July 2009 Archives
Today's Office: Oxygen for Ideas
Jul 31, 2009
We've not been issued with oxygen masks, and despite signing a high-altitude waiver form there is no real pending sense of threat. In fact the journey is smooth enough to type up field notes - somewhat surprising given that we're currently a smidgen higher than 4200 meters, gaining altitude and traveling at a steady 93km per hour. The only audio annoyance is the very occasional Chinese pop song played over the tannoy, something that is easily blocked out by shutting the compartment door. Glancing out the window reveals a vista of the Tibetan plateau that is both stunning and monotonous - we're approximately half way through a 36 hour train journey that will eventually terminate in Lhasa.
Every field study needs time for reflection, beyond the daily debriefs and meal time chats - so after 12 days intensive data gathering in Shanghai and Xi'an a bit of space was called for, tickets and travel permits obtained. Not that it's been plain sailing: going through touts for the tickets aligned well with our study into [redacted] but it also meant we couldn't be sure if we would make the journey standing, would have to blag space in the conductor's sleeper carriage, or would have a compartment of our own until we boarded. It is, thankfully, the latter - although admittedly everybody in the crew was up for the former.
We did have an option to use the journey to gather more data: ~800 people in an enclosed space for 36 hours creates a lot of interview openings, but at this point we don't need more stimulus material -the past days have taken us on early morning jaunts with 100's of manual labourers jostling to be part of the Chinese economic miracle; afternoons spent in the company of cosmopolitan young professionals; and late, late nights coaxing stories out of are-you-really-old-enough-to-work-here KTV hostesses. Business as usual then. Or not - may we live in interesting times.
So how good is a long distance train ride for the team to discuss the research? Better than good actually: a comfortable compartment with 4 bunks puts the team in close-enough (but not too close) proximity with each other and the data; limited distractions from on-demand internet access; the aforementioned vista for middle distance thinking; and our two secret weapons: a power extension cable and 8 cup cafétiere with a kilo of freshly ground coffee - this being China we have an unlimited supply of hot water.
Had we wanted to hustle for money we could have made a killing from the double whammy of caffeine and internet deprived tourists by opening (one of the worlds highest moving non-airborne etc?) internet cafés - four Macs connected to China Mobile data services via an N97 running JoikuSpot. Having an unlimited [cough] work [cough, cough] data plan doesn't hurt.
New dawn rising, a carriage stirs, it's time to take my typing to the dining car.
Social Form
Jul 30, 2009
Beautiful street scene with strong cultural assumptions about what makes for a viable seat, what activities can take place on the street, use of public spaces
It's inherently social. Why don't you see this in your neighbourhood?
Stud Norms
Jul 26, 2009
Objects that Build Trust
Jul 26, 2009
Pills (but not thrills, unfortunately) sold in this rural Shaanxi street market. Note the role of the mat in creating a viable 'street pharmacy' complete with white-coated, stethoscoped 'doctor'. Trust? You got far to little of it.
Objects Between Use
Jul 26, 2009
A row of hot water/tea canisters for the work crew of this Xi'an petrol/gas station. Heat wise the polar opposite of this.
Lets Pretend
Jul 26, 2009
Heading off into rural Shaanxi Province for a round of interviews and farm visits - today's driver pulls his seatbelt across his chest but stops short of clicking in. Yeah - a scene from a thousand car journeys, but this being China a relatively novel experience.
To what extent is what you do in your car a private affair? Running through the shopping list/daydreaming/listening to music/sexual stimulation/text messaging - there's a line there somewhere its just a matter of where it's drawn. Do your fellow road users/pedestrians have a right to know that you're actively engaged in non-driving activities whilst at the wheel? That you never passed a driving test? That you're high? That you're not wearing a seatbelt?
To what extent could status transparency - your/vehicle's current status available to anyone become the norm - either through legislation or through the desire to self-broadcasting. For a crude rendition imagine a dashboard projected on the outside of the vehicle.
Objects When Not In Use
Jul 26, 2009
Mobile phone resting on the instrument in this Chinese theatre. Quite an evening of research - video to follow.
Today's Office: A Lesson in Street Dynamics
Jul 24, 2009
Navigating the saturday night back from a contextual interview: streets teeming with people, 3 generations hunched around a couple of mahjong tables lit up by bare bulbs; beer flowing; smokes being smoked; and the kind of intensity that comes from a hunched body focussed on the act of eating to the detriment of everything else. It's good to be in Xi'an, good to living in a neighbourhood that operates on such human scale.
Design Details: Blast Doors
Jul 21, 2009
Surprising design detail in this underground car park in the new Fudan University campus: blast doors. Then again the car park itself is a newish design detail - with most students using public transport and/or cycling to class.
Printer Hacks
Jul 21, 2009
An afternoon spent on the back of a motorbike ducking between ad-hoc interviews in the largely immigrant areas of Pudong - took shelter from the intense ~38 degree heat and ducked into a neighbourhood photo studio. The printer hack: external reservoirs attached by tubes to original-but-drilled ink cartridges - on this trip - we've have seen more hacked printer-cartridges than the real deal.
Whilst this kind of hack is generally restricted to cultures where consumers care enough about costs to want to keep seek out an alternative solution and are smart enough to do something about it, in what ways can the Canons and Epsons of the world keep evolving their restricted-use business model?
When will we see printers that analyse ink signatures? What if they gave the ink away for free - and automatically debited accounts per page printed? Or a business model the lifetime's use of what is printed is measured and charged accordingly? That cover sheet that went straight in the bin? That cost you 1 Euro. The memo that went from hand to hand to hand? That one's for free.
Patterns Recognised
Jul 20, 2009 | 2 Comments
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Pattern Recognition presentation/discussion last night - the translator deserves a win-bonus, we ran for 3 hours, by golly. The measure of an audience can be calculated by the quality of the questions - hope I did 'em justice. Slides can be viewed online here - though with the granularity of the material I'd advise downloading the original here and play locally (55MB). Yes they need filesize-optimising - any volunteers?
Time permitting I'll be posting more material on the patterns thread on Future Perfect in the coming weeks just got a couple of field studies to run, heh, meantime take a peek at the following posts on Afghanistan, China and Japan and related research here.
Great walls of fire permitting you can follow me on Twitter here.
Props to the local crew - our first full day of field research down - after all the prep work it's good to be immersed again. Typing this to the sound of Shanghai waking - time to hit the street for a breakfast of steamed buns.
Motivations for Licking / DNA Profiling
Jul 18, 2009
Continuing on today's DNA riff - think of a future perfect of 'dna stamps' that when licked contain all the data needed to look up the sender and auto-complete an address. For every lickable surface, a motivation for licking, a motivation for measuring what was licked.
Mainstreamification of DNA here.
The Mainstreamification of DNA
Jul 17, 2009
$99 buys you, and a whole bunch of other inquisitive people better awareness of their genes with this DNA testing kit from the 23andme. Send a tube of saliva to a testing lab and check out your profile online. With an increasing number of medical and judicial proceedings pulling on DNA data and a continious trickle of whose-the-father paternity testing DNA is slowly but surely moving mainstream. Who'll be the first to take individual's DNA data and mash it up with dating profiles? Nature versus nurture? Bring on the hucksters.
The rise in adoption/use of DNA is particularly interesting because it affects people, families deeply and retrospectively. Your dad for the last 40 years? He's not y'know. (For source stats head over to Measuring paternal discrepancy and its public health consequences by Mark A Bellis et al. - they cite ~0.8% to 30% paternal discrepancy, median 3.7%)
Roll forward 20 years when you can obtain a DNA test for the cost of a packet of gum - hell, it might even come in the form of a stick of "DNA Brand' gum where the consumer is encouraged to spit out and stick after use.
It might even change our perception of lickable surfaces.
Background? The package arrived amidst last minute prepping for six weeks on the road: a trip across China; a week off to, uh, rest; and then over to the Malaysian peninsular. It's good to be back on the road.
In the Public Space, Restricted Access
Jul 17, 2009
For every resource in the public space motivations for, and how to restrict access? What would be the triggers for restricting access to 'universal access' resources? Think the glow of public lighting, emergency response, ...
(Motivations Behind the) Wedding Norms
Jul 13, 2009
Street, wedding, cacophony, 100's of guests, researchers-as-VIPs, fizzy pop, public spectacle, a debt that might well take a life-time to pay off, risk-aversion-strategies. Ahmedabad.
Dog House: HSBC USA
Jul 12, 2009 | 91 Comments
Today many of HSBC customers in the US will receive a letter titled "Important Privacy Choices for Consumers" highlighting 'their rights' and 'their choices' when it comes to privacy. Ironic since the carefully designed letter highlights some of the worst commercial practices when it comes to exploiting their customers private information.
The first issue is that the customer is forced to opt-out of having their personal information shared - the customer needs to take action to protect what is rightfully theirs. Secondly is in the design of the form - the user needs to answer 'no' - as in 'no, please do not share..." - for the skim-reading, half awake customer browsing this form over coffee 'no' means 'not interested', no is something to be declined.
But the key sentence comes in a section marked "Time Sensitive Reply" as follows: "However if we don't hear from you we may share some of your information with affiliated companies and other companies with whom we have contracts to provide products and services." I'm not inherently against sharing personal information for something of value, but this is a choice I get to make. Tarting it up in the name of 'respecting my privacy' is the worst kind of hypocracy. HSBC - clean up your act.
What if every store clerk who asked for your telephone number had to give out their Facebook page? Every company CEO had to pass on their children's location information before selling on their customers? Reciprocity is a powerful principle (and one that we put to good effect when conducting field research). At some point the clerk won't have a choice and neither will the CEO's kids.
Right now we're still (just about) in the big brother stage of evolution - the technologies to meaningfully gather and systematically analyse [data] on a global scale in the hands of the few, but it's rapidly changing. People are carrying the tools to help them by-pass existing power structures whether it's established news-media, record and movie companies, governments. Will our ways of storing and sharing value go the way of the music and movie distribution? If financial intermediaries and institutions like HSBC continue along these lines, you can bank on it.
MJ (The Media Experience) Remembered
Jul 08, 2009
A short essay on the MJ media experience here.
Bangkok does a pretty compelling gridlock. Tokyo skips to the rhythm of subways and cyclists. Los Angeles? It throbs to the thwop-thwop of the news-copters . In LA, when celebrities are involved the network media are the first responders everyone else is playing catch-up.
I happened to be close to the UCLA hospital as the events surrounding Micheal Jackson's death unfolded - it's not easy trying to work at home with 4 news-copters hovering overhead so eventually gave up, cycled a few blocks and shot of a few reels - a few which are posted, along with future perfect thoughts of the media scrum. here, here and here.
Data Capture Redundancy
Jul 08, 2009
Redundancy, quality, over-compensation...
Witness to a Drive By
Jul 08, 2009
All of the drivers passing the media scrum rubbernecked the scene, about 1 in 6 recorded on mobile phones, and the occasional digital camera. What's the future perfect of rubbernecking?
Pattern Recognition
Jul 08, 2009
One for Shanghai dwellers: On the 19th July I'll be giving a talk titled Pattern Recognition on the challenges and opportunities that come from understanding where people, technology and culture collide, and the role of design research in helping to join the dots.
To attend: RSVP panthea dot lee at gmail dot com. Space is strictly limited.
With kind thanks to W&K Shanghai for hosting and for making everything so damn sweet.
Click on flyer to enlarge.
Remote Presence
Jul 07, 2009
A piece of experimental kit for our upcoming field study - a satellite personal tracker that supports simple presence awareness and binary messaging as long as we stay within these parameters. I don't expect the 911 feature to be a lot of use where we're going.
Given that so many mobile phones now have GPS and there are a multitude of location aware applications and platforms to what extent is a dedicated position-revealing device really necessary? Its about convenience: pressing one button once a day says we're alive and we're here. No power issues - it should last for ~1 month's use on two lithium batteries, and no roaming charges after paying subscription. Perhaps most importantly no expectations of a detailed report of how things are going - field studies being busy, all-encompassing energy beasts. Think Twitter, except with four characters or less, no trending topics and no celebrities.
Carrying a tracker is not driven by a desire to reassure colleagues that the field team is safe, but rather its about maintaining a remote presence. Going into the field is disruptive to the working flow - this being one, small way to bridge the gap.
Related field gear here.
Transaction Transparency II
Jul 06, 2009
A more transparent version of this from the Caffe Luxxe (the home of the best cappuccino on the Westside). To what extent does the container affect how we appreciate the money? And the act of tipping?
Tangible Memetics
Jul 06, 2009
The NYT's piece (original behind subscription firewall) tracing the trajectory of the Keep Calm and Carry On tangimeme, including Matt Jones design that was tee-riffed with Howies.
Transaction Transparency
Jul 04, 2009
A tip-jar in our most excellent local pho restaurant - the Vietnamese proprietor takes credit cards but suggests to customers to tip in cash.
As an artifact this tip jar is so stacked with intrigue, playing off numerous cultural and contextual assumptions: whether tipping is socially acceptable; whether it's acceptable to show or hold money; the likely denominations of money that is used to tip and whether those denominations are considered too dirty to display on a counter; whether the amount of money in the jar should be revealed - is a paying customer more or less likely to tip/tip well if the jar is perceived to be empty/full; and particularly transaction transparency - whether the size of the tip can be seen by proprietor as it travels towards the jar, and once it is placed the jar? Is the covered jar an attempt by the Vietnamese proprietor to be particularly sensitive to his (mostly Asian) cliental? - tipping being less prevalent in Asia than the US.
Simply beautiful.
Targeted Signs
Jul 04, 2009
A remarkably detailed 'do not' sign, right down the detailing of the Swiss Army knife. With the ability to identify the person in real time the increasing personalisation of signage, advertising. Or in this future perfect context would taking out a knife bring on the nag-bot?
Unexpected Profit Centers
Jul 04, 2009
Somewhere in Cupertino a bean counter has a little shrine to Visa and MasterCard.
Whilst the iPhone has helped redefine the 'mobile phone' in many positive ways durability isn't one of them. This report by SquareTrade (to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism - they're in the business of selling warrantees) suggests that ~13% of iPhone owners smash the display (21% of iPhone owners reporting accidents, 66% of those were smashed displays).
Given the number of mobile phones bought on credit card, and that many purchases are covered by the credit card insurance to what extent are the major credit card companies unexpectedly subsidising the cost of fixing displays? What is the sum of (13.7 million iPhones sold / ~13% displays smashed / % of credit card purchasers who have insurance and claim x ~$300 repair costs)?
To be fair every phone manufacturer's products break - the field failure rate is part of their profit/loss equation. Having a o% accidental breakage for a mobile phone would likely mean that the device is over-designed - that most users are paying for physical protection they don't need. And of course credit card companies offer insurance safe in the knowledge that the psychological security increases the likelihood that a credit card will be used in any given situation, which in turn increases their profits. But then every so often comes a product where the norms shift - where the claimable accident rate is that much higher than the industry norm - enter iPhone stage left.
But don't feel sad for the credit card companies - they'll be sure to pass the costs along to all their customers. For every business model, externalities - the only question is who pays.
Photo? A friends 3 day old, still-covered-by-credit-card-insurance iPhone.
Portion Control
Jul 04, 2009
This Tork Xpressnap dispenser extolls the virtues of delivering single servings of napkins 'one napkin at a time, every time' - their website guarantees 25% less napkin use.
Bringing it over to digital - what is the cost of shifting bits? In what contexts is it important to educate content consumers to shift less bits. How can we help them consume more relevant bits?
Upcoming Attractions
Jul 02, 2009
A thriplet of speaking engagement that should enthrall and excite in equal measure:
Pattern Recognition 19th July, Shanghai. On the challenges of exploring patterns in human behaviour, culture, society and technology and the art of pulling something of value out of where they all collide. Interested? Follow @janchip for the venue announcement. Very limited seating.
Designing for Illiteracy at the Mobile Money Transfer Conference in Dubai. October 26/27th. An update to this original essay and presentation based on the rampant spread/adoption of mobile technologies around the world. Will also co-host a workshop on the same subject with Olga Morawczynski
The End of The ... As We Know It October 2/3rd Providence Rhode Island at the A Better World By Design conference. The full list of, way more talented speakers here (I assume they'll update my bio at some point).
Sometimes you want the elephant and sometimes you don't - the trick is in knowing what time this is. Photos from Mumbai.
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