Gender Segregation, Service Opportunity

Gender segregated train carriage in Tokyo.

The demand for women-only carriages driven by: a desire for comfort which relates to; physiological gender differences; the dis-proportionate affect of hyper-crowded Tokyo carriages on women during rush hour compared to men (men tend to have smaller, less senstive breasts, differently shaped butts); and the exploitation of the commuting conditions by (relatively) occassional male passenger to sexually harrass female passengers.

During peak hours the train carriage is female only. To what extent does segregation currently support targetted advertising and services? How will this evolve as the technologies to support more flexible content mature - electronic signage e.g. e-ink and devices like mobile phones? How might this affect the female commuters that decide not to use this carriage during these times?

Another example of commuting segration? Tehran.

Writing from Tokyo | April 12, 2007 | Permalink

Indeed

Solicitor's office, London.

Writing from Tokyo | April 11, 2007 | Permalink

Election Bias

Tokyo became that little bit noisier today - with loud-speaker wielding polititions entrenched outside train stations extolling would-be voters to could-you vote for them. With the speed at which hurried commuters approach the station and decend into relative calm of the Tokyo rush hour it is doubtful they hear more than a few words of the candidates message. So if the message is not the message what is? The presence of the politition?

Elections billboard's such as this from sakuraesque Naka Meguro have sprung up in every neighbourhood - giving the candidates an opportunity to enter the consciousness of the electorate. Personality and image aside how might voting patterns be influenced by the design of the board: spatial positioning such as left or right as a reflection of political persuasion; loyalties suggested by the clustering of candidates in relation to one another; numbers each candidate is assigned; the number of slots for candidates as a reflection of a democratic society; the actual (low) number of candidates as a reflection of engagement with the democratic process?

The use of left/center/right to describe political affiliations is enough in common in Europe. But what analogies are in use elsewhere?

Writing from Naka Meguro | | Comments (1) | Permalink

Game On

Mobile phone game advertising, Shibuya station.

Writing from Tokyo | April 10, 2007 | Permalink

Augment

The easy way to track dimensions.

With a camera phone, augmented reality, a size reference point, and enough processing power, dimensions are only a button press away. Or are they? In an augmented world - what to measure, acceptable margins of error?

Writing from Daikanyama | April 9, 2007 | Permalink

Context is Everything

A skate shop ad sticker using the b-word. The context? Heathrow's terminal 1.

Signs warning against bomb-related jokes can be found in a number of airports, LAX springs to mind. When does placing a advertisement become an arrestable 'act of terror'?

And taken to the nth degree by WK Interactive, and now viewable in Neo-Tokyo (ta David).

Writing from Tokyo | April 6, 2007 | Permalink

Predictability, Margins of Error, Quality of Life

Think about your daily commute - how accurately can you predict your time of arrival? To the minute? 5 minutes? Within an hour? And in what ways does being able to accurately predict where you will be when effect you and the people around you?

After graduating from college I lived for a number of years in Stoke Newington - a Williamsburgesque neighbourhood in north London made marginally more affordable by not being connected to the Underground network. Transport into central London meant getting on a bike or catching one of the iconic 73 Routemaster busses, with public transport putting the traveler at the mercy of road works and the then frequent IRA bomb scares*. A journey into town might take 35 minutes or then again an hour.

*For a number of years millions of UK citizens were affected IRA transport disruptions and in turn were forced to think about what their government was doing on their behalf outside the cosy confines of the ‘mainland’. In its own little way, changing the predictability of the daily commute bought the war in Northern Ireland home. Flyers in the US may well be experiences a similar pause for thought every time they take their shoes off going through TSA security.

Commuter travel in Tokyo is a very different story - public transport is both frequent and arrives on time (not that I'm unduly affected by it - its a city that is easy to get around on a bicycle). If a train is more than a couple of minutes late Japan Rail issues an apology and on arrival at the destination a queue may form at the station-master’s office to pick up an official late-note. Blaming public transport is not a viable excuse in Tokyo. Predictability encourages just-in-time behaviours and frees up time that can then be put to other uses. The flip side of this - not knowing the time of arrival puts the onus on travelers to maintain awareness of their current surroundings, keep abreast of the ongoing status of the transport as well as juggle destination related parameters - such as keeping colleagues or clients abreast of arrival times. If you have a job where being on time is a necessary component of functioning effectively then the ability to accurately predict where you will be when is also valued. Its a simple proposition - people tend to be willing to pay for stuff they value.

And yes the ability to successfully move millions of passengers, as in the photo of the Tokyo rush hour above, increases the flow of people to the point is literally and figuratively swept along by the crowd.

We are of course in the midst of significant shifts in the way we perceive time, location, and the world around us. Real time status updates are available from an ever wider variety of sources whether its knowing when a bus will arrive to parcel being delivered and yes, the mobile phone is playing an expanding role in supporting both micro-coordination and maintaining awareness of those things we, well, wish to maintain awareness of. Lateness is increasingly relative - when the people and things we coordinate with have sufficient awareness of your whereabouts they are more likely to mitigate the consequences of lateness by using the time for other valued pursuits. For some the concept of being late or early is a twentieth century notion.

But technology is far from neutral and affects us in different ways (the photo above is of a gender segregated queue for a bus in Tehran). What are the implications for being ‘late’ in business or social contexts? Or, bearing in mind societal stereotypes for way finding or map reading - what does it mean if as a woman you turn up late for a meeting compared to a man? Employers or employees? Brazilians or Germans? In the near near future your geo-location is just another parameter to decide to share with others.

Or at least that's the theory. Because many consumers won't fully appreciate what about their location is being shared and with whom - hidden behind deliberately opaque business models or poorly designed interfaces. Or quite simply they won't have a choice about whether to use the technology or not. Which is where the astute and empathic designer comes in - you have the power and with power comes responsibility.

Been playing around with Dopplr these past few days and whilst its too early to judge whether it will become a valued tool for the long distance traveler the signs are there: it requires minimal setup and ongoing maintenance to derive real value, and has a pleasantly neutral weather-forecast approach to informing members who is roughly where and when.

And why these photos from train stations around the world? The photo above is from Seoul Station taken during a study on Mobile TV early adopters [related essay]. Would-be passengers are relaxed and watching a sports event, trains and departure platforms have been announced well in advance of departure so they can switch their attention to other more leisurely activities. The photo below is of passengers in London's Waterloo Station, with only five minutes before the train is scheduled departure the platform has yet to be announced and fellow passengers spend their time intently staring at the screens.

Any (service) design students out there looking for a thesis project? Design a service utilizing mobile devices that helps passengers know where to be when. What would a station or an airport look like if everyone maintained an absolute awareness of their here-now, and there-next?

Writing from Heathrow | April 5, 2007 | Permalink

Gaps Minded

The same message targetted at passengers standing on the platform and those disembarking from the train. Given the semi-random scattering of passengers on a platform versus the limited number of doors on a train there should be more messages facing the train - there were however equal numbers facing both directions.

The role of technology in supporting the delivery of micro-targetted messages. The contexts in which it is likely to be ineffective.

In Helsinki this week - a welcome opportunity to deliver projects, share ideas, fill in the gaps and plan strategies. And the best part? talking though research topics with the team; and figuring out the most appropriate places in the world to conduct the research. Time for something a little more challenging.

Writing from London | April 4, 2007 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Jarring Intrusions

When advertising makes its way into spaces that you'd rather it stays out of.

Like? Like the advertising for mobile phones on the hangers of London's Bond International.

Writing from Hoxton | April 3, 2007 | Permalink

Lions Den

After seven years of living in Tokyo its the first time in the UK that I'm only seeing my home land through the eyes of a stranger - perhaps a side effect of hotel living and mentally not having the opportunity to unpack.

Yesterday evening's office is the Dunhill Den, a post-nostalgic best of British if there is such as thing. An hour to kip on an expansive leather sofa before the arrival of guests a welcome opportunity to delay the onset of the side-effects of permalag. But lions den? Ah, an evening spent in the company of the fouth estate - though in truth more inquisitive cats than lions. Design research communicated, challenged, surviving both jetlag and a mauling. Close to midlnight the assembled disassemble and when everyone is ready to doze off my body tells me its time to wake up.

Breakfast is a 5am walk through the City of London, introducing a Korean colleague the delights of a bacon butty.

Writing from London | March 30, 2007 | Permalink

You Are. Are You?

Writing from City of London | | Permalink

Anti-Social By-Products of Use

The anti social cost of free-papers? - they are more likely to end up littering the streets. Another example of cost, perceived cost affecting usage behaviour.

Writing from London | March 28, 2007 | Permalink

Positioning and Support for Asychronous Communication

Office entrance, Mayfair.

Not the liveliest of neighbourhoods if you're jetlagged at 4am .

Writing from London | | Permalink

Phone Box Advertising Norms

The visual richness of escort service advertising in this London Mayfair phone booth above, and the more text based equivilent in Sao Paolo below. And the complete absence of escort ads in Bangkok - bottom photo.

Why interesting? The richness and cost to produce the advertising; the degree to which it can be (re)moved by potential customers and/or cleaners; the position of the advertising within the phone booth itself; the social acceptability (or otherwise) of using soft-core pornography in a public space; the legal status of prostitution in the society and the fact that illicit advertising is deemed necessary in the first place.

The keen eyed amongst you will no-doubt be chuckling to the appropriate nature of text in the Mastercard advertising in the top photo. Click to, enlarge.

Writing from Mayfair | | Permalink

Routes, Landmarks

The dominant landmark, in this instance Mt. Fuji, that defines a route of a train. That then makes it onto the train signage.

Writing from Tokyo | March 27, 2007 | Permalink

My Icon. Your Icon?

Consider the impact of this grafiti on the walls of Geneva (where it was spotted) versus on the walls of Tokyo. Iconic images for whom? And why? And what reaction from the local population?

What are the technologies that increase the immediacy at which this kind of information flows around the world? And the accuracy of those flows. Blogs? Don't be silly. Think Microsoft's Photosynth. Though as a TEDster pointed out this moves from Wow to genuinely interesting when it is able to recognize the Post Falls Seven Eleven from every other Seven Eleven out there.

This morning's commute is a little longer that usual: hello London, followed by hei Helsinki next week.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Phone, PDA Customisation Norms

Nail shop in Bankgok that has extended its services at the bequest of customers to include customising mobile phones. Somewhat surprisingly PDAs also go for the bling treatment. And their design inspiration? Harajuku.

Writing from Tokyo | March 26, 2007 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Thai Nail Shop Norms

Writing from Tokyo | March 25, 2007 | Permalink

The Elevation of Objects

Media Skin by Tokujin Yoshioka, in the KDDI concept store, Harajuku. At first sight the design comes across as minimal, but when the flip is opened the user is confronted with additional rows densely packed buttons. Features have go somewhere right?

A pleasant enough way to display a product if you happen to have a couple of robotic arms lying around.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Stretching in 2 Dimensions

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Play On,

Uma is Japanese for horse.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

If They Can They Will

What makes this pipe a (more) socially acceptable place to place trash than, say the ground or gutter?

From last winter's soujourn in Chengdu. The hard hat eventually moved - the chap was peeing against the other side of the wall.

Writing from Tokyo | March 23, 2007 | Permalink

Oo

Writing from Tokyo | March 22, 2007 | Permalink

Localised

Graf includes a Japanised version of the Ronald McDonald face.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Rules, Exceptions

Height rules for travelling on Bangkok's Sky Train: 140cm or less - free only on children's day, 90cm or less - free everyday.

And the exceptions to the exceptions?

Writing from Bangkok | March 21, 2007 | Permalink

Tips Over Time

Beads of a sap-like substance forming on the tips of wheat grass.

The crop is harvested once per week, and blended into a variety of drinks for the Glow cafe at the Bangkok Metropolitan. And if you happen to be in that part of town they also do a decent steamed fish soup with wild rice.

Writing from Bangkok | | Comments (1) | Permalink

Natural Glow

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Smoking Makes Your Teeth Go Bad

Mentally quite affective - the package design is simply not something you want to have lying around on a cafe table. But why stop there? Packaging with abrasive surfaces, increasingly unpleasant odors...

Thanks to our local guides, Nad & Yu for making our stay that much easier.

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Experiences Reconnected

The smell of Playdoh triggered strong childhood memories.

We're already heading down the trail of cradle-to-grave-rich-meta-data. How will information about your past experiences - be called upon to enhance elements of your next experience?

Whilst experience-data mining has the potential to be highly accurate, my guess is someone out there will find a way to apply that data in crude and, from the consumer's perspective ulimately unnecessary ways. Part of the 'value' derived from recalling this childhood Playdoh experience is that it's a rare occurance. What consideration will marketing company X have for the subtleties of your past memories?

Get ready for the truly invasive sensory equivalent of spam.

Writing from Bangkok | March 19, 2007 | Permalink

Status Brace

Fake or non-functional bejeweled braces bought by teenage girls from a street market in one of the poorer districts of Bangkok.

Whilst we didn't get an opportunity to ask any gem-grinning consumers about this product my assumption is that purchase motivation is driven by a mixture of decoration, experimentation, and status - showing off that one's parents can afford to pay for this kind of dental care. 39 Baht (0.9 Euro)
buys you a brace for upper or lower rows.

From a humidly sweaty night trying to understand the flow of a Bangkok street market.

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Texture, Colour Norms

Tokyo's subway above, Bangkok's Sky Train and the London Underground, below.

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Information Positioning

Taxi license plate posted on the left and right passenger doors supporting information recall. Related to the risk of forgetting and then having to retrieve belongings from the taxi, and perceptions of passenger safety?

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Humour Disconnected

Humour that requires translation is not humour.

Whether global connectivity enables a shared base understanding that makes humour, well, more universally humourous. Or whether it helps define the boundaries of whether you are in or out of [this] culture?

Writing from Bangkok | March 18, 2007 | Permalink

Brutal Walks

Event sponsorship and the sensorial touchpoints - in this instance funky tasting snacks in the hands of punters that become integrated into the experience, of Bangkok International Fashion Week.

Of note beyond the catwalk? Bouncing around in the media scrum and watching people watching people watch people. We slink in and my colleagues at least quietly, elegantly slink out.

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Shoe(less) Norms

As with Japan its common to take off your shoes entering a Thai apartment. A foowear behaviour extending into this workplace - a library worker pads around the stripped floor of the Thai Creative and Design Center building prior to opening.

Given that this is a space trodden by members of the shoes-wearing public to what extent does this behaviour assume that there hasn't been much shoes wearing traffic since it was last cleaned? (How) will her behaviour change as the building infrastructure and worn materials are incresingly able to gather information on the things they interact with? For example? - exactly who has walked where in this building, the type of footwear they were wearning, and the (bacterially tranmissive) stuff they have come in contact with prior to being here.

Who is motivated by what reasons to 'raise awareness' of the issue germ transmission in public spaces? (and then of course provide a 'solution' to meet the 'need'). And how might architects and urban planners redesign human flows through buildings to contain or affect the flow of the stuff we carry on the soles of our feet?

A full day of workshops with local designers, followed by a night conducting street research. For once I'm happy to not be out there during the midday heat (35 degrees yesterday) and happily bouncing off the creative energy of the team.

Writing from Bangkok | March 17, 2007 | Permalink

Respect For, Sponsored By

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Thai Sticker Graph

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Street Freshness Norms

Juices are all freshly squeezed, whereas condensed milk for a street cappuccino (using however freshly ground beans).

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Bike Brands We Know & Love

Writing from Bangkok | | Permalink

Stinkin' Links

Touch down Bangkok. Today's driver is straight out of, well, Taxi - gloved hands wrapped around a steering wheel with enough ribbed rubber grip to be subliminal advertising for a major brand of condoms, and a spoiler to that never gets a chance to, well, spoil. A fast set of wheels is largely cosmetic in a city with one to many traffic cops and legendary traffic jams.

Ah yes, stinkin' links? The TED presentations are now correctly linked (thanks Tom) as PowerPoint or PDF [4MB]

Adrenaline does strange things to people, apparently.

Writing from Bangkok | March 16, 2007 | Permalink

Cost, Perceived Cost Affecting Usage Behaviour

The humble Biro is one of those ubiquitous products that is by and large ok to forget to return, or to put it another way - steal. Which helps explain why this Salt Lake City café has adapted the default design to extend their claim of ownership. But why is this product socially acceptable to steal? Even in a city where faith and responsibllity is pushed to the fore?

For those wanting background research my colleague Jan Blom has written extensively on what motivates people to personalise objects e.g. here he's also got good material in the pipeline which I'll link to in due course.

For a start the pen is mass produced, ubiquitous, changes hands as part of a task process (signing a credit card slip), and typically can be replaced for very low cost. Last week I chatted with guys from our LA design studio (cheers RN, AG & DB) and have since been mulling over the extent to which the in-store sticker cost is associated with the perceived value of the product.

Lets take a real world example from the advertising in the photo below- is it really possible for a Wal-Mart to make a profit or at least break even on a Motorola c139 mobile phone at less than $15? This isn't just about loss-leading. Despite its tangible presence the product in this advertisement isn’t the phone - the product is connectivity, and that’s where for Tracfone and by association for Wal-Mart where the promise of future profits lie. Of course this is nothing new - operators the world over take a hit on the device and make it back over the course of the contract with devices that best support services offering up the largest sticker subsidy.

But the gulf between sticker cost and actual cost hides something deeper than a lighter wallet. Like the humble biro it changes our perception of what it means to 'own' a product and may well have significant impact on the speed at which the product ends up reaching the end of its life as a functional object, of being discarded. With an estimated 1.2 billion mobile phones being sold next year this is a non-trivial matter. Transparency plays an important role in helping individuals understand their environmental impact (which is why I like the Kill a Watt that came in the TED gift bag). To what extent could or should the price of objects be transparent?

Writing from Tokyo | March 15, 2007 | Permalink

Function & Projected Function

Writing from Narita | | Permalink

Advertising in 3 Dimensions

Physical advertising for Kenzo in a Daikanyama cafe includes supplying and stocking bamboo furniture, product samples, framed aren't-we-in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia/Thailand photos for the walls, and a rather weak movie projected on the walls.

Writing from Tokyo | March 14, 2007 | Permalink

Stanford Slides

Links for last week’s Stanford University presentations on Repair Cultures [PowerPoint, 4MB] and Exploratory Field Research [PowerPoint, 2MB] - material first published last year. Cheers to Bill Cockayne for hosting.

For attendees following the discussion on the informal practice of sending money as airtime - Sente, may wish to read this essay on shared phone use and download this accompanying presentation [PowerPoint, PDF, 7MB].

And the photo? Just another Shibuya pop-street interview. Spent time observing, but in this instance nothing new to learn.

Early start tomorrow - the 35 degree heat of Bangkok and the energies of the design team awaits.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Textures of an Urban Interface

From a pedestrian crossing in Naka Meguro. The blind/dis-abled crossing box includes brail on its top surface.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Appropriate Use of Punctuation

Unusual use of exclamation marks in street signage, or more accurately park signage - Tokyo's Komazawa Koen.

Writing from Tokyo | March 13, 2007 | Permalink

(Un)Conducive Spaces

During last week’s presentation at Ideo I touched on conducive spaces places that you expect to be, well, conducive to ad-hoc social interaction and engage in whatever research questions you're interested in exploring without unduly pressuring the people or changing the vibe of the space itself.

A good example? A bowling alley in Tupelo that served as a social hub for both young and old members of the community. Less productive spaces? For starters the techno-playing bowling alley in Tehran turned out to be a dud. And during the same 10 day cross-country road trip of the US as the Tupelo bowling alley we also stopped off at Doug's Sport and Shoot gun range for what we assumed would be a photogenic round of meet the locals. Turns out that interviews, guns, ear-muffs and ammo don’t mix.

And the photos? Last week-end's Utah style après-ski.

Writing from Monterey | March 12, 2007 | Permalink

Authoritative Reference Points

Time is everywhere, and its confusing.

It's strapped to my wrist, displayed in my rental car (though thankfully I don't have to deal with this) broadcast on the radio, there were two bedside alarms in the hotel, on my sat-nav, mobile phone, digital camera and laptop. Which is not inherently a problem except that many of these sources synchronise automatically, and to do this successfully it needs to know both where I am and what the local time is. And that today the US government has switched to day light saving hours, bless them so one of these is in doubt. And I don't know which time source I can trust.

In a world where current time information is ubitquitous the wrist watch has largely lost its relevance as a time keeping device (though don't expect it to disappear - it still has value). And no device has yet stepped up and completely filled its role as a time source you can always trust on. Yeah I know, you can get your mobile phone to automatically synchronise the current time with the network. When's the last time you really trusted the network? The network operator?

Right now I've either missed my flight, or got another hour to kill.

Writing from Monterey | | Permalink

Disembodied Voices

I seem to have missed a beat. At what point in the evolution of hte service industry did it become OK to look someone in the eye, say 'hi, how can I help you' and ignore the answer? Obviously I don't travel thru, um, drive-thru USA enough - where this past weekend a number of restaurant serving staff were expected to multi-task by enaging in-store customers whilst simultainiously coping with incoming drive-thru and telephone orders. The net result is a disembodied experience where all the social cues say 'you presense in this store is valued' but the words that are spoken 'you're irrelevant'.

I'd assume that most stores would train their frontline staff to adopt body language that makes it obvious where their current attention lies - with the customer in-store or a remote somebody. But how to unlearn a life time of social behaviour and cope with the multi-tasking demands of service industry managers?

BTW - the server above is an example local/remote multi-tasking done right - when micro-phone is down she's somewhere else, when in the up position she gave her full attention. The worst offender? Below.

Writing from Monterey | March 11, 2007 | Permalink

Signing on the Dotted

Attendance of the conference implies consent.

We used to rely on verbal consent during street research under the assumption that obtaining a signature from a stranger would be too invasive. Turns out we were wrong - in our most recent ad-hoc street survey we started collecting signatures with a 100% success rate. BTW - if you're running street research collecting verbal, video or photographic data, acceptance of any form of gift by the participant implies data consent.

Writing from Monterey | | Permalink

Moving Atoms

Two TED gift bags - red rollers for attendees and the additional yellow hold-all for speakers far outweigh my hand luggage on this trip. Includes an offer to FEDEX these to wherever on the planet you live.

In pretty stark contrast to Doors Juice held in Delhi last week where my Nokia Design colleague Hannu Nieminen gave a presentation on the extent to which we move atoms around the planet and what we can do reduce, well, pushing atoms around the planet. Business Week has a light write up.

Shipping back home in an hours or so, to catch up on loved ones, laundry, Tokyo. In a few days Bangkok beckons - the research team keeps rolling on (and on).

Writing from Monterey | | Permalink

The New Sociality

Playing around with Jeff Han's multiple input display. First thoughts? Just how social/anti-social you can be working in the same space as someone else. Yes, totally obvious but not immediately so from the demo.

Writing from Monterey | March 10, 2007 | Permalink

When you Delegate Positive Experiences

During yesterday's TED talk I proposed that from a design perspective a potential solution to pretty much every design problem is delegation - getting other people or technology to complete those parts of a task or activity that the user is unable to complete themselves. With the exception for things like bodily functions e.g. going to the toilet or entertainment - you wouldn't pay someone to go to the cinema and enjoy a film on your behalf. (Yes, just because its a potential solution doesn't make it a worthwhile goal to aim for).

Except that at some point - when we are better able to understand and map sensorial experiences and have a better understanding of how the brain processes these you may well be able to delegate entertainment experiences to other people, to be enjoyed at your leisure at a later time and date. In essense - time, location and body-shifting experiences. Movie buffs amongst you will already be tutting about Strange Days, and so you should.

Experience shifting raises all sorts of interesting questions about empathic design, where from an physiological-emotional perspective experience designers will literally be able put themselves in someone elses shoes. What are the characteristics of the people whose experiences will define, well, the essense of the experience we wish to design for, to communicate? It can be anything from designing an out of the box experience to learning, knowing what it feels like to walk in a Sao Paulo subway station (above), the touch a razor from a Chinese back street barber (below) and yes, will encompass sexual encounters. In this world DRM boils down to removing experiences from human memory and the inevitable badly written DRM leaves its host as a vegetable.

A new profession will arise - people whose job it is to experience stuff, and who will be judged on their ability to capture the subtlties of any difference process, task or context. With a distinction between raw experiences and those enhanced though stimulants, or post production. And yes, Gonzo?

Anyone feel like writing a job spec for this job from the future? Thoughts in the comments please.

Writing from Monterey | | Comments (1) | Permalink

TED Downloads

The slides from yesterday's TED Talk are now available for download as either PowerPoint or PDF [4MB] (the .ppt includes notes, and I'll post transcripts at some point). It pulls together threads from research on what people carry and why; designing for illiterate users; how the streets are able to take univerally appreciated functionality/services and innovate in ways that are both efficient and in tune with the local conditions - in other words pulling together material from the other talks from the past year.

A summary? Research to understand the consequences of living in a planet that is truly connected - where for the first time most people on the planet have in their hands a tool to allow them to transcend space and time; the immediacy of ideas and information and that the metric for what we consider to be a big idea will in part be judged on our ability to engage the next 3 billion; the immediacy of portable objects and the functionality/services they represent will travel faster and further than anything we've seen - largely we've underestimated the speed of technology adoption (which broadly correlates to the singularity); that if you're smart you'll be observing street innovation and applying this to inform and infuse what and how you design; and lastly that with billions more people connected the conversation got that much larger and that if you wish to remain (or be) relevant you need to learn to listen.

The direction of the conversation will have the most profound impact on you and me because everyday we take for granted that our perspective on the world is relevant to the broader context. The cultural center of gravity is shifting and its shfiting to include languages you have yet to learn.

Related research, as always here.

Writing from Monterey | | Permalink

Ideo Presentation Download

Yesterday's presentation at Ideo Palo Alto entitled Always On - An Introduction to the Design Research for Everyware can now be downloaded from here [Powerpoint, PDF 2MB]. It highlights the challenge of designing for everyware and that, if we are serious about minimising negative externalities, our ultimate need to understand the relationship between everyone and everything. In essense our challenge is to understand the sum of all human experiences - which is clearly impossible. The PowerPoint includes slide notes, which I'll expand on at some point.

Thanks to Jane Fulton Suri for the invite, and the lunch-time audience for, well, engaging between mouthfulls.

And the snowglobed city? The San Francisco view from my capsule hotel.

Writing from San Francisco | March 6, 2007 | Permalink

If You Can See This, It's Already Too Late

Looking the wrong way down a gun range. Reminds me of the sign targetted at train driver's in Old Delhi Station that says 'You've gone too far'. It's positioned right in front of a terminus point.

Writing from Salt Lake City | March 4, 2007 | Permalink

Perception, Reality, Privacy

Close Circuit TV camera becoming a lightening rod for the debate on privacy. To what extent do people perceive their privacy to be violated by CCTV cameras? To what extent is their privacy actually violated i.e. the information that is collected is acted on in some way? And how big is the gulf between the perception and the reality? And is the difference irrelevant?

What design changes can be made to mitigate/extenuate the feeling of being watched?

Given the granuality of information they are able to collect, why doesn't this sticker include the name of a search engine? What does it say about our awareness of what search engines (and other services) versus physical presence? Or about the willingness to give up privacy for convenience?

Writing from Salt Lake City | | Permalink

Local Newpaper Section Norms

Local sensitivities reflected in newspaper information architecture - The Salt Lake Tribune includes a section with the title Faith, Spirituality and Ethics (whether it matches your or my understanding of faith, spirituality or ethics is a different matter). Ditto the Religion and Ethics joining Sport, the main section and local news in the Deseret Morning News.

Writing from Salt Lake City | | Permalink

Trust Jesus

Writing from Salt Lake City | March 3, 2007 | Permalink

Speed of Change, Discovery, Love

The Disney theme-park inspired love hotel close to my office looks like it’s about to close. Although the only people I’ve seen walking in and out are elderly salarimen and their spritely nieces it adds colour to the neighbourhood. I'm left wondering what kind of building will go up in its place.

Buildings in Japan are often constructed to last 20 or so years - before being rapidly torn down to be re-incarnated as something else. Local neighbourhood skylines that might take decades to evolve in cities like Frankfurt or Bristol change with rapid progression and I'm intrigued to what extent the speed of change - both in terms of form and function affects our perception of locality, history. How does it affect wayfinding - our ability to find or give directions? In a world where it is increasingly easy to (geo) tag places with memories how does the speed and velocity of change affect how this information is discovered, used? When, like in this love hotel, there's a emotional backdrop behind each and every encounter, room, and night of the duration of this building's existence some of these stories will make it into the ethersphere. So that when half a year later an office complex goes up on the same plot of land Tanaka san cross references his new desk location with the presence of who has been here, in this exact spot over time, and may well smile (especially if a photo was also carefully/throughtlessly uploaded).

And if you'll excuse the tangent - for individuals and cultures with a belief in ghosts and other-worldly presences to what extent will the digital blend with the ethereal and the physical? The one thing I know for sure - the exorcist will need to include data cache flushing skiills in his or her repertoire.

Hmm, ast call for boarding. Destination? West coast US to catch up with our Calabasas design studio, a couple of presentations to share ideas on design research (new material will eventually be posted here, plus a conference that hopefully challenges assumptions about, well, everything.

Would you turn down a weekend in the rockies? No, neither would I.

See you on the other side.

Writing from Tokyo | February 28, 2007 | Permalink

The Selfish Toothbrush

The electric toothbrush is a selfish object. Not in terms of the power it consumes - a viable enough argument, but in the level of engagement it requires during use.

For many people mornings are about completing a number of time-pressured tasks before walking out the door - ablutions, sustenance, getting dressed, and caring for appearance to present ourselves in public. In between all of this we somehow find time to catch up on the latest news, make packed lunches, and look after dependents whether kids, pets, plants or (occassionally) spouses. And at some point most people brush their teeth.

With so many things to do its not surprising that we multi-task - newspapers browsed whilst downing coffee, listening to the radio whilst getting dressed, interrupting tooth brushing to complete two handed tasks like opening the sock drawer or place objects into bags. Which is why the electric toothbrush is a selfish object - it demands to be held the whole time it is used and the alternative that works with regular tooth brushes - to be clasped in the mouth for those moments when you need both hands is not an option. Why? The device is too heavy, and more importantly it continues to vibrate making the mouth-clasp a thoroughly unpleasant experience. (Yes it can be temporarily placed on flat surfaces but it leaves nasty hard to remove toothpaste marks). At what point does the electric toothbrush becomes light enough to be clasped in the mouth polite enough to turn off the vibrator for that moment? At what point does it really fit into the flow of the morning? And in our sunny, shiny future perfect at what point does the act of brushing teeth become redundant? Replaced, for example by super efficient armies of Colgate branded bacteria scrubbing your teeth on your behalf? Pop a pill when you walk out the door, arrive at work feeling minty fresh.

A convoluted link, but a link never the less - I've been using the N800 for the past week - and it seems destined to fill a small but friendly role the the home. But as with the toothbrush its a selfish device that requires two handed engagement to be able to appreciate what it has to offer, which is fine in a number of contexts just not during the morning multi-task.

There’s another much talked-about selfish object on the horizon - the iPhone. How well will it fare as a two- handed device in what is more many people a one-handed multi-tasking world?

Writing from Tokyo | February 26, 2007 | Permalink

Context & Macro-Break Tasks

Tokyo is criss-crossed with railway lines so one cultural anomaly is the amount of time people spending waiting at crossings for trains to pass. Unlike other waiting contexts there’s not a huge amout of people watching going on - everyone on one side of the crossing is facing the same direction, and the people on the opposite side of the tracks are too far away to be able to pick up subtle (flirting) behaviours. For people standing alone mobile devices feature heavily in how they occupy their time.

Thought for today - the cultural differences in the causes of waiting. And how these differences affect technology/service adoption.

Writing from Tokyo | February 25, 2007 | Permalink

Jahwe

Mobile phone appliations advertised on the side of an advertising truck.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Expiry Dates Affecting the Perception of Validity

During a routine credit card transaction recently in the UK the sales person took the card, checked the expiry date and tutted “It’s just about still valid” - it is due to be replaced in 03/07. A gentle example of how people treat things with expiry dates and times, whether credit cards, parking meters, foodstuff, differently the closer it comes to being due. Another common example, particularly amongst the male bachelor of the species is sniffing milk before pouring - trusting the sense of smell over the date on the side of the packet.

As we continue to learn how to control what happens at the nano + bacterial level there is greater scope to communicate current expiry status: ID cards that visibly or olfactorily depreciate closer to that time; money that feels different when you’re down to your last ten Euro note - prompting a visit to the nearest ATM; containers that tell you much more about the condition of what is held inside.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Changes of Carrying and Wearing Positions Over Time

Whilst we've had the opportunity to research where people carry their mobile phones so far - having studied the residents of 11 cities across 4 continents, we've not managed to do any follow-up studies to see how carrying behaviours change over time (our studies were not designed for longitudinal comparison). Despite the rear area often being considered, in the words of a female clothing designer we interviewed, a 'problem zone', in Tokyo mobile phones and music players like the iPod (pictured above) are increasingly making their way into the back pockets of women. Monoblocks are carried 'all in', and clam-shells half-in and half-out - understandable there are still quite a few chunky clamshells in the market. In both cases decorative straps, that by our reckoning are found on 60%+ of women's phones, hang out of the pocket - both making it easier to retrieve phone from said pocket and drawing attention to the surrounding female form. Which gives all sorts of clues as to who wears/carries their phone in this way.

Of course this 'trend' could merely be a result of me seeing what my male brain is hard-wired to see.

Incidentally, the half-in the pocket half-out style is sometimes seen amongst younger males except that the phone more likely to be carried in the front right pocket - remaining within easy reach of the dominant (right) hand - useful for processing incoming information, maintaining a visual awareness (unlike Ms. Backpocket, above), whilst simultainiously supporting the projection of personal identity.

Deadlines permitting, I'll be co-publishing research on carrying behavious with my colleagues Fumiko Ichikawa and Cui Yanqing later this year. I live in hope.

Writing from Tokyo | February 22, 2007 | Permalink

Reduced to Pantone

When purchase choices are guided/reduced to one of colour.

Not all colours are created and perceived equally. And not all colour schema's are created and perceived equally. From the new Softbank store, Harajuku.

Writing from Tokyo | February 21, 2007 | Permalink

Understanding Alternative Scenarios for the Future

Delivered a presentation to the S.E.T. studio in Tokyo - in a funky, and funkily-wired building just off Harajuku's Takeshita Dori - a working environment that also functions as a test-space for 'living' new ideas.

Presentation material on research methods can be found here [4MB] and informal repair cultures here [3MB]. Ta Henry and Oba san for the invite

And the model above? Barcelona's own.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

EPFL Presentation Downloads

The slides from last-last week's presentation at the Ecole Polytechnique Fedarale de Lausanne were culled from previously published research on Cultures of Repair and Innovation in India and China [4MB] and Communication, Literacy & Design [6MB]. Thanks Nicholas for hosting and students for sharing thoughts.

A question was asked about whether rural consumers were offered classes to how to use their mobile phones. They aren't (though I think at some point Orange in the UK offered its customers lessons to make the most of features on their phone). What does the lack of structured mobile phone classes say about how people learn to use their phone? Whilst designers strive for simple and intuitive designs offering formal classes isn't inherently a bad thing: it can help align the user's mental model with that of the system; introduce local users to one another to build up a support network if things go wrong; and ultimately put people at more at ease with the technology. How does this apply to you? - we are all only one generation away from being mystified by the next ubitquitous, useful, but ultimately sub-optimal for humans technology.

And the photos? From ad-hoc street research in South Delhi last year - in an effort to figure out what kinds of and what levels of literacy were required to run a paper recycling station.

Writing from Tokyo | February 19, 2007 | Permalink

The Art of Never Unpacking

To arrive back in Tokyo is to confront the rituals of physically and mentally unpacking.

Today there isn't a field research kit but in its place the tangible result of too much time spent in swiss and french delicatessens. Hotel laundry beats washing at home, unopened mail on the desk, grocery shopping. The absolute pleasure that comes from properly-properly cleaning the dust from another country from the camera lense.

Bodily time-zone adjustments that either just work, or that take days to figure out. And the the solitude that comes when, like today, the day starts at midnight and 'lunch' is preceeded by a 5am ride through the city. It takes a hard hour's riding to follow the expressway though central Tokyo before curving around the Imperial Palace and heading for home. After 8 hours in 54H the sounds and smells of the city are inviting. The mental clarity that comes from the wee-hours is only tempered by the effect that jetlag has on loved ones later on. Everything has a cost, you just need to figure out what it is.

In many respects home-life stands still for the traveller for the duration of these travels - that list of things that really should be done can take months to be crossed out simply because you're not here; food stuffs that would normally be eaten in a fortnight last half a year; projects that require a physical presense take an age to get off the ground and everyday relationships are put on hold.

When you travel a lot theres a part of you that never unpacks. Its not good or bad, but it is.

Writing from Tokyo | February 17, 2007 | Permalink

What You See, What You Are Expected To See

Those little design details that help you see what your brain is trained to see. Photo from Geneva.

Writing from Tokyo | February 15, 2007 | Permalink

When (Design) Rules Are Made to Be Broken

Do cultural attitudes towards obeying and breaking rules - not crossing a road except using pedestrian crossings also extend to the rules by which things are designed - say not creating a pedestrian crossing unless there is sufficient room for at least three stripes. Seems imbalanced to me. Also from Geneva.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

A City Pool & Sauna

Key ring board for Helsinki's Yrjonkatu swimming pool and sauna includes a minature clocks to mark the entry time for each pool goer - anyone staying longer than the one and half hours is charged extra. Or at least they were - the practice of limiting the customer time in the pool hasn't been used since the 90's. The board serves multiple purposes. The number of missing keyrings provides a visual snapshot of how many people are currently in the building. And because each key relates to a specific locker it is possible for the attendant to 'partner up' pool goers to have neighbouring lockers, increasing the likelyhood of social interaction or in the case of males on the prowl, something more. Unlikely? On men only night? Yeah right.

Last year we interviewed a Brighton cafe worker to understand the role of the cafe played in the community. In effect they used long tables with shared seating and strategic placement of incoming customers to encourage social interaction, though whether it worked or not is another matter. The extent to which customer default preferences and automation limit serendipity - chance or weighted-serendipity - the stuff that seems like chance, but ultimately is part of someone else's match-making plans (like making a bet on weighted dice). Seating on planes, trains classrooms and in shared taxis. One of the perks of the (bored) job.

Tangent of the day: contexts in which access to resources whether bandwidth, seating, expertise or a safe space to rest is is retro-actively limited, or when limited access is opened up. The role of technology in making more efficient use of previously allocated resources and the extent to which we adjust to that efficiency simply by consuming more.

And the pool & sauna? Four Euro twenty buys you entry, goggles recommended, use of swimming costume optional. As you leave, the brisk Helsinki winter air threatens the undried head.

Writing from Helsinki | February 14, 2007 | Permalink

Cost Optimisation

When the plane touches down theres usually one or two travellers who take off the battery cover, pop out the SIM card and replace it with a SIM from the local carrier. In wealthier markets to what extent will reductions in roaming charges reduce the practice of SIM card swapping? For more price sensitive consumers - whether students in Helsinki or increasingly the bulk of consumers in emerging markets what cost differential is sufficient to maintain multiple SIM cards?

Photo from a study in Brazil last year.

Writing from Tokyo | February 13, 2007 | Permalink

Transgression Transparency

Transgressions that become more obvious as the context changes - the parking equivilent of saying the punchline to a rude joke just as the room goes quiet.

Today's notion of car parking changes when the roads are full of automated vehicles - if yours can't find a parking space it simply cruises the neighbourhood until required by its owner (along of course with the rest of the driver-less vehicles - boy that will be a quality-of-life kind of neighbourhood to hang out in). When gridlock is merely an ad-hoc car park who has a vested interest and power to create then dissapate gridlock? Given the wide variety of vested interests to what extent will car parking become a centrally co-ordinated activity - the Central Traffic Authority relying on real-time schedule updates to micro-coordinate the delivery of your personal or personal-shared vehicle.

Assuming that a self-driving, self-parking car is programmed to park within legal boundaries, how much would you pay for the make-the-most-of-what's-out-there hack?

Writing from Geneva | February 11, 2007 | Permalink

Train Luggage Norms

Train heading up to Les Diablerets including fold-down snowboard and ski racks. The overlap of contextual and cultural norms.

Post-note: Feels ever-so-slightly wierd to be wandering back to the hotel in full boarding gear. Ces't la vie (if you live in Geneva). Ta Nicholas for the heads up. Shipping out to the Helsinki mothership tomorrow.

Writing from Les Diablerets | | Permalink

Linear Progression

If galleries were built to the same design rules would more people be exposed to more art?

Writing from Geneva | | Permalink

Message Complexity

Writing from Geneva | | Permalink

Keyholes as Entry Point to Nodes in the System

But what functionality does the key hole represent? And what is the cost of finding out?

The way in which an object is inserted into another object affecting the way that the data on that object is treated by the device it is inserted into. Simple example? Your home computer has 2 USB slots - attaching your digital camera cable to the 'secure' slot automatically carries out a sequence of tasks such as copying and encrypting the data before wiping the memory card. Yes, potentially it severely limits the host device functionality - in what contexts is this beneficial?

Need more options? The ways in which memory cards (yeah, gosh, keys) are inserted into their host affecting what happens next. Variables? Whether the memory card is squeezed, rammed, pinched, stroked, caressed, or even held during insertion and copying process. Beyond the obvious what effect for memory card coitus interruptus? Hmm, definitely time to head out.

Last thought for the day: to what extent do memory cards remain embedded in one device or 'migrate' between devices? Between owners?

Ta Ben for the loan of the finger.

Writing from Geneva | February 10, 2007 | Permalink

Our Heroes, Who Are They?

Heroes? Heroines more likely.

Writing from Geneva | | Permalink

LIFT Presentation Download

The slides to today's LIFT presentation on Literacy, Communication & Design can be found here [6MB PowerPoint] with a related essay here. The presentation was long on highlighting issued raised by the design research and short on showing solutions that have been proven to work beyond what is currently possible with well designed simple mobile phones. I can understand this probably disappointed a number of the audience, but ask yourself why. I'm not yet convinced that the obvious solutions - spoken menus and more comprehensive use of icons particularly work and the complexity and subtlety of the design solutions don't translate well to this presentation format in the time available.

A summary? Illiterate consumers are in many ways lead users for the rest of us.

The MotoFone mentioned in the question and answer session can be found here, and related Nokia products here and here. Related research can be downloaded from here.

And the photos? The first two were used in the presentation - field research in Delhi from 2006, snow falling on Helsinki from earlier this year and a presenter on the podium from an earlier session.

Writing from Geneva | February 9, 2007 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Suggested Interaction

Shoe glove.

Writing from Geneva | | Permalink

Thought Delivery

Yesterday's LIFT Conference workshop on the City of the Future hosted by Bill Cockayne and Nicolas Nova. A chance to see how others figure out how the future will turn out, and reflect on how we can do it better ourselves.

And the thread about objects becoming less and less fixable? Hmm, depends where you look - try this essay + presentation [4MB PowerPoint] on informal repair cultures.

Writing from Geneva | February 8, 2007 | Permalink

How it is Communicated

Writing from Geneva | February 7, 2007 | Permalink

The Line Between L'Humor and

Writing from Geneva | | Permalink

Looking for What You Expect To Find

A fly poster plasters the only available flat surface on a car park wall, pausing to keep a keyhole uncovered.

It's Switzerland, and I expect to find order. So I find order (regardless of its merit).

Writing from Geneva | | Permalink

Infrastructure, Discoverability & Speed of Adoption

At what point does infrastructure become, well, infrastructure - the stuff you can rely on being out there?

Would you buy an electric driven vehicle when there are only a few public recharging points scattered around your regular stomping ground? To what extent do technologies such as personal access to accurate location positioning and real-time status updates mitigate the need for blanket coverage of infrastructure such as this Elektrobay charging poing in London's Covent Garden? (This charging point is aimed at council workers not the general public so the argument is moot in this exact context).

Knowing a charging point's location, availability, quality and cost can go some way to support early adopters. Being able to reserve it ahead of time takes some risk out of the process - though it could introduce a hedge market for access to that particular power stand. Value added? Self driving vehicles that hook themselves up to the nearest power source will remove the end user hassle of having to remember (in the same way that in the domestic context keeping personal devices charged and otherwise maintained is something that can be delegated to autonamous machines).

And yes you could argue that to maintain a higher degree of consumer environmental awareness you don't want to make the re-charging process seamless. Will we see the fuel equivilent of warning signs on cigarette packets?

Writing from London | February 5, 2007 | Permalink

Perceived Ownership of Rentable Spaces

Digital equivalents?

Writing from London | February 3, 2007 | Permalink

Continuity

Writing from Farnborough | February 2, 2007 | Permalink

Granularlity, Accuracy, Timing of Delivery of Data

Complimentary hotel newspaper adorned with weather forecast sticker.

Writing from Egham | February 1, 2007 | Permalink

Backwards, Looking Forwards

Three days of workshops with people who specialise in topics I don't - always a rich opportunity for learning. The discussions? The world 20 years from now. The setting? A 16th century mansion in Egham.

To what extent can being surrounded by 'the past' provide direction to thoughts about the future? And given the richness of experiences we are able to capture now, to what extent will future-guessing workshops 400 years from now rely on immersed 'past experiences'?

Writing from Egham | | Permalink

Postures Associated with Activities

How technologies, design change the need to adopt a particular posture to complete an activity. Simple example? Cameras becoming small enough to use with one hand or even no hands. Binoculars in use above, camera below.

Perhaps more interesting are the emotions associated with a particular posture - the chalet owner scanning the snowline for ice-climbers in Grand Montet - with the sunset only an hour away their window of opportunity to descend was rapidly closing.

Writing from La Praz | January 30, 2007 | Permalink

The Legality of Supporting Recognised Usage Behaviours

Power cord for a mobile phone re-routed around the gear stick. The conflict between designing for known usage patterns and supporting what is increasingly becoming an illegal activity - calling without using a headset whilst driving.

A journey to Geneva somewhat marred by the vehicle having a fuel leak.

Writing from La Praz | | Permalink

Logos as a Moments in Time

Recommended by and listed in the guidebook. The entry is updated yearly with new stickers being added to the entrance of this restaurant, providing customers with a snapshot of design tweaks.

Writing from Grand Montets | | Permalink

Out of the Box Setup Norms

The in-shop purchasing experience for the avalanche transceiver includes a member of the shop staff applying a rescue plan sticker - in consumer's language to the the device unit.

In an age of rich, digital consumer preference profiles to what extent will the need to ask this question become moot? In what contexts do relatively stable preferences like preferred spoken language change over time? Or change according to context: an airline pilot's knowledge of English; a gift purchase; someone who speaks in one language, but prefers to read in another?

Writing from La Praz | January 28, 2007 | Permalink

Local 108

Stereotype bistro setting making its way into local grafitti.

Writing from Chamonix | | Permalink

Abstraction & Recognition

Writing from La Praz | | Permalink

Contexts of Use

The extent that certain elements of the pedestrian crossing stand out or blend in - in the context of snow conditions of La Praz, France (above), or Chengdu (below).

Whether the colour/layout/context of this walk way in Sao Paolo (below) effects the flow of pedestrians. Do they revert to more pedestrian crossing-like behaviours? What are pedestrian crossing-like behaviours?

Writing from La Praz | | Permalink

I Know What You're (Collectively) Thinking, Planning

Your company makes widgets and like most of the online planet many of your staff use one of the popular search engines to effectively go about their business. The guys and gals in the research lab use it to track down obscure topics in online journals; the creatives spend a fair bit of time, well, y'know, browsing stuff to stir their creative juices; human resources use it to do whatever it is they do between alternate rounds of hiring and layoffs; and the comms team monitor the response to the quarterly results or the latest press releases.

The search engine company knows some of you by name and some of you a lot more - you did after all sign your soul away for that terabyte data archive. A few brave souls consistently practice safe browsing - multiple pseudo-anonymous identities and so on, but by and large your search finger-print, a data set built up over your life-time gives you away. Every time.

Anyway even for those safe searchers out there, there are multiple ways to know who you are and where you live. Reconstructing the real you is not exactly difficult since your family started using handhelds, embeddeds, online accounts and old fashioned online photo albums. Automatic face recognition now works well enought for identifying self-documenting teenagers and selca Koreans up to the age of 30, but for the rest of us its the simple stuff like the wallpaper in the home and traces of unique combinations of objects that were (re)searched, and bought and delivered that give you away. But anyway its all moot because ever since the ability to search was refined to the point where it is truly (mobile) seamless to your daily life, your search queries have become a brain dump of what you're thinking. They know that thing that you plan to keep secret from your closest friends. Sometimes when the brain interface fails the search engine implant sends queries from your subconscious.

Yes, you're right - none of this is particularly novel or new. So what is?

What happens when you take a reasonable time span of search data - say 10 years, associate it with the education, leisure, pleasure and work search queries of individuals, and pool it with a collective/legal entity such as a company? A widget company even. It could be something as simple as tracking searches by domain. They haven't been sitting idly by just looking at search terms over those ten years - they've tracked the financial returns of the widget market, career trajectories of whose joined and whose left, the products and services they've released and how well these have done in the market place. That big recall in 2017? They were there, hosting the complaints forums, re-directing searches for the class action lawsuit, and remember the search queries by an engineer clearly out of his depth. That researcher who went onto earn a Nobel prize - they were there at the beginning when she typed her first hesitant words, scoping a new vocabularly. They watched and learned.

How long before the collective search terms of a company can be used to sufficiently predict the products and services they next bring to market? How long before that search engine moves into financial forecasting? And given that companies and other deep-pocketed legal entities are (profit) motivated to protect 'their' privacy what tools will ensure that what goes on in the lab, stays in the lab? How will these tools manifest themselves as consumer products?

With apologies to Alan Kay - the best way to predict the future may be to invent it, but the easiest way to predict the future is, simply to predict it. Or keep tabs on those who are inventing it.

Right now Google's keeping tabs on itself.

Geneva today, mountains to follow, see you on the other side.

Writing from La Praz | January 26, 2007 | Permalink

Bias from Gender Split Activities

To what extent is going to the cinema a male only, female only or mixed gender group activity? How does the act of segregating a queue disproportionately effect males or females and for what movies? And given this, to what extent are the rules 'flexed' to cope with extremely long queues? Gender segregated queues from Gangtok, India.

Security in the Gangtok movie theatre was tight - pat downs and bag checks to look for 'terror related' paraphernalia, their search brief extended to banning cameras and stopping customers bringing their own food and drink in the cinema (movie theatres can make more money on food and drink than on selling movie tickets). Security can be profitable.

Writing from La Praz | January 24, 2007 | Permalink

Activity & Waste Residues

Bin used as a spitton from Gangtok above, paint shop in Lhasa below.

Related: the residues from scree running and skateboarding.

Writing from La Praz | | Permalink

Texture & Movement Standards

What is revealed, what remains hidden.

Writing from La Praz | January 23, 2007 | Permalink

Fake, Real, Fake, Real. Repeat until fade

Real and knock-off 8800's from Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market (photos taken late last year). A used original about 220 Yuan, a fake with Nokia logo about 900 Yuan, and a version with identical industrial design but no logo 50 Yuan. The power of the brand? Does the same apply to your brand?

Incidentally, my translator & guide for the day correctly guessed the real from the fake with her eyes (literally) shut by listening to the sound and feeling the sliding mechanism, but with her eyes open she considered the fake to be the real thing. Not exactly surprising considering that she'd not held one in her hands before. This is where I should probably write something about the need to eductate consumers. However, in what contexts does educating consumers on the value of the original drive up the value of the fake?

I've touched on fakes before, whether the fluidity of markets in Shanghai, watching fake covers being packaged up in a Delhi market, the real/fake fake/real battery buying options in Ulan Bataar, fake cigarettes in Xiamen, a prevalance of Ecko in Lhasa, how to fool consumers into thinking a non-waterproof watch is in fact waterproof in Kathmandu, and why Al Zawahri was probably wearing fake New Balance convolutedly via Cairo.

The backdrop to the photos? A backstreet Sichuan eatery. And yes, I'm still in Tokyo.

Writing from Tokyo | January 22, 2007 | Permalink

Open Minds, Open Skies

Heading to Europe later this week - a chance to listen, learn and contribute to the LIFT Conference in Switzerland and the Shell Technology Futures workshop in the UK. As some of you may be aware I've recently moved out of the research lab to join the Nokia Design Studio in Tokyo, not that much time, ahem, was actually spent in the lab per se. So to round of the trip a visit to the mothership to meet new colleagues. Will the career change result in a change of direction for Future Perfect? Lets see.

You may have watched the view of the future videos posted by Nokia Design on YouTube. I'm always intrigued at the personal touches that make it into corporate presentations - in this instance my design studio neighbour Younghee making a brief appearance in the Achieve video.

So why the hair-on-the-lens photos of back country boarding and Hokkiado's Mt. Yotei? The LIFT conference thoughtfully wraps up on a friday. What to do with a weekend near Geneva?

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Print on Demand

Daily newspapers printed on demand by Newspapers Direct. What does the fact that this business exists in a world of ubiquitous digitial content say about our appreciation of physical content? In what ways is print-on-demand physical content different to role-printed mass-produced newspapers?

From Singapore Airport. Cheers DMc.

Writing from Tokyo | January 21, 2007 | Permalink

Contained Servings

Sake containers that double up as drinking glasses.

And a toilet sign semi-disguised as one-cup sake containers - the shelf swings out to reveal the bathroom. Buri, Ebisu.

Writing from Tokyo | January 20, 2007 | Permalink

Village Phone, Photo Presentation

At the Nokia Technology Media Briefing last November I touched on the Village Phone initiative between Grameen Foundation, my employer and local micro-finance organisations in Uganda. A short photo essay about the Village Phone co-authored with my colleague Indri Tulusan is now ready for download as Powerpoint or PDF [2MB].

To recap - the Village Phone extends regular base station cellular coverage from around 15 kilometers to around 30 kilometers through the use of a village phone kit - an antenna and ten meter cable (shown above) and a coupler (shown below) connected to a regular Nokia 1100 mobile phone plus of course, a micro-finance loan. The net result? In a number of cases it provides the first convenient, reliable and affordable connectivity to the outside world for many rural communities as well as providing a stable income for the local entrepreneur that takes out the loan.

In the spirit of Future Perfect lets start with a simple question: To what extent do villagers need access to mobile phone? Who is in more need of personal, convenient synchronous and asynchronous communication - someone in London who works 9 to 5, 5 days a week or someone in rural Uganda working 5 to 9, 7 days a week? IMHO the impact on quality of life is far greater in the rural context and the some of the innovations this enables are touched on in this longish essay on Shared Phone Use. One example of the benefits of connectivity? Sente - the transfer of money via mobile phone that essentially also extends regular banking services such as the remittance of cash to these communities.

As always, related research here and you can be signed up to receive notification of new downloads by emailing to info at janchipchase dot com with the word subscribe in the subject line.

And the gent featured on the cover of the presentation? A kiosk operator for a rural village phone in Uganda. Cheers to the extended Nokia team for letting us piggyback your work - Johanna, Jens & Suzanne.

Writing from Tokyo | January 19, 2007 | Permalink

Separation of Church & State, What You Carry

Religious slogan adorns the wall of an Iranian sports hall - a common enough sight in a city adorned with revolutionary murals. Thoughts for today: the cultural differences in separation between church and state. Does the relatively high level of physical religious presence encourage or discourage the carrying of religious artifacts amongst mobile essentials? And for mobile phone manurfacturers does it encourage or discourage the religous customisation such as ringtones or wallpapers?

And the photos in the sport hall? Your's truly partaking in a 5-aside footy game between conducting contextual interviews in Tehran late last year. Yup, that phone is not a phone, its a stop-watch.

Writing from Tokyo | January 18, 2007 | Permalink

The Psychology of Packaging

Very deliberate design references for this non-alcoholic malt beverage, Iran.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Transitions

Writing from Tokyo | January 16, 2007 | Permalink

When a Butterfly Lands on a Cactus

Friends of mine recently moved in a modern Tokyo apartment, that included amongst its other mod-cons a remote control to operate the toilet. Control panel's like this are nothing new and this Toto washes, sprays, and blow dries (though It doesn't however have an SD-card slot for uploading music like the one in the ladies bathroom at work). The apartment also comes with peace-of-mind-security coverage - the remote control for which thoughtfully placed next to the toilet interface.

So when house guests are wanting to flush and aren't familiar with the kanji for 'emergency' (not yours truly, but tip of the hat to you-know-who-you-are) there is naturally a risk of pressing the wrong button. Looking at the photo which button would you press? What the likely consequences of pressing the wrong button? And given the context is the user in a position to ask the hosts for help?

Its no surpise that the 'wrong' button is pressed and an alarm sounds, and the security company sends out a uniformed emergency response team. I'd like to think that this is a joke, but it isn't, though the impact is lessened by the uniformed gentleman arriving by mamachari bicycle to investigate. Is this the end of the story? Actually no.

Some days later a written report arrives, officially stamped with the details of the resident-presses-the-wrong-button-in-the-toilet-incident duly written up. There's so much wrong with this future-perfect-connected world situation its difficult to know where to start. Good intentions, technological illiteracy, in-elegant failure. And its all coming soon to a culture near you.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Tokyo Park Sign: No Practicing Golf Swing

No practicing your golf swing joins the more common no cycling, no dog waste, no fires, no littering and no picking flowers on this sign at the entrance to a park in Daikanyama. It's not surprising given the passion for golf here. On a shinkansen ride through Japan the tallest structure in many local communities is the massive net covering the golf driving range. Combined with a distinct lack of practice space - balconies in Japanese apartments are not big enough to swing a perfectly manicured chihuahua much less a golf club and golfer's desire to practice in the local park is understandable.

Other sign norms? The lack of park signs in Tehran as an indicator of where the energies of officialdom lie i.e. not regulating what people do in parks; the use of humour in this 'Beware of the Invisible Cows' sign in Hawaii; signs to support illiterate users in multi-lingual and high-illiteracy India; and severe weather warnings at a toilet entrance in Dallas.

And sign shops in Ho Chi Minh City, Kampala and Pokara Nepal.

Writing from Tokyo | January 14, 2007 | Permalink

Expectant View

It is good to back in the megopolis after what feels like a year on the road. Samples of prevalent sticker-spam in Shibuya.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Power Up: Street Charging Services in Uganda

Uganda is a country coping with a severe energy crisis resulting in frequent power cuts. In addition, access to mains electricity in rural locations is limited. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable - how do people keep their mobile phones and other electrical devices charged? Last July a Nokia research team travelled to Uganda and explored this issue as part of a more in-depth study into shared phone use.

There are two forms of mobile phone battery charging services in Kampala - either offered as an additional service by phone kiosk operators or as a stand alone service. It costs 500 Ugandan Shillings (0.2 Euro) to have a battery recharged similar to the price of 2 or 3 phone calls. Whist both services appear to thrive there are a number of barriers to use: customers cannot use their phone whilst the battery is being charged; the customer risks, or perceives the risk that their battery being swapped for an inferior one; a perceived risk of phone theft - signs that suggest service providers are not responsible for loss or theft are evident.

For many Ugandan rural communities with no access to mains power car batteries are the primary means of providing electricity to the home. Businesses such as bars also run off car batteries but they are more likely to have their own power generator. A used car battery costs 30 to 40 dollars and can keep a household powered for a month, though in a bar the same battery might last a week. The homes we visited ran electrical items included radios, CD players, television and domestic lighting.

It can take 3 to 5+ days to have a car battery recharged at the process involves delivering the car-battery to a charging service often tens of kilometers away the nearest town that has mains electricity access. The battery is taken and returned by a trusted and friendly taxi driver or trader. It takes 3 days to charge a battery, longer if the town where the service is based itself experiences power cuts. The cost of charging a battery is around 1,000 Ugandan shillings (0.4 Euro), not including delivery. (As a comparison a mobile phone battery costs half as much to be recharged using one of the mobile phone street charging services mentioned above).

How does people's behaviour change when there is intermittent or limited access to power? How can we better support users with limited and intermittent access to power?

Two short presentations co-authored with my colleague Indri Tulusan are available for download from research.nokia.com. The first entitled Power Up: Street Charging Service in Kampala as PowerPoint or PDF [3MB] and Rural Charging Service, Uganda PowerPoint or PDF [2MB].

Readers may also like the related research into shared phone use as well as the full list of presentations and downloads.

Writing from Tokyo | January 12, 2007 | Permalink

Analog Messaging Between Check-in Staff and Baggage Handlers

Simple analog messaging between check-in staff and baggage handling staff at Hokkaido's Chitose Airport. Group check-in luggage is preceeded and ended by empty annotated crate shown at the back of the photo.

Ah yes, what you really want to know is whether there was a decent dump of snow? Does an onsen smell of sulphur?

Cheers to the boarding crew for making it happen with such finesse. CS - next time for sure.

Writing from Chitose | January 10, 2007 | Permalink

Heritage, Reference

A digital sign capable of displaying text in any font or layout. What are the motivations for copying previous, analog sign designs? To what extent does the visual transition between the fixed analog form and digital support passengers looking for visual clues that they looking at the right sign?

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Borders Between Clean and Dirty Spaces

Reasoning here and here.

From a ryokan last week in Hokkaido.

Writing from Niseko | January 9, 2007 | Permalink

Motivations for Sachet Use

In a market such as India sachet portions are very much aimed at the poorest consumers - people for whom buying more than is immediately needed is unfeasible. But the convenience of either supplying or using individual sachets can benefit more than this target market: the photo above is from a (higher end) hotel in Gangtok where 2 rupee sachets of shampoo have made their way into the bathroom toiletry collection. For companies that sell both to entry level and wealthier consumers what are elements of the the design and/or experience that will appeal to one segment and be avoided by the other? In a global market where millions of phones are discarded every year is it possible to to segment and somehow enforce the segmentation of the market? See comments on 'unlikely consumers' in the discussion of this essay).

Incidentally individually wrapped portions are also common in Japan but for very different reasons - a combination of a strong cultural appreciation of the design and use of packaging, a tendency to eat smaller portions than found in say the US or Europe and a need to protect perishables from the intense summer humidity.

I'd hoped to get my hands on a Motofone before leaving India, but it was not to be. To what extent its simple and innovative design elements tempt more design orientated and wealthier consumers?

Writing from Niseko | | Permalink

How to Avoid Becoming Road Kill

The striking thing about the journey between Rangpo and Gangtok apart from: taking chai breaks from a packed Mahindra; the scenery - tropical forests clinging to the Himalayan foothills; and packs of monkeys lining the route - are the multitude of signs extolling drivers of the dangers of the road. Arrive in peace, not in pieces, don't gossip let him drive, and my personal favourite because of its proximity to a particularly cliff-like cliff drive, don't fly.

The past days in the Himalayas have been physically and mentally tough (in ways you might not expect) and recent travel experiences have put a lot of things into sharp focus. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger right?Tomorrow starts the final leg of my winter journey - heading to Hokkaido for fresh powder and onsen. The future (perfect) can wait a few more days.

Writing from Sikkim | January 1, 2007 | Permalink

Shoe Norms

Shoes off facing in, or shoes off facing out? Whilst different cultures share sensibilities about clean and dirty spaces are there cultural differences in the way these spaces are entered and exited?

Writing from Gangtok | December 29, 2006 | Permalink

Reasons for Opposites

Airplane window shade pulled up rather than down. Emergency exit, where the vertical space above the window is otherwise used.

Writing from Bagdogra | | Permalink

Hear My Tunes

Writing from Darjeeling | December 28, 2006 | Permalink

Plank Order, Lock Positions

Writing from Darjeeling | | Permalink

Outsourcing, Relativism

Writing from Darjeeling | December 27, 2006 | Permalink

Shared Phone Practices

What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use?

A Nokia Research team set out explore this topic during a July 2006 field study in Uganda with a brief to understand how people share mobile phones. The research builds on prior research from India, China, Nepal and Mongolia and Indonesia.

An longish essay on Shared Phone Use can be found here, and a presentation co-authored with colleague Indri Tulusan entitled Shared Phone Practices: Exploratory Field Research from Uganda and Beyond can be downloaded from research dot nokia dot com here [7MB, PowerPoint]. A full list of related research can be downloaded from here , and you can sign up to be notified of new downloads by email info @ janchipchase.com with the word subscribe in the subject line.

The research team identified 6 shared use practices: an informal service called Sente that essentially enables a mobile phone owner to function as an ATM machine; mediated communication that neatly side-steps issues of technological and textual literacy; the ever popular practice of making missed calls; the pooling of resources to buy the lowest denominations of pre-paid airtime and extend the access days for the phone that is topped up; the use of community address books to reduce errors and (supposedly) encourage phone kiosk customer loyalty; and finally Step Messaging - the delivery of text and spoken messages on foot.

Whilst the baseline benefits of sole ownership and use of a mobile phone are personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication, the personal and convenient aspects of mobile phone ownership are compromised by sharing. This support the notion that phone sharing (as it is defined at the beginning of the essay) is seen as more of a transition to sole ownership than a naturally stable state.

For many poorer consumers in emerging markets other people's perception that you are connected is the status symbol, a sign that you have arrived and in some senses are worth connecting to. When most of the members of a person's peer group , or society are connected the focus of status shifts to the brand and model of device. phone ownership is not the same as use - if there are cheaper ways to communicate these will be used.

We are increasingly coming across what have termed unlikely consumers, where feature rich and once premium devices in the hands of the very poor and the myriad of ways the devices get there we have dubbed sideways adoption. Today the front-line of telecommunications innovation is in connecting the unconnected, and its a matter of time before today's unlikely consumers become tomorrow's innovators.

Heading to Sikkim early tomorrow for altitude + fresh mountains air, will return in the new year. Oh, and whilst no-one got it totally correct there is a winner for the blinged nano - will be shipped in January.

Writing from Darjeeling | December 21, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink

Specialist Media

People's Railway Daily on the Xining to Lhasa train.

Writing from Chengdu | December 20, 2006 | Permalink

Element Protector

Writing from Chengdu | | Permalink

Cool = Obey = Not Cool

An adapted Obey logo sits a top of the cap of a Lhasa rickshaw driver, buying logo free clothing often costs more in the local markets.

Writing from Chengdu | December 19, 2006 | Permalink

To Catch A Rat

Continuing the theme of rats, a rather playfully designed rat trap in Chengdu Airport.

Writing from Chengdu | December 18, 2006 | Permalink

Crossing Clean and Dirty Spaces

A Chinese gentleman on a train platform makes a phone call wearing white slippers. The slippers were provided for soft-sleeper passengers on the Xining - Lhasa Express for comfort, to avoid the need to put shoes on and off before climbing into a bunk, and to keep the bunks clean of regular shoes.

Cultures have different notions of clean and dirty spaces, take Japan for example. As a device that is both portable and engages our senses the act of using a mobile phone is well equipped to help us temporarily forget these boundaries.

Writing from Chengdu | | Permalink

Microbreak Advertising

The appropriation of a zebra crossing in Chengdu as a backdrop for advertising, somewhat similar to this in Tokyo's Daikanyama.

How will local government digital infrastructure be similarly appropriated?

Writing from Chengdu | December 16, 2006 | Permalink

Pleasures of the Flesh at 4am in Chengdu

A stopover in Chengdu to round off this Chinese leg of my journey starts out innocently enough propping up, and playing go with the regulars of the Little Bar and ends many hours later as a witness to, um, wanton abandoned consumption.

Every culture has its own equivalent to the 4am, pile-on-the-energy meal that rounds off a decent night out - after-hours clubbing in Tokyo followed by a hot bowl of ramen, richly filled bagels in London's East End or a pide in Kreuzberg. For my Chengdu companions that food is simply off my culinary radar.

It takes our taxi driver an age of cruising empty streets to find a suitable eating establishment though to be fair he has to cope with our frequent requests for changes in direction. Given that he picked us up from a street known for its bars at this time of the morning he should expect a degree of incoherence and anyway the meter is nicely ticking over. At three am on a Chengdu winter's night there aren't a hell of a lot of culinary options and on more than one occasion places that should be open are shut. We eventually pull up to a row of cheap blue plastic tables, each identically set with boxes of tissues and a cup of rough wooden chopsticks. The uniform appearance of the tables is in stark contradiction with what they represent - set back from the road are 6 small street eateries each in competition for our trade. A tout opens the taxi door and steers us to a table - only to be roundly ignored by my two female companions.

Each of the slippery steps down into the restaurant proper is a lawsuit waiting to happen. What's the Chinese equivalent to a greasy spoon cafe?

Hot glasses of water are first to arrive. This is swiftly followed by a pig's knuckle soup and the oily seal that has formed across its cooling surface is only broken by icebergs of bone, ligament and a floating white bean. When the final dish arrived it took a while for me to recognize the origins of the 3 skinned and identically shaped lumps of flesh and bone staring somewhat nonchalantly out of a pool of chili oil. As a non-local one of the pleasures of meal times in China is trying to figure out the origins of the food, the ingredients and style preparation so alien to a European. Ultimately it was the dental records and snout that gave it away. "It's stewed rat head" one of my companions grins matter-of-factly before donning a pair of disposable plastic gloves, selecting a choice skull, snapping open its jaw and with a happy abandon not normally associated with this time of the morning proceeds to suck the meat from the bones. I tell myself that ultimately there is little difference between a well cooked rat or pig or cow or lobster but years of culinary conditioning kick in.

I forget to ask what kind of rat makes a good stew. Are free range better tasting than caged?

If there's a future perfect link to all of this, and I'm not entirely convinced that there is, then it's the plastic gloves that Cecelia uses during the meal. Eating stewed rats head is a messy business and the plastic gloves make sense but I can't help thinking that another culture would have evolved some form of implement to help expose the meat, or alternately that an apron would be worn and that hands would be first used then washed. When a task process, whether eating a rats head or lobster, changing a car's oil filter or even sorting though a digital music collection is this messy how to contain the 'dirty' from the 'clean'?

A number of small-town China market stalls serve soup in a regular bowl lined with a thin, transparent plastic bag. When the meal is over the bag is thrown and the bowl can be reused without needing to be washed. (Not that I've ever seen it used this way, but the bag-lining-the-bowl design is well suited to being a doggy-bag-bowl)

How do the cultural differences in the ways we interact with food carry over to the way we interact with what is carried, and what we worn? How well would the stick-your-finger-in-your-ear Whisper Phone go down in this mass-market Chinese context? In a world of wearables it's a question worth asking.

Heading to Tokyo tomorrow to pick up supplies, a fresh change of clothes and a travel companion before the next leg of my December journey. Peace of mind is an open road, hand-luggage and the promise of good times ahead.

Writing from Chengdu | | Permalink

Recycling Collection Options

Writing from Chengdu | December 15, 2006 | Permalink

Rubbish Collection Norms

Flexible waste pick up in Chengdu above, and three forms of fixed rubbish drop off from Jardins São Paulo below. If I understand correctly the waste in Brazil isn't placed directly on the sidewalk for two reasons: to deter rats; and to allow trucks with water jets to blast the street whilst driving by.

Writing from Chengdu | | Permalink

The Sound of Flem Hitting a Dirt Floor

If you close your eyes and listen carefully to the sounds in next room you can hear a large pot of chai coming to the boil. The stove and its owner are out of view, but a weak shadow is cast over the corridor between our rooms. Before long the smiling owner appears, places two fresh thermos flasks on a shelf in the corridor before his foot steps recede back into his workspace.

After two hours of early morning wandering around Lhasa's back alleys it was time to duck into a small chai house for some sustainence. Three rows of red laquered wooden benches face the back wall, or to be more precise they face the TV that is perched on the top right hand corner of the back wall. Hours ago the TV would have been blaring out bollywood movies to a packed local crowd but for now it sits in silence reflecting the room back on itself. To my immediate right are three labourers two with heavily worn hands and sun-at-altitude etched faces who I assume they are in their 30's and with them sits a fresh faced 10 year old. In front of them three sleeping bodies try to make the most of the limited space and benches designed for sitting not sleeping. The labourers look up as I walk in, nod and then shift their concentration back to chai and cigarettes. The kid is also smoking.

The menu options at this time of the day are either to go for a large or a small themos of chai, the ordering-gesture for which is difficult to mis-interpret. These simple choices remind me of a road trip through small-town Mexico and walking into one-room bar that only sold tequila by the shot, half or full bottle. The other memorable aspect of that experience was that the main feature on one one wall of the bar was an open urinal - how many can't-pee-when-you're-really-not-watching men walked out of there with a full bladder. How many were sober enough to care?

If you shut your eyes and listen the distinct sounds of a space gradually reveals itself. Here, the clearest sound is the repeated slurping of hot chai from small glass cups. At regular intervals this is followed by a low thwump as the worn cork is pulled from the thermos followed by the sound of fresh chai hitting the bottom of an empty glass. Throats are repeatedly cleared of flem and spit is allowed to fall to the dirt floor. One of the sleeping dead emits the gentlist of snores though his sleep pattern is sharply interrupted by a kid repeatedly trying to use a lighter that appears to have run out of fuel.

Nobody speaks. Outside as the city wakes the nearest thing to vehicles going by is bell attached to a cycle rickshaw.

Covering most of the wall on my right is a panoramic poster of Lhasa seen from a nearby mountain range. It's designer has thoughtfully surrounded it with a printed a wooden frame. On another wall a poster of a Chinese teenage with a skateboard looks down on our little nativity scene.

In Lhasa 1 yuan buys a thermos of hot sweet chai plus whatever memories you can walk out with.

Writing from Lhasa | December 14, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Informercials as a sign of a healthy productive society

The most frequently broadcast informercials on small hours Chinese TV are for energy drinks and breast enlargements. Whether the effects are accumulative? The latter promises to move ladies from an A cup to a C. There's a phone number to call but no web address.

Writing from Lhasa | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Spiritual Places, Places to Get Drunk

Writing from Lhasa | December 13, 2006 | Permalink

Homes Away From Home

The train journey from Chengdu to Lhasa takes 48 hours and 3 minutes. Before boarding passengers have to sign a waiver form saying that they don't have any significant ailments and that they are medically fit to cope with altitude - the highest mountain pass the train travels through is at 5000 meters and altitude sickness can start at around 3500. The form has been roughly (mis)translated into English including 'passengers are not suitable travel to the plateau area ... when they have one of the following diseases ... (f) highly dangerous pregnant women'.

The good news is that after 12 hours on the train I've yet to be attacked by a highly dangerous pregnant woman. I do however have had to cope with a dining car waitress who runs a side-line in selling an eclectic range of goods and she appears at my door every few hours with a different tray of goodies. The magnetic jewelry was just that, and her super tough socks which she ably demonstrated by running a wire brush across its surface looked like a steal. Just before we pull into Lhasa she's tries to flog me some strawberry milk tea and a Chinese language train time table. I can't explain the former but a train buff might appreciate the latter. However despite having taken the trans-Mongolian express this time last year I'm not especially enamoured by trains.

My home for the 2 days is a soft sleeper - one of four bunks in train compartment. It's off season and I've got the space to myself. Travelers to Tibet are supposed to be on a tour group but last year I discovered a travel agent in Chengdu who can set up a group of one - here are the tickets, have fun. The train is modern and the compartment has an electricity power socket and each bunk a flat panel TV showing Chinese VCDs. Fortunately it cuts out half an hour into the journey never to return. The compartments next to me are filled with chain smoking, tangerine munching, card playing Chinese gentlemen on their way to a holiday Lhasa - their carpeted floor is littered with the detritus of, well, card playing, chain smoking, tangerine chewing Chinese gentlemen. Not bad for a no smoking train. It doesn't take long before they make themselves at home in my space.

The journey itself offers up all sorts of magic, not least waking to a moonlit and frozen steppes and gazing up to a constellation filled sky. That hissing sound? Oxygen being piped into the carriage.

A train cleaning crew stands to attention on the platform as the train pulls into Lhasa station, their mops and brushes presented like weapons on a parade ground. Lines of cleaning crews are a common sight at airports for some reason they always seem too dressed too lightly for windswept context. China has a habit of throwing up unexpected contrasts - on a late night arrival at Chengdu Airport watching a cleaning crew cycle in a column across the vast tarmac landscape under the shadows of sleeping giants going by names such as Sichuan Air.

My home for the next few days is the Yak Hotel. If you're in Lhasa this is a good place to be.

Writing from Lhasa | December 11, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink

Selling Up, Locking In

Checking in at the Raffles Swisshotel Beijing - "You want executive room for xxx Yuan more?" ... "Better view, 2 hours free internet..." followed by "If you pay now you pay 24 hours internet access for only xxx Yuan". A coke and fries with that burger sounds great and indeed the room does have a better view of the smog.

To what extent does the customer acceptance of these 'offers' depend on how jetlagged the guest is? What are the variable factors that affect acceptance rates?

And with all the new data floating around (including the extended flight passenger manifests that the EU kindly sends the US) when, in 2010 you're checking into the Mondrian the receptionist loadedly asks you whether you'd like you'd to pay for that thai massage now or later its because, literally they know exactly where you've been.

Writing from Beijing | December 5, 2006 | Permalink

Contextual Advertising

Advertising for train pass (Suica) equipped mobile phones advertised at the point of their intended use - the ticket barrier.

Writing from Tokyo | December 4, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink

Societal Notions of Acceptable Anti-Social Behaviour

Smokers huddling around a smoking zone at the far end of a Shibuya train platform - a behaviour deemed as anti-social yet, by the very fact that infrasructure is present, accepted. A modern day opium den?

What similar behavours will future generations partake in? And how will society react?

6am Shibya station, waiting for the Narita Express.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere (in Tokyo)

Shibuya Station morning commuters walk past a sign advertising Mobile TV. 10 things you didn't know about mobile TV here.

Cultural practices and the the likelyhood of technology adoption.

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (3) | Permalink

Personal Cultural Radar

A lamp shade made from dozens of internal rubber sheaths of Tenga's - a Japanese single use penis pump.

For those of you who like to know how things work - a cross section diagram of a Tenga can be viewed here and its possible to contrast the internal differences between each of the designs that they make. The product packaging, its relative simplicity, and the rich sensory nature of its human interface when in use make it an interesting case study for user experience designers.

The lamp shade formed part of the Peace Needs a New Logo event in Aoyama and an element of its appeal (or otherwise) as an artifact is in understanding its origins. In practical terms it means having dismantled a penis pump which in turn implies having purchased and used one, or at least having spoken with someone who has. And whilst there are contextual, individual and cultural differences to what you discuss with whom, the obscurity of its origins, its display in a public space, and the very personal nature of a Tenga's use make this lamp shade a conversational bonding experience waiting to happen. As such it reminds me of the shift that is well underway in how we process the cultural references around us and how future changes in technology will in turn create new shifts in this landscape.

Today's mobile phone already combines the ability to process audio, visual and other sensor captured information. It is in essense an early form of a cultural radar - in tune with your personal preferences and the values you prescribe to. The quality of those carried sensors, the sensors in the world around us, the extent to which interaction is automated will only grow over time - leading to new ways of understanding our context. If you value the perspective and critical eye of WallPaper*, the New York Times or even Future Perfect then you'll simply sign up to their subscription service to apply their filter to your literal view of the world.

Given that part of the enjoyment of an object or service is in the process of discovery, in knowing and understanding obscure references, how does the designer/artist/creator remain two steps ahead when the links between things are inherently that much clearer?

As a valued reader kindly pointed out earlier this year Future Perfect is not half the site of Grant McCracken's This Blog Sits at The Intersection of Anthropoogy and Economics. When it comes to writing about culture I couldn't agree more. And finally credit where credit is due, during my travels to and from the mountains this week I finally managed to spend time on Adam Greenfield's Everywhere well worth a read if you want a more systematic approach to understanding the ubitquitous world.

Writing from Tokyo | December 3, 2006 | Permalink

Tokyo Wayfinding

Writing from Tokyo | December 2, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink

QR Bar Code Meta Data

QR bar codes (photo below) embedded into the mosaic of the station posters (above) - each 'tile' is a separate bar code. Snap a photo of the bar code with an appropriate camera phone to follow the link. From Shibuya station.

Writing from Tokyo | December 1, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink

Density of People In a Space

With the communication+ devices fully integrated into what you carry you are the infrastructure and that fixed point with which you interact today becomes fluid. What factors affect with what or whom you interact?

Had the pleasure of catching a rush hour train this morning. Related thoughts from Sao Paulo earlier this year.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Large Buttons, Gesture Input

Spent the last couple of weeks observing an elderly relative first puchase then use a digital camera for the first time. What stood out? The touch screen on the Sony T50. Why? Human motor skills depreciate over time and the soft keys are larger and less fiddly than anything than can be squeezed on the physical form factor.

But the bonus? The speed at which a (relative) novice learnt and understood gesture based interaction - sliding her finger left and right, to navigate photos.

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Out of Office

A positive aspect of working for a Finnish company is the respect for personal and vacation time - in July and August many of my colleagues take up to a month out of the office and head to their summer cottages. My personal equivalent to this as of last year and continuing this, is taking off most of December and some of January and exploring new parts of the world. With a hectic year's travel and research behind me there are a lot of ideas to formulate, a lot to write.

So as of next week I'll be heading to first to China and then to India with time at altitude in both Tibet and the Himalayas. I'm still not quite sure what I come back to (if you guess right you can win a Shibuya blinged iPod Nano), such is the game of corporate musical chairs. Oh, the scramble to find a seat before the music stops. One thing is for certain, next year the best is yet to come.

In a way my month off has already started - prompted by visiting family, time off in the Japanese Alps and coastal ryokan. There's nothing like the clarity that comes from watching the sun rise over the Pacific (in Izu above) or waking up above the clouds to put life, the universe and (more humbly) my research into perspective. That these mornings yield a disproportionate share of big ideas is merely a bonus.

Next to me on my desk there's a freshly brewed coffee that needs drinking (a rather tasty organic blend from Ugandan since you ask) which is probably the weakest way of leading into saying that In the next few days I'll share some research on, um, Shared Phone Use a study that co-incidentally also covers Uganda. For now I'll leave you with the following two questions: Of everything that you own what would you not share with others? And why not? Answers in the comments please.

Writing from Izu | November 30, 2006 | Comments (13) | Permalink

Posture Signfying Events

Writing from Izu | | Comments (2) | Permalink

Human Traffic Flows, Design Flexibility

Form and flow of the sign facilitated by the ability to read top to bottom. The flexibility of sign design in a culture that reads left to right and top to bottom.

Writing from Izu | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Things That Are Included By Default

By default what is included in the package? Knife, fork, straw & banana chewing gum. For every item why?

From a restaurant close to the Caspian in Iran.

Writing from Tokyo | November 29, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink

Street Language

Writing from Tokyo | November 28, 2006 | Permalink

Separation of Clean and Dirty Spaces

Shoes specifically for use in the male toilet room (the rest of the building, a mountain lodge is a shoe free environment) the result of a strong separation between clean and dirty. Visually the strongest demarkation of boundaries is the presence of the objects, toilet slippers, themselves.

Does it, should it, or could it apply to the storage and separation of clean and dirty (or private and not so private) digital content? Beyond the obvious, what makes for dirty content?

Writing from Akedake | November 27, 2006 | Permalink

Honour

Make a 100 yen donation to use a mountain public toilet - including a rather fetching woolen toilet cover ideal for sub-zero conditions.

Do people pay? See related post on making charity donations in Tehran.

Writing from Akedake | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Cutting to the Chase

Tangible reminders of memories for sale.

Writing from Akedake | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Trial, Error, Aspiration

Train carriage canvas for aspirant graf artists. Apply your tag/artwork/visual noise from the comfort of your own sofa/school desk/bedroom. A simple lifestyle object with strongly implied intentions.

From the Montana store, Heidelberg.

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Object Positioning and Flow

Keys positioned in doorway - making them easier to remember but sufficiently out of the way to not inhibit flow. From the same Akedake mountain lodge as previously.

See also point of reflection.

Writing from Akedake | November 25, 2006 | Permalink

Culturally Understood Sequences

Say the name Ichiro and ask a Japanese person over a certain age to guess the name of his male siblings they'll sequentially come up with the names Jiro, Saburo and Shirou. Why? Because at a particular time this naming sequence was popular amongst Japanese parents. (Admittedly there can't be that many Japanese families with 4 sequential male siblings but by naming the first Ichiro, and the second Jiro you are perhaps showing intent to have a large family).

Thought for today: culturally specific naming sequences of siblings, objects, products or services. The ways in which these sequences can be leveraged by designers e.g. to suggest that a product is the first of many. The extent to which these sequences can be exploited e.g. someone uses the first item of a little known sequence as a password, can guess other passwords based on other items in the sequence. The extent to which sequences have cultural equivilents.

Mountain hut rice cookers named Ichiro (above), and Jiro, Saburo (below).

Writing from Akedake | | Permalink

Mobile TV, Personal Experiences

Learn ten things you didn't know about Mobile TV in this essay.

A summary? Its all about a personal experiences; home use is surprisingly popular; watching is a small part of the whole; up to 4 people can view a mobile TV at the same time but the act of sharing changes what it means to be a phone; why accessories are a struggle; design content for changing user postures; immersion is possible but is it desireable?; interactive experiences require interaction which is difficult if the user is not holding the device; everything you wanted to know about very personal media consumption but were afraid to ask; and finally what, how and why people watch in secret.

You can download a new presentation on Mobile TV entitled Mobile TV, Personal Experiences here [4MB PowerPoint].

Want more? A paper co-authored with my colleagues Cui Yanqing and Younghee Jung (pictured in Seoul above) entitled Personal Television: A Qualitative Study of Mobile TV Users in South Korea can be downloaded here [0.2 MB PDF]. And the previously published presentation entitled An Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases can be downloaded from here [7MB, PowerPoint]

Related research as always, here.

Writing from Tokyo | November 20, 2006 | Permalink

Bacterial Paranoia And Device Handling

What are the cultural differences in attitudes towards cleanliness?

Some cultures have an inherently high awareness (or paranoia depending on your perspective) of bacteria and its perceived consequences. These photos are taken in carrier shops in Seoul, South Korea - where you can irradiate, air-brush, wipe and scent your phone.

How might this affect device usage? For starters: the extent to which devices are shared; where objects are placed when not used; the likelihood that a protective cover will be placed over a phone - all of which affect device interaction.

Related: cleaning swab for telephone in a Seattle hotel room.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

One Size Does Fit All

An innovative solution to the problem of an oversized frame.

From a field study in Kyotera, Uganda earlier this year.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Needle Through the Eye of a Fish

Twigs threaded through the eye of fish, from the market in the Caspian seaside town of Chalus.

Writing from Tokyo | November 18, 2006 | Permalink

Elevation to Art Form

The Heidelberg Montana graf shop somehow simultainiously at home and at odds with the twee surrounds of the old town. To what extent does the ability to see what other people have been doing in the same field, essentially comparison shopping legitimise the medium?

"Iranian grafitti?"
"..."
"Its all political isn't it?"

Indeed you might expect so.

Writing from Tokyo | November 17, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Data Transmission Mechanisms

An intriguing keynote presentation by Oxford University's Dominic O'Brien of at the World Wireless Research Forum on using solid state lighting to transfer data. Background research and information can be found here. Essentially it turns a solid state light source such as an LED traffic light into data transmission mechanism.

For thousands of years people have used light sources for low data transmission mechanisms - whether its hilltop beacons to warn of an impending invasion, ship to ship morse code or more recently the extensive use of car head-lights and tail-lights in Tehran's car to car flirting culture. The inventive step is to increase the data rates, reduce error rates and get the base technology - LEDs down to a mass market price point.

Whilst its likely that most of the data transfer will be ambient - unnoticed by humans the inherent properties of the data delivery mechanism (a light source) and the simple fact that humans have built in senses to process light (eyes+) makes for a number of interesting applications. For example what kind of visual cues will indicate that that that light source is compatible with your device? The type of content that is being transferred? That the data transfer process has completed? How does today's use of light map to light + metadata tomorrow? A simple example is that whilst it takes you 0.5 seconds for you to notice that the car in front is indicating to turn right your car already noticed in 0.1 seconds. Extrapolate this to all the cars on a freeway during rush hour - each passing information on to the car in front, the car behind. Yes the car behind you is really a doctor on his way to an emergency.

In 2012 when you're flashed by the teens in the car behind are they telling you to get out of the way or trying to download tunes eminating from your sound system/rear indicators?

And what if anything does this have to do with the maclaim graf found in a Heidelberg alleyway above? Only that the medium can be the message and you shouldn't assume that the message will be friendly.

Writing from Heidelberg | November 16, 2006 | Permalink

Infrastructure Covered

The inherent properties of infrastructure that support its blending into the background. The speed at which this transformation process occurs.

How does our awareness and appreciation of infrastructure (and the services it represents) change as what we perceive as infrastructure increasingly becomes mobile?

Writing from Heidelberg | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Relative Metrics of Success

Hard to figure out whom this advert is aimed at - its extolling the number of devices success of Bluetooth with a full page spread in the USA Today.

Writing from Heidelberg | | Permalink

Whose Finger on the Trigger?

From Heidelberg above and by A1one in Tehran below. The universality of emotionally evocative content

Writing from Heidelberg | | Comments (1) | Permalink

From Noise to Signal

Someone somewhere values that niche thing you know so much about, enough enough for a friend to ask a friend to buy a book in London and bring it to Helsinki. This issue of understanding what has value echoes a challenge we face during field studies: given that the value of what is recorded is often apparent after returning from the field how do you know what to document?

The answer is a valid reason for doing at least some of this kind of research in-house. When you out-source qualitative research the subcontractor is paid to present signals and filter out noise. But some of that noise does in fact have value, it just doesn't have value at the time of the report writing, or is not apparent to the report writers. Recording all photo/video/metadata is both impractical - too much data processing, boring - a trained monkey could do it, and morally dubious - how to protect the privacy of the people who feature in your data collection?

Writing from Helsinki | November 14, 2006 | Permalink

Snow Falling on Asphalt

In the Helsinki mothership today followed by the World Wireless Research Forum in Heidelberg for the rest of the week.

And the photos? Light snow flurries atop of Helsinki's Hotel Torni.

Writing from Helsinki | November 13, 2006 | Permalink

Personal TV

A mobile phone user sits alone watching live baseball whilst sitting in Komazawa Koen, Tokyo.

One of the surprising findings of a recent research study we did in South Korea was the extent to which Mobile TV was used in the home. Given the competition in the home from large screens, good audio, high definition and known content why would anyone watch mobile TV in the home space?

Its turns out that people really value control over the watching experience. No need to negociate with other family members over control of the remote or control of the sofa. Curled up in bed with a hot cup of cocoa. Of course. Want to multi-task whilst you're instant messaging/downloading/doing homework? Why Not? Extrapolate this contol over the experience to contexts in and outside the home. The key benefit from Mobile TV is not mobility- very few people will watch whilst actively on the move - its that the experience is personal. Its time to start thinking about Personal TV.

Picked up in a recently published summary of Mobile TV research published by Dr Shani Orgad. Plus a few slides from the South Korea study can be downloaded from here with a full paper due once a suitable venue to publish is found.

In the big scheme of things does a more personal experience for you imply a more impersonal experience for the rest of us? Are your personal experiences socially connecting? Or do they cut you off from everyone except your media?

Writing from Heidelberg | | Permalink

Harass, Segment

"On weekdays this car is 'only for women' in trains for Osaki and Shinkiba departing from this station from 7:38 to 9:33"

Of note: the necessity for gender segregation of train carriages; the precision of the rules; colour, design and placement of the sign.

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Friday Pop Quiz - Free Blinged Nano

Time to clear out the old.

I'll gift this Shibuya blinged iPod Nano to the first person who can guess my job come January 1st 2007. Bonus points for naming the city and country I'll be living in and, gosh, the name of my employer.

Post your answers to the comments.

The glittering prize will be shipped to one lucky winner once I figure out the answer myself.

Writing from Tokyo | November 10, 2006 | Comments (35) | Permalink

Two Wheels Good

Documenting a city or country from a car is a bit like doing human behavioural research without ever leaving a laboratory - there is worthy stuff you can learn but IMHO you'll pretty soon reach the limitations of what's interesting. Yeah I know, unless of course the focus of your research is car culture itself. But mostly getting out there requires removing the barriers between you and the world around you. What's your excuse when a motorbike and local driver can be yours for as little as 5 Euro for half a day? And even if motorcycle taxi's don't exist in a city of your choice it is possible to engage regular motorbike drivers to engagte in a bit of moonlighting.

Photos from motor cycle field research in Shanghai above, Kampala, Tehran, Hue, Fujian Province and Ho Chi Minh City below.

So you think language an issue? Some of the most effective days spent researching from the back of a motorbike have been with a driver that doesn't speak a word of English/German/Japanese and likewise me struggling to get my tongue around Farsi/Vietnamese/Chinese/Lugandan. What makes for a good research ride? A driver who is sufficiently aware of the passenger but ultimately knows exactly what he can get away with on the road/pavement/cattle path; a comfy passenger seat; plenty of cc's; and ultimately someone who is not phased by requests to stop in wierd places; and ends up anticipating places and peoples of interest.

Pillion highlights from this past year?

Interviewing boda-boda (motorbike taxi) driver's in Uganda for a study of shared mobile phone use, and on one occasion speeding through Kampala sitting Tour de France cameraman style i.e. the wrong way round on the passenger seat trying to get a good shot of a colleague Indri conducting an eventually very successful interview. Trust in your driver is a wonderful thing, especially when near misses are only witnessed after the miss and the only practical alternative is blind panic.

Being baled out of a sticky street situation by a motorbike driver in Tehran who knew just when to come and rescue me from over inquisitive officials. Watching Ho Chi Minh City wake and commute to work - Vietnam is after all still a 2-wheeled culture. The morning included a stop for a double condensed milk coffee and spending the next 30 minutes gripping and tripping.

And finally a day in the mountains of Fujian Province listening to tunes and staring contentedly at the back of a plant pot helmetted rider, who later introduced me to his favourite barber. The size of rock falls that were common in that part of the world would have wiped us out no matter how much wickerware protection he was wearing.

Bargain hard, tip well, don't expect a helmet.

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink

When Every Private Vehicle is an Ad-Hoc Shared Taxi. When...

Many private vehicles in Tehran operate as shared taxi's - stand in the road stick out your hand, communicate your destination through the window of the slowing vehicle and if he or occasionally a she, is going your way then you have a ride. The resulting dance looks somewhat like mixed gender curb crawling with both men and women peering into car windows agreeing on the details of the transaction in advance and hopping in.

The process is relatively efficient - single occupancy cars taking on passengers to travel routes they are likely to travel anyway, and the process makes me wonder why similar practices haven't evolved informally in places like London, Tokyo or New York. Yes there's car pooling in places like Los Angeles but it's mostly pre-arranged and not as widespread as in Tehran.

Is this kind of service more likely with: a means of screening potential customers; and our abilty to increasingly micro-coordinate making smaller decisions later?

Mobile devices are already capable of running as fully functioning nodes on the internet i.e. not just a terminal, and can in effect act as a personal and proximate, digital, connected presence. What ad-hoc services will be provided in markets such as Tehran? How to design these services in a societies where the boundary between official and unofficial is at best blurred?

When every car is an ad-hoc taxi, every everything can be an ad-hoc something.

Heading to Finland on Sunday if any of the Helsinki crew is around?

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (1) | Permalink

Four Person Taxi Meter

When you run a shared taxi service and customers step into and out of your ride at different points of the journey - how to you keep track of what to charge each person? This four person taxi meter introduced by Tehran's taxi authority technically works but according to this taxi driver is not often used. Why? Unpopular with customers more used to a culture of bargaining.

This meter is crudely indicative of the finer granularity of data that increasingly surrounds us. In which cultures will this measurable/precise data be welcomed? In which rejected?

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (1) | Permalink

Documenting You, Documenting Me

A Cairo waiter shows off his photo of this researcher above, and a more traditional studio photographer in Delhi below.

With the tools to capture experiences in the hands of more and more people its not surprising that one of the experiences that ends up being documented is, um, the process of being documented. How does being watched affect how we (researchers) work? when will we have the first Rodney King style documentation of a mis-behaving field researcher?

Writing from Tokyo | November 9, 2006 | Permalink

Demarkation of Segregation

Physical barrier on a Kobrasol bus deliniating who has paid and who has not, in the above photos. Male only queue for a Tehran bus in photos below - the female only queue was for the back half of the bus, and yes with equal number of seats in both halves.

At what part of the (service) process to sort/filter/segregate? Motivation for segregation? Implications of segregation on the objects/people being segregated?

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Gender Norms

Male housekeeper in a Tehran Hotel above, female paintball team in Northern Tehran below.

Writing from Tokyo | November 8, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

When Localisation Means Not Localising

Weighing scale in Tehran above, and Tokyo below. Both languages have their own scripts for numbering, so why are western numbers used as a default? If you enjoy the challenge of localisation you may like this.

How do local preferences translate into the device user interface? Ask someone about what kind of design they want and they'll talk passionately about having a user interface localised into their own language. The challenge is matching your and their idea of what it is to be local.

Writing from Tokyo | November 7, 2006 | Permalink

Knocking Off

Diesel, Pamu, Rebook on sale in a Cairo store.

Remember the comments about Al Zawahri in his promo video wearing New Balance shoes? What chance they were fakes?

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Opening Rituals

Exhibition opening at stich Daikanyama.

Writing from Daikanyama | November 6, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Trust in What You Give

At any time the average urban Iranian is within a few meters of a collection box like the one pictured - the larger model can be found at regular intervals on most pavements and its smaller cousin (photo below) is frequently found on shop walls. A snap assumption would be that their frequency is indicative of the nature of giving in Iranian society, but is it really so? Does the tangible reminder to give translate into actual giving?

It's partly an issue of trust - to what extent do you trust that the money that is placed in the collection box ends up in the hands of those for whom it is intended? Street crime is an issue in Tehran - I’d guess from the way people behave, carry and interact with the objects they carry it is similar to London in its intensity. To a thief the charity box represents an-hoc 24 hour loose change machine - to be carried off, forced open or, given the volume of keys that must be out there, simply unlocked.

And supposing you trust that the money is affectively collected by the, um, money collector, do you trust that it is put to good use? How transparent is the collection, distribution and application of those monies?

Fast forward to our naturally future perfect, where you carry the real time means to browse, preview, pay, track, and in the case of digital goods and services, receive and store what you buy i.e. through a personal mobile device. What new ways of charity giving does this enable? What is the personal mobile device equivalent of putting a few pennies in a collection box? A pre-loaded Give Now application - simply select a charity an amount and press send where the results are billed to your account? Or donations triggered by the tasks you complete - every time game played results in a 10 cent donation. Even matched funding according to how much you spend on your phone bill, assuming of course calls are not already free by then.

But as with the collection boxes on the streets of Tehran, how sure are you that your digital donation is actually being put to good use? Whom do you trust to administer the money collection service? A Vodafone, MTN or Cingular? A Motorola, Samsung or Nokia? An HSBC or CitiBank? Or a charity branded application or service?

And given that donations can be tracked to what extent do you, or for that matter the charity, want to highlight exactly when and how the money is spent?

Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink

Opportunity to Give

As collection boxes become part of the urban landscape, how to ensure that customers continue to give? And the same question when giving is digitized?

Photo from newspaper kiosk in Tehran.

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Moral Guardians, Learned Behaviours

As our collective ability to watch and monitor becomes ever more sophisticated how does this change the relationship between individuals, governments and organisations?

In our future perfect your government, network provider and/or device manufacturer has taken it upon themselves to keep society decent. Your communication device monitors your spoken conversations and every time you swear a 10 Euro cent 'fine' is levied to a virtual swear box. Each spoken swear word appears on your phone bill as 'Profanity'. The only question is whether profanities need to be itemised?

Writing from Tokyo | November 5, 2006 | Permalink

Line, End

Signal, Daikanyama attempts to brand the end of the line. Urban spam? How could it be cleverer?

Cheers to the Tokyo crew - you're what Sunday's in Tokyo are about.

Writing from Daikanyama | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Features That Help Owners Make the Sale

Menu items on a japanese Sony Ericsson phone converted on the fly into a comic strip - each speech bubble represents a function. Navigating left or right trigger a new comic strip layout. Highly creative but also a jarring transition as soon as you skip to any other part of the phone's standard menus driven interface.

The extent to which this kind of software interface feature helps raise awareness of the product - the 'hey check this out' part of hanging out with friends. The extent to which device owners actually uses this feature once bought - or whether they revert to the (arguably more) usable menu driven interface for day to day usage. The extent to which use after purchase is irrelevant i.e. the feature has served its function.

It's owner? David Williams of Asentio Design Shanghai.

Writing from Daikanyama, back of | | Permalink

Deepresso

A varient of Georgia Coffee called Deepresso showing at least that someone in Coca Cola has a sense of humor.

The effect of product naming on the enjoyment (or otherwise) of consumption.

The happy convenience store model? Danke und gruesse are in order.

Writing from Aoyama | November 4, 2006 | Permalink

Peace Needs a New Logo

Lights projected onto the United Nations University in Aoyama being photographed by numerous passers by. Proportion of camera phones to cameras? About 8 to 1.

Writing from Aoyama | | Permalink

The Art of Remembering in a Nano World

Typical behaviours when carried objects go below a certain size: attaching similar objects together such as key rings; grouping similar objects together - the wallet being a commonly carried example; enlarging such as adding straps. Clustering is somewhat like a mobile center of gravity. Straps serve multiple purposes and I'll write about the nuances once I've sorted out the research.

What happens when more of what we carry is designed and minaturized using nano tech? Will we become a society of attachers, groupers and enlargers? At what point do objects become so small that these strategies fail? At what point do objects that evolve into services become so distant that these strategies fail? Example - a carried key evolves into a remote monitoring service that provides access to the secure places and objects in your life - your car, home, diary. Embedding or attaching nano-objects to the body is one solution, but will another category of object arise - that of placeholder? An object whose only purpose it is to remind and support our use of some minutely small other object (or naturally clusters of minutely small other objects). Placeholder's already exist - the business card is a common example. How will tomorrow's placeholders be different than todays?

When an object can be any shape or size what shape or size should it be? When does form not follow function?

And the photos above? A Japanese bondaged bunny attached as a strap to an easy-to-lose USB drive.

Writing from Tokyo | November 3, 2006 | Permalink

Remembering Founder

From a deli in Chalus, and related thoughts from Cairo.

Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Mobile Classifieds

From a Tehrani free sheet.

Writing from Tokyo | November 2, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

ID Cards and the market for Fake ID Cards

Take a journey through a Chinese urban landscape and you'll soon come across stenciled advertisements for fake IDs - one phone call, meet up, hand over some yuan and you can obtain a work live/permit for a different city. In China there are restrictions on where you can live/work and although its possible to get away with it, having the necessary permit brings a degree of flexibility. Jump over the ocean to the US where college students are frequently carded - producing a photo ID, typically a driver's license to get served in bars or enter nightclubs. It's not surprising that in the US fake IDs abound, or at least that they did when I was underage and hitching my way across Texas.

What has this got to do with Iran? Iranians carry a National ID card and from experience where there are originals there are invariably fakes. Or are there? Buying a train, bus or plane ticket requires the ID card but the activities where fake IDs are most likely to be used in other cultures - drinking alcohol and entering night clubs don't apply to Iran. Underground events or private pool parties aren't the sort of places where a card with a photo is any more likely to get you in and buying alcohol is strictly an under the counter affair.

What mainstream activities enabled by being able to prove you are a different age, person or even gender? Are these 'benefits' sufficient to trigger the mainstream use of fake ID cards?

And what does this have to do with the photos above? Actually... nothing, they're just details from one of dozens of revolution related murals that have been painted on the sides of Terhan tenements. These remind me of the 'men ...rituals... touch...' by Barbara Kruger.

Writing from Tokyo | November 1, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Local Graf

Writing from Tehran, suburbs of | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Abstract Commodities: Money, Identity

The shared understanding and agreement of value that enables markets to form and transactions to take place. Current Iranian Rials, Shah era Rials and US Dollar bank notes for sale in the photo above, and SIM card + phone numbers below.

SIM cards are still scarse in Iran - ordering one takes months unless you're willing to pay to jump the queue. Numbers starting with a 1 - the first SIM cards to be issued by the government/operator, command a higher price than more recent issues. Abstract values indeed.

Shipping out in a few minutes. Cheers to the local crew for making it happen so smoothly: Mahsa, Saeed, Mohy, Nigar and Azadeh.

Writing from Tehran | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tehran Sk8, RIP

Unused swimming pool in a Tehran housing estate converted into a skate park - to my knowledge the only skate venue in Iran. Whilst the brick & concrete ramp construction is admirable the current state of the ramps shows there's not a lot of skatin' going on here.

Writing from Tehran, suburbs of | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Dancing in the Dark

Iran is a society where an unmarried man and woman alone in a car together can trigger a ticking off, fine or worse if stopped by the Basij - a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As well as the more common parks and shopping malls how else to meet the boy or girl of your dreams without falling foul of the authorities? For some younger driver's Tehran's car 2 car flirt culture has evolved to fill the niche.

Rules of the game? Pile in a car and head with your same sex possie to one of the city's flirt strips, cruise up and down until you spot a likely target, being careful to pick a car that's broadly your car's equal and then aggressively use tail lights, fog lights and rear windscreen wipers to initiate the courting ritual. A response is equivilent to a pick-up and the cars cruise side by side to arrange later rendezvous through open windows and over the sound of preferred music tastes. Rapid excelleration and braking are optional.

Need a social excuse for getting out of the vehicle and interact face to face? Nudge someone elses car and swap personal details for 'insurance purposes'. Iran as lead use case for anyone developing car to car communication solutions?

Cheers to our local guides for the heads-up.

Writing from Tehran | | Permalink

Wayfinding Redundancy II

The reader's relative position in the city highlighted on the sign - in the photo the small red triangle is overlaid on a Tehran City logo. Given that a mountain range in the North of the city is a constant reference point the information is somewhat redundant.

Writing from Tehran | October 31, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Consequences of Walking in the Wrong Door

I'm currently sitting in a roadside restaurant sipping coffee and trying to avoid eye contact with a heavily set gent on the next table. It's quite difficult because I know he knows and I'm wondering if anytthing will come of it.

We're situated is on the hug-the-mountain road somewhere between Tehran and Amol. To our left lies Mt. Damavand - Iran's highest peak and the focus of today's attention. Except that my goal of scaling a decent mountain in these final two days in Iran has come to naught due to a combination of mostly positive factors - the driver having sidetracked me with a series of increasingly interesting diversions. And anyway this time was set aside to think through the events of the last month and focus on some big decisions for the next - I recently passed a six year milestone at Nokia and need to figure out where and with whom to focus the next.

Don Norman's treatise on designer's taking responsibility for people pushing a door that was designed to be pulled was one of things that inspired me to get into this line of work, so there's some kind of justice that it's the current reason for my current undoing. Twenty minutes ago I was, shall we say in need, and confronted with two signs denoting access to a male and a female toilets. Yes I know I should have figured out the Arabic for male and female public toilets but frankly it's not been that kind of trip. The challenge? There were no secondary design clues - no colour coded signs, no difference in smell (ladies trust me on this) and no one walking in or out to help me decide which door to pick. For all my inherent prejudice against blue denoting male and red or pink denoting female, colour coding gender specific signs sure helps you’re struggling with Arabic or any other unfamiliar script. The often re-assuring confirmation that you've walked into the right/wrong toilet - the presence of a urinal is wholly missing from Iran's public toilets - the squatting position dictated as the posture of choice by the powers that be.

So I flip a mental coin and walk in, do what I need to do, clean-up and walk out. And its one the way out that I meet the heavy set gent, walking out the other door.

BTW - photo above from a gents.

Writing from Rehney | October 30, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tire Man

Writing from Tehran | | Permalink

Communal Bathing, Social Bonding

A single metal pipe feeds volcanoes-hot water into an octagonal pool, and with my feet pressed up against one edge of the pools rim a local resident starts to vigorously pummel my back. Across the octogon a Che-bearded gentleman sits perfectly still lathered in shampoo from head to toe, and to my left my driver and a graying member of the local community converse about life, football and the foreigner sitting in their midst.

The social nature of this public bath is the reason why I end up staying longer than expected - a chance to observe and interact with the male residents from the mountain village of Ab Karb that drift in and out over the course of our two hour stay. Bath house nudity is not appreciated here, unlike say a simillar venue in China or Japan which explains why 30 minutes ago I was led through the village to find something suitable to wear. Walking out the store 20 Rials (1.7 Euro) lighter and the new owner of a baggy swimming costume with a crude 'Speedo' stenciled across its crotch. I'm actually quite happy because another resident eyed up the same pair I ended up buying and the only alternative was day-glo green.

The changing area is set back in an alcove no more than a meter from pools edge and later as we leave I see that after 2 hours in here the clothes have a gentle steam pressed feel to them. The first few minutes are spent observing local bathhouse etiquette: everyone greets one another with an salaam; street clothes and shoes are OK poolside until you get changed (a big no-no in Japan); and once changed new arrivals can make themselves comfortable on any untaken edge of the octagon; its acceptable to request or give back scrubs and a rudimentary back massage; though strangely no-one actually enters the pool - preferring to draw water using plastics buckets and pour on water. The reason for this immediately apparent on first contact with the water - its far to hot to dip body parts into for any length of time.

During my student years in London a female flat mate and I used to visit the same sauna complex - York Hall in Bethnal Green on different gender segregated days of the week. She relayed to me that the women pretty much kept to themselves to themselves, whereas on male days people were quite sociable. Actually a few men went beyond sociable to intimate - for some it had a double function as a gay pick up joint. But by and large it was a space in which communication was not considered taboo.

As we walk into the sunlight, sulphus cleaned, two thoughts occur to me - as there are more ways to support distance relationships and live more virtual lives, does this put greater emphasis on face to face social interaction in common core activities such as eating and bathing? And how what would be different in a society where communal mixed gender bathing was the norm?

Writing from Ab Karb | | Permalink

Literal Translation, In the Name of God

Only a few days of the study left and a still a need to cover a lot a ground in different parts of the city - in Terhan if you want to beat the traffic you either take a motorbike or the metro and since I need to document above ground it's a bike + driver. Lunch is spent sipping a decent coffee - Raees Cafe on Jam St. trying to making calls whilst admiring the advertisement for the Jeff Koons Illy collection. Its too much to hope to see any Koons + Cicciolina products on the shelves here.

For one call the automated operator voice kicks in - Bismillah hir hahram ibrahim... which is then followed by a literal translation in English "In the name of god. This is the International Iranian Switching Center. The number you have dialed does not exist on this network."

One for you l10n people out there.

Writing from Tehran | October 29, 2006 | Permalink

Wayfinding Redundancy I

An arrow pointing the way to Mecca on the ceiling of a Tehran hotel room - a simple enough task for a GPS enabled mobile device. Given the relative predictability of everyday life, and the multitude of actual and relative directional cues - in what contexts is a Muslim really unlikely to know the direction of Mecca? What other more emotional needs could a digital direction finder meet?

Writing from Tehran | | Permalink

Both Ways

Local death notices frequently posted around the small coastal town of Chalus, though not yet spotted in Tehran.

To what extent does a sense of community make posting these viable? To what extent do posters like these foster a sense of community?

Writing from Chalus | October 27, 2006 | Permalink

Behavioural Norms

That its OK to camp on the pavement and road. That the green grass is ignored - on the bottom photo everyone opts for the pavement. Locally defined camping.

Writing from Chalus | October 26, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Over Mountains Passes to the Caspian

Today's office is a villa situated on the outskirts of the Caspian sea-side town of Chalus.

Arriving last night's the surrounds looked like a cross between Nagano, Dieppe and Hilo - a suburban highway surrounded by lush vegetation, cloud touched mountains on the horizon and rain. Constant, incessant rain. So why are we here?

After 6 days of intensive data gathering in Tehran and 2 weeks in Cairo before that we need space to discuss and reflect. Yesterday our driver Mr. Bikhi transported us North along the winding mountain roads to here in Chalus. The drive normally takes 3 hours but we arrive after 5 - the traffic having come to a complete standstill due to an accident. Given that the road is single lane and that a number of drivers treated it as a dual carriageway an accident comes as no surprise. Iran is the kind of culture where you look both ways on a one way street before crossing the road. As we wait in the car the impacted vehicle is towed by signaling the Yin and Yang of the situation - the severity of its damage suggests someone has been hurt, but the fact that the car is being towed means our journey can continue. As far as I can tell the car is an Iranian made Peikan - recently manufactured but based on a classic 1950's design - a colleague later tells me that the engine is actually imported from the UK and is based on the Hillman (older British readers may remember the Hillman Imp). As its damaged frame is limps by I'm guessing that the car is not built around the principal of crumple zones, side impact bars and airbags, technologies - what we take for granted eh? The accident is not the only reason for our delay - the night before we left the government suddenly announced a 4 day holiday to coincide with the end of Ramazan resulting in more traffic weaving its way out of Tehran. That a 4 day national holiday can be introduced with only a 6 hour notice is perhaps indicative of the unpredictability of the decision making process and ordinary life here.

We spend a long evening reading through interview transcripts, the silence punctuated by conversations about data points and ideas triggered by the same. Ambient audio recordings from Cairo are played to give the team members a greater sense of having been there, though the term "ambient Cairo street sounds" is an oxymoron - most of Cairo simply isn't ambient. Which makes autumnal Tehran feel so calm, and this villa positively tranquil. Brainstorming starts tomorrow in earnest but we're already half-way there.

For readers in this part of the world on the 29th October I’ll be giving a joint presentation with my Nokia colleague Ramin Vatanparast at Tehran University, Department of Art and Industrial Design entitled Design Research: from field study to the design of products, applications and services.

Writing from Chalus | October 25, 2006 | Permalink

Headlines

From the Iran Daily.

Writing from Tehran | October 23, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Chandeliers and a Piano

A group interview in an upscale north Tehran restaurant.

Behind me to my left a dozen or so ladies dressed conservatively in black from the neck down but more like a bouquet heading up - fancy headscarf's covering coiffure hairdos, heavily made up faces and even one lip stud - the first open body piercing I've spotted here. Their constant chatter carries across the restaurant and any lulls in their conversation coincide with the dramatic moments from a Ramazan soap opera emanating from a 42 inch Panasonic flat screen mounted on the wall in front of where I'm sitting. An actress spends most of the evening tied up with a gun to her head, whilst her beau runs around a dilapidated house with a plank of wood in his hand. Our interviewer battles through the excitement of the kidnapping and somehow keeps the session momentum going. I suspect the audio transcripts of this session won’t be much use.

When it's all wrapped up, we walk back at the office/apartment to find team is finishing off today's data entry and a late night take-away. Given our schedule there's something welcoming about turning up at a gently buzzing space - where everyone knows what to do.

The logistics of running this kind of study mean we either opt for a hotel suite or have to rent an apartment. In Iran a private apartment is our only real choice because it's not culturally appropriate for the 4 female members of our 8 person team to come and go to a hotel suite, particularly given the hours that we keep. Similarly our street data gathering teams are paired male-male and female-female.

Our apartment is situated in northern Tehran - a rather grand space with chandeliers a piano and many a lace covered coffee table. It's still less than half the price of an equivalent hotel - all credit to our local guys for finding it. Doily-grandeur is not appropriate for working in and it takes only 20 minutes to reclaim the space as ours - the printer gently hums, a map of the city stretches across one wall and an Arabic 'no mobile phones' sign picked up in Cairo nestles between two ornate elephants on the mantelpiece.

I've often wondered what hotel workers make of our mobile office - everything from the annotated map of the city, participant profiles, a plethora of recording equipment and the gradual build up of visual data. Everything here is easily explained in context but I'm also aware that everything here can be taken out of context. The question is who would want to take what out of context and what are the consequences of that re-interpretation? Part of this job is assessing risk and in the current geo-political climate these are not idle questions. Before you jump to conclusions I consider the risk pretty much the same working from Tehran, Washington, London or Cairo.

Writing from Tehran | | Comments (0) | Permalink

Pixel Art

Carpet style.

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Textures of a Mountain Lodge

In six weeks or so the ski-season will have started.

Writing from Tehran | | Permalink

Devil Bush

First piece of stencil art spotted in Tehran.
This is the city of murals.

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Uncondusive Spaces

Ad-hoc interviews in a bowling alley seemed like a good idea at the time - after all the same location had worked well on a research road trip through the US. In Tupelo on the eve of Elvis's birthday the lanes were the local social hub and the pace and space highly condusive to social interaction and documentation. But here techno drowns out any hope of meaningful dialog, even between team members.

Won one, lost one, glad we came.

Writing from Tehran | October 22, 2006 | Permalink

Wet Room

The lip that deliniates the border between the bathroom and the rest of the the hotel suite. The world can be divided in homes that have wet rooms (the whole room can be treated like a shower cubicle - Iran, Japan), dry rooms (your average German, Italian bathroom) and no-rooms (don't have access to running water).

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Import Norms

Bowling lanes from the USA, shoes from China.

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Doping Brand Goods

Honey and nuts since you ask. And the weight lifter ties neatly into the wrestler/weightlifter interest that seems prevalent here - yesterday the taxi driver quoted me names from the iron pumping scene in the UK. Class.

Writing from Tehran | October 20, 2006 | Permalink

Missing, a Good Thing