Advertising in 2012
Lines leading up an Akihabara staircase to a maid cafe above, and through a São Paulo station below.
What do the properties of the line tell you about what to expect at the destination? Or whether there is a destination? What if these lines were ethereal? A digital flow made visible by your personal communication device, like having a radio tuned to static, walking into a signal and following. What would the flow communicate to encourage you to seek out its destination?
Writing from Tokyo | August 22, 2006 | Comments (3) | Permalink
Relevant, Less Relevant, More Relevant
Not sure if this São Paulo graffiti refers to this or this?
Writing from Tokyo | August 15, 2006 | Permalink
Digital Gait
Knowing a person by the sound of their footsteps, their gait. What would be unique about your digital gait?
From a series of photos taken in Shibuya Station above and Sé Station below.
Writing from Tokyo | August 14, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink
Personal Space, Changes In
The human density from the process of queueing and then boarding a train in Sé Station, above. The degree to which personal space is maintained at a pedestrian crossing in Shibuya visually extenuated by the umbrellas, below. Different cultures have different norms as to what constitutes an acceptable amount of personal space. How does this distance differ between contexts? In any given context what are acceptable 'excuses' to breach this space?
How do notions of personal space, privacy change as more about how we define ourselves and how others define us become digital? What are acceptable excuses to breach personal-digital space? How do you breach someone's personal-digital space?
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Your Next Job Is Here
To round off today's virtual visit to Brazil - human billboards seated in a row carrying advertisements for jobs. In the photos below - a row of applicants queues and job advertisements displayed on public and ad-hoc infrastructure.
Many of the people queuing will have public access to online job advertising so what is that attracts, and continues to attract job advertisers and job seekers to this physical space? What are the benefits of human over stationary billboards? Are these benefits being fully utilised? What are the cultural characteristics that make human billboards omnipresent in this Sao Paulo street?
How do the human billboards affect the perception of the quality of the job (or other services) on offer?
Writing from Tokyo | August 4, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink
Mobile Location Based Advertising
Mobile advertising From Shanghai (above), Sao Paulo, Ho Chi Minh City and Delhi (in sequence, below). If these vehicles and the majority of people are carrying connected high capacity devices what kind of services does this enable? What will be your criteria for judging whether to connect or not?
OK, technically the Delhi photo is announcing a funeral.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
The Positioning of People
Human hoardings in a Sao Paulo street - there were at leat 16 different information hawkers. What would be different if they were selling digitial services or content?
For a Tokyo equivilent see the value of you, is where you are.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Tangible vs Digital
Locks and MP3s for sale side by side in a Sao Paulo market street. For customers buying digital content from street vendors how to recognize the quality of what is for sale? That it plays? That it contains the correct music? That the metadata is present and accurate? In the way that collectiions are put together?
In the corner of the DVD market stalls below you can (just) spot a portable DVD player - for offering customers previews of movies. For music and in a noisy street environment how can a buyer appreciate what it is they are buying? Currently the quality of music bought in these contexts is largely 'that the CD-ROM or DVD actually plays', rather than the quality of the recording, but like with DVD previews its only a matter of time before some form of value added preview is offered. In some Delhi markets its more likely that the music would be burned just-in-time - its already the case with software purchased through the same channels.
With digital music larger file sizes might imply higher quality recordings. Part of the AllofMP3 business model is to allow the customer to choose the quality and ultimately pay according to the resulting file size - for example MP3s can be encoded at low, high or CD quality (128, 192 or 320 kbps) and the customer can choose which DRM free format to encode into. There is a flip side to all this of course.
How can street sellers raise the perception of quality of their digital wares? How will quality be judged by future, more savvy consumers?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Security Concerned
A metro-using Paulista shields his back pack by wearing a coat.
Given all the security and theft stories both prior to and on arrival in Brazil this kind of most-obviously concerned-with-theft wearing style was rare. From our various studies on where people carry stuff (not that we did any formal research in Brazil, but drawing on data from 8 other cultures) people concerned with theft tend to carry bags and objects of value e.g. mobile phones or wallets hidden, within easy reach of hands, in lines of sight and/or in tactile contact to the body. Given that a back pack worn normally is mostly out of sight and out of reach the number spotted being worn on the Sao Paulo metro was surprising.
For every context a series of trade-offs.
Writing from Tokyo | August 2, 2006 | Permalink
Under the Flyover
The Garrido Boxing gym taken during a São Paulo how the-city-wakes-up session, which eventually morphed into trying to figure out how-people-utilise-the-space-under-flyovers.
Related photos here.
Writing from Tokyo | July 27, 2006 | Permalink
Smaller. Happier?
Re-sellers catering for highly price sensitive customers whether its cigarettes sold individually (Sao Paulo, above), shampoo & soap powder and tobacco (Delhi, below) or small units of call time in the Philippines. To what extent can what elements of goods and services be broken down into smaller parts? If manufacturers are unable or unwilling to directly cater to this market themselves what design elements support secondary markets? What are the limits of this approach?
Why does the Sao Paulo shop not offer a service to pair up customers who cannot afford to buy the sole consumption rights to a cigarette? Why is there not an aftermarket for second or even third hand smoke & nicoteen? What are the limits indeed.
Writing from Tokyo | July 26, 2006 | Permalink
Density & Flow & Use of Spaces
An hour spent people watching at Sé Metro station. What if anything, is unique about the São Paulo context?
Limited undertaking of activities such as reading, text messaging, and listening to music whilst waiting for or riding transport; the density of people at 16:00 on a friday; that the train pictured is pulling out of the station with many passengers still on the platform; separate platforms to enter and leave the train; that in culture with a high perceived risk of theft a number of bags are carried on people's backs - essentially out of sight.
Engaging in tasks such as listening to music or reading send a signal to others that your senses are othewise engaged. What can be undertaken without drawing attention to the fact that a task is being carried out? What strategies do people use to avoid detection? How do these strategies change according to the context?
Sad to leave São Paulo, but good to be heading home to enjoy the Tokyo summer.
Writing from Sé | July 23, 2006 | Permalink
Placement
Why are the stickers advertising the services of Mika, Karla, Pati, Juliana, Kakau and Sheilinha (and/or their pimp) placed on the phone body and handset and not in the infrastructurre of the booth itself? Why stickers and not cards that are popular in places like London or Berlin?
There's a Hugler Sao Paulo phone model in there somewhere.
Writing from Perdizes | | Comments (2) | Permalink
The Speed of Subcultures
A saturday night of Sao Paulo subcultures.
A Paulista uses his mobile phone to video the smoking, oh all right then - smokin' wheelspin from a muscle car in a downtown backstreet (above); climbers abseil down from the Sumare bridge onto the motorway traffic island; and bathroom covered with S&M club flyers in a Consolacao dive bar (below).
The first activity starts out legal but can drift into a grey legal territory. Whilst the abseiling is being clamped down by the new mayor it's not as if it's not obvious to passing traffic and the police did not intervene whilst I was there.
Thought for today? The blurring of legal, non-legal and illegal activities depending on context. The change in the legal status as laws play catch-up with what's happening on the ground. And on a slightly different tack - the speed at which sub-cultures are disseminated, absorbed and re-appropriated for local contexts.
Writing from Consolacao | | Permalink
Icons, Rituals
The role of faith, religious icons, rituals in everyday life, from Sao Paulo above, and Old Delhi below.
For everything I believe in there are more people who believe in something else. The same goes for the rest of you.
Writing from Consolacao | | Permalink
Lateral Thinking Required
Writing from Jardins | | Permalink
Inverse Textures
Writing from Jardins | | Permalink
Context & Understanding
Sao Paulo is very much a city of flyovers and underpasses, that latter being the focus of yesterday's street research.
This refrigerator has been converted to a novel use. What is it currently used for?
Photos contain some clues but I don't reckon any of you will get it.
Update: The following photo shows its recycled use - as equipment in an under-the-flyover gym.
Writing from Bela Vista | July 22, 2006 | Comments (13) | Permalink
Touching Bases
A few days in the Sao Paulo to wrap up this trip to Brazil. In a world of dense urban spaces it doesn't get much more dense-urban than this.
The city is going through a heat-wave of sorts - the violence between Police and local gangs has escalated with police stations and government buildings being attacked. I'm tempted to say that it there is an Escape from New York edge to the city, but for the locals its business as usual.
Tonight's driver has promised a Paulista's view of the city, lets see if he delivers.
Writing from Perdizes | July 21, 2006 | Permalink
So New It's...
Still covered signs at the check-in counter of TAM Airlines - the moment between delivery, installation and use.
Varig appears to be cancelling a lot of flights out of Sao Paulo.
Writing from São Paulo | July 11, 2006 | Permalink
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