
Nov 03, 2008
What's in a phrase? What goes through your mind when someone approaches you, cap in hand with those words - "can you spare a quarter?"
On the freeway into DC from Dulles, this satnav using vehicle had little option but to pass through and un-manned toll booth with 50 cents being the cost of passing through. Except that this driver has 35 cents and not a penny more. The road ahead is open give or take a red light and a severe tire damage grill - no idea if jumping a red light triggers it or not but not in a position to risk it. Meanwhile the road behind is stacking up with restless vehicles waiting to pass through. The only option is to step out and go car-door to car-door asking for a quarter. Which is inherently awkward, but is also a system design choice - an inherent part of the experience of this toll both.
It looks like quarter, but is in fact a key.
You Are a Walking Advertorial
Nov 03, 2008
The lady at the counter gives an upgrade with a smile and nary a request for a credit card - legroom weighs the odds of sleeping in my favour, a bonus to an otherwise drab Sunday spent flying from LA to DC.
The gent sitting next to me is an advert for high risk heart disease - the last passenger to rush aboard the plane, snarling at fellow passengers as he marches the isle trying to find space for his luggage, squeezing his plump frame into seat 8E before proceeding to wolf down 2 buttery croissants. It's a compelling enough everyday drama for the stewardess to raise her seen-it-all-honey eyebrows, and its compelling enough for us to want to know more. If you're in the business of pushing ads this is obviously an opportunity to place your product.
Consider the ease at which today you can create a personal home page and host advertising to make a few cents. Now take that experience and apply to the physical world, apply it to you. In a future perfect world where everything and everyone can be digitally tagged and everyone has the tools to filter and read those tags (everything and) everyone around us is an advertisement for something whether it's a lifestyle or as in this case, a lifestyle to avoid. But why would anyone bother to tune in to the "you" show? What makes you so compelling?
You thought that a system that auctions keywords to search terms was smart - it was after all smart enough to create and cement a multi-billion dollar search/online-ad monopoly. But wait until this advertising extends into the digitally tagged physical world - keywords matched with people and objects and events all in real time. A constant wave of auctions matching ads to micro-events and an army of people ready to both take on the micro-paid assignment and become the interactive human billboard.
Is that couple arguing or just a preamble to pitching marriage guidance services? Is the plump gent that just squeezed into seat 8E genuinely stressed and late or simply trying to make a few extra cents as a walking, event-contextual advertorial pushing the merits of a door to door limo service? - "Don't be like me, sign up for 100% guaranteed stress free limo services".
Ah, but people will filter out the noise won't they? But of course.
Not. This assumes that the noise can be separated from the signal. And don't forget that the heavily subsidised tools that we use to navigate and filter the world around us have to find some way of clawing back that subsidy.
Look on the bright side. We have the potential to become micro-celebrities in our very own day time infomercial. And more importantly we get to define the future through the choices we make today.
Organic / Inorganic Over Time
Nov 03, 2008
A Fear of Waking Up
Nov 03, 2008
Life rotates around fixed moments, events and appointments that for one reason or another cannot be shifted - whether it's giving birth, dropping the kids at school or, more humbly attending a session at a conference. Preparation for that moment can range from a lifetime's work, to months to minutes to not a thought.
For the jet lagged traveler (hei) or sleep deprived parent (hello) the challenge is to be sufficiently fit for duty when that moment comes, ideally more than that but if it's less than that there are consequences, people are affected. The challenge is that a restful night's sleep is not always easy to come by when the mind is turning over (for the sake or argument) family pressures, uncertainty at work, the constant rumble of thunder and occasional lightning of the financial crisis or merely a bit of turbulence and the ping of a fasten seat belt sign.
At some point exhaustion kicks in, and sleep carries you on a journey that will leave you refreshed for the next day. Or so your mind would have you believe - I'm now wide awake and the clock says 9.28. Except that it's PM not AM, and that there's a night devoid of sleep and meaning ahead.
Been playing time-zone bingo this past month and this week at least, losing badly. It's not so much a fear of waking up, but the implications of waking up 12 hours early.
» About
» Essays
» Presentations & Downloads
» Media
Stay In Touch:
» Follow Jan on Twitter
» Follow Future Perfect on Twitter
» Facebook | LinkedIn
» Dopplr
Browse archives by:
» Date
» Keyword
» Location 324