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 | August 4, 2006 | Permalink
Who Values Your Data?
What is the value in knowing what is going on in each these Shanghai apartments?
Who would pay to know what the inhabitants use; their personal preferences; family preferences; what they look for; what they are planning; their secrets; what they buy; what they sell; who they communicate with; and what they communicate about; the emotional or practical value of that communication.
Which company will be the first to offer a we-pay-you-to-store-your-dataTM service? How many consumers would give up their pseudo privacy for a little cash?
Writing from Tokyo | June 5, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Subtleties in the Norm
The red-background-gold-text welcome mat is a regular feature of many shops and restaurants in China - and in many respects has become cultural norm. What subtle (or not so subtle) messages do they send to passers by, in how they are placed, the degree of wear and tear, the language(s) that are supported, and how they are serviced?
Writing from Tokyo | May 8, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
The Fluidity of Markets
China is well known for producing fake branded goods and no location more so than the area around Xiangyang Market in Shanghai. The Chinese government has recently stepped up its campaign against vendors offering fakes and part of this is a visible police presense and details such as signs posted at the market entrance (photos, below). To some extent vendors of these goods are becoming more mobile - instead of carrying stock that is easily confiscated they show passer's by a catalogue of what's in stock, taking the punter to the gear once their interest is piqued. Where the product is carried - such as DVD's the bulk of the stock is held in a shop nearby - for the seller the practice is practical and reduces risk.
Over the course of an hour I managed to spend time observing the buyers, sellers and the uniformed police. As the police arrived the sellers scattered, and some of the more interesting aspects of that afternoon was in tagging along their escape routes - side alleys leading past the backs of restaurants into the maze of blocks of apartments. But within 20 - 30 seconds of the police moving on the goods we're back on the street being paraded and tourists were buying. Purely from the point of view of supply and demand efficiency the market works well. When there are buyers wishing to buy goods from sellers wishing to sell goods things will be bought and sold regardless of their legality. This scale can be changed by introducing higher risks and consequences targetting and publicizing them to both buyers and sellers. But could it be more efficient? Online Amazon's one-click shopping reduces the amount of friction in the transaction to a minimum. What is the absolute friction free shopping experience?
And perhaps more interesting, in a world of 'experience shopping' to what extent does obtaining goods and services through grey or black market channels enhance the user's experience of the good or service? In which situations does implying something is stolen enhance its value? Or credibility?
Don't sell fakes sign from a clothes market in the Shanghai suburbs.
Writing from Shanghai | May 4, 2006 | Permalink
Indicators To What Goes On Inside
The skylines of Ho Chi Minh City - knowing what people do inside their homes by what you see outside their homes.
Writing from Shanghai | May 1, 2006 | Permalink
Interactions With a Skin-Like Interface
I came across this tap attached to a water barrel during our getting-to-know-how-a-city-wakes-up walk around Old Delhi. I've been trying to figure out whether the design deliberately imitates the shape of male genitalia (I know it's small in the photo but, um, click to enlarge). The function - passing water maps well enough to the body, but the colour is not an accurate reflection of local skin pigmentation and I guess the design misses the opportunity to introduce modality. But the resemblance is there.
User interface designers like to tap into what their users already know - and in this vein the desktop metaphor relies on the basic assumption that users know that objects can be placed on and moved around a desktop. In an increasingly globalize world is there domain knowledge that is universally known across cultures, ages, and genders? What are the things that you have spent the most time with in your life? What has been there through thick and thin, good times and bad, and has been there in your most intimate moments?
High on this list is your body or at least the parts that you can easily see such as the back of your hands, or easily touched such as your shoulders, chest, front of legs, bum, face and yes genitalia. (There's also the stuff inside you that you feel - anything from the pressure of a full bladder to aching limbs but that's a discussion for another day). What if skin-like materials were just another tool in the designer's toolbox? Today we have mass-produce able pleather. With a desire to rebuild wounded soldiers and in particular treat burn victims leading research into growing body parts and skin is mass produced skin-like materials really that far behind?
Your first reaction is probably gentle, chiding revulsion - triggering of thoughts about eXistenZ and looking again at the photo you're thinking that the tap design (and this post) is just plain tacky. But pause and think. Given a life-time of getting to know and interaction with your own body and the knowledge of your shapes, scars, textures, preferences is there something there that can be tapped to design more optimal products? What I'm not proposing is cyborgs or human like robots. But put simply, what if your 12th generation iPod casing felt like, looked and behaved like your own skin? Supple, warm, tender. How would it respond to gentle squeezes, flexes, stroking, a tug or a pinch? What kind of interaction would play or stop a song? If you wanted to customised it would it be with a piercing? Or a tattoo?
If realistic skin was widely available it wouldnt take long before it was wrapped around body-part-like shapes. What would the inherent characteristics of those body shapes be? What functions could map to tapping a 'shoulder'? Rubbing a 'foot'? Nudging an 'elbow'? How would interactions differ depending on the age, gender and cultural background of the interactor? How would interaction preferences differ for the same? I may have a weak grip and rough flaky skin but that doesn't mean I just want to interact with skin-like products that feel the same as me.
And how would and should our skin-like products wear and tear? Would they age? Succumb to sun burn? Require a shave? Treatment for lice? End up with cancer? Can they be restored with the liberal application of aloe or would it require something more drastic such as botox or a nip and a tuck?
And given all of this do we even want to go there?
Writing from Shanghai | April 30, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Delivery Plus Related Services
Milk box located close to the front door of a Shanghai home. The design (above) is commonly found in Chinese cities includes a door within a door - enabling independent access by both the owner and by the person delivering the milk. The milk box design below requires both the owner and the deliverer to have the same padlock key. But why have a box in the first place? In a culture of extended families - where it is likely that someone will be at home when the delivery is made, what purpose does it serve?
Are there lessons that apply to the design of any physical or electronic delivery service?
The physical presence of the box also serves as an advertisement for the delivery service. How long before eBay gives away drop-boxes for customers of their auction sites? In 6 years time, if such a box was available what other digital services could it support?
Related material: media delivery in Delhi and Seattle.
Writing from Shanghai | April 29, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Epic Adventures
Those of you who conduct field research or perhaps want to get into the game might be interested in EPIC - the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference which is happening in Portland in September. Why mention it now? Well the deadline for full papers May 1st, workshops May 15th and posters is July 15th.
Enough about work - it's friday night and Shanghai awaits.
Writing from Shanghai | April 28, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Getting From Here To There
A couple of hours trying to squeeze in a bit of research in Shanghai - I'm trying to figure out what the lauded government crack-down on branded fakes has had on the availability on the streets - more on this later if I remember. The quickest way to hop around this city - on the back of a motorobike. The downside? The driver tries to interest me in evey tourist attraction and a few destinations you might not want to tell your mother about along the way.
And the pegs in the bowl? An example of keeping track of what order goes to which table.
Writing from Shanghai | | Permalink
Recordable Surfaces
Small, cheap and thin displays finding their way into Taxis - this model is showing a loop of TV programmes. A way of coping with Shanghai traffic perhaps? A simple example of the extending reach of moving image displays.
Writing from Shanghai | | Permalink
Motivations for Defining Boundaries
Motivations for carving out boundaries in public spaces: An Old Delhi street cafe above, Shanghai building site below.
For shared services, devices or projects how to signify who has control over what? What signals can the layout of the space send to imply inclusion or exclusion for members of the public? Does this map to the digital realm? How?
Writing from Shanghai | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Number One Seller. Really
Phone numbers for sale at a kiosk - the numbers that have already been sold are struck through.
How does knowing what others have bought influence purchasing behaviour? How can this behaviour be manipulated by suggesting the popularity of certain items? Who would want to manipulate the data for what reasons?
Writing from Shanghai | April 27, 2006 | Permalink
Public Interfaces
Wandering the neighbourhoods around the hotel between working group sessions. Condom machine situated on a residential street points to the societal attitudes towards the availability of contraception.
Writing from Shanghai | | Permalink
Defacing As an Art Form
The extent to which graffiti is covered up is notable since my last visit here. As with Seattle the defacing of the defacing becomes an art-form in itself.
Writing from Shanghai | | Permalink
Motivations for
Walk along a street in a Chinese town or city and you are likely to see numbers stenciled on the walls. Street stenciling in China very much geared towards advertising - 'id cards' - without one a person who has migrated to work in a city might not be covered for health insurance, 'plumbing services', 'coke delivery' - coke for burning, not ingestion. The stencil describes the service and includes a mobile phone number.
Trees stenciled with advertising from Shanghai, above.
Leaves carved from Hawaii, below.
How does the object that is stencilled or defaced affect how the message is perceived?
Writing from Shanghai | | Permalink
Locks, Failed Locks
The battery in the room safe dies and the house manager turns up to reset it. He brings with him electronic key, a physical key two electricians and a member of the security team. There's failure and then there is elegant failure. Given the frequency of people forgetting the numbers of the safe or the batteries running out, this didn't fail particularly elegantly.
In system design is it better to block a task from being started or to let the user experience and then report inevitable errors? Same question, but this time imagine a more (or less) networked world. In what contexts and for what tasks is it advantageous to let the user report the error?
Writing from Shanghai | April 26, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Taxis, Hotels In Beta
Today's taxi driver from the airport doesn't like the silence and borrows my headphones for a couple of songs. He pretends to enjoy Public Enemy, and after a couple of track hands the played back to me and lights a post coital cigarette. There's quite a storm coming in and I'm quite happy for him to concentrate on the road. Shanghai traffic makes the most of the available space and the first rule of the road is to take opportunities when they arise. Just like life then. Hmm, why don't bicycles have break lights?
Betas are not restricted to software. The hotel I'm staying in is having a soft launch. Whilst waiting for some paperwork to be completed the receptionist on the 46th floor murmurs 'The hotel has been open for half an hour, no, half a year'. Shes speaks faulting English and a smattering of Japanese. It's sweet but (unfairly) triggers the broader question of when a (5* commercial) service is not really a (commercial) service? In this context how important is good english? What should guests expect not to work? Or not to work to what extent? Fail often and fail fast is fine when its not you being failed and the consequences are minimal.
Spend 30 minutes in the pool and another hour on the rain soaked streets. It's warm and friendly in here, but definitely lacking in, well, life. And yet we're here in part to discuss what life is going to be like by the time the next wave of infrastructure is rolled out.
What is the commercial equivalent of an ivory tower?
Writing from Shanghai | April 25, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Mobile Essentials
Presentation by Per Persson, Mikko Aarras, Petri Piippo & Tetsuya Yamamoto & myself to last year's Designing the User Experience conference can now be downloaded from here [2MB].
Slides include photo examples of how to think about carrying behaviours including Center of Gravity, Point of Reflection and the Range of Distribution. A conclusion? The easiest way to have nothing to forget is to have nothing to remember. Whilst you might be tempted to enterpret this as a form of Zen philosophy, it is actually more about the art of delegation.
Related research here and here.
Writing from Tokyo | March 22, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Localised Design
An example of a localised seat design for an airline in China (Sichuan Air or Air China if I recall correctly). The cup holder can support the almost ubitquitously carried green tea/hot water containers (above) without having to lower the main tray (below).
Writing from Tokyo | March 12, 2006 | Permalink
Consumer Options
Four batteries for sale in China.
Covering a gamut of real consumer options: official Nokia; fake Nokia; premium non-Nokia - costs just below the official Nokia price but doesn't pretend to be official; and generic no-brand. Getting what you pay for? Getting what you perceive you pay for? Quality assurance? Risks?
Writing from Tokyo | March 9, 2006 | Comments (3) | Permalink
Unexpected Behaviours
Cycling in Chinese cities I was frequently surprised by electric bicyles - the driver seated often with feet resting on pedals, but not pedalling, nor the sound of a motor, yet faster, silently and effortlessly drifting by.
What makes a bicycle a bicycle? Or a motorbike a motorbike? At what point do objects outgrow their original names? To what extent are new features, or the way we use an object constrained by its legacy features, expectations of how it should be used?
Writing from Tokyo | December 22, 2005 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Non-Literate Mobile Phone Communication
To communicate with someone outside your immediate proximity requires at least 4 things: something to communicate; tools to create what you want to communicate; an infrastructure to carry the communication; and a means of identifying with whom to communicate. There are an estimated 799 million non-literate peoples world wide. If you can't read and write how do you manage your contacts?
This simple observation was the starting point to conduct a series of (ongoing) exploratory research studies in India, China and Nepal - our aim to understand the communication needs of non-literate users. For mobile phone manufacturers who wish to address these needs: How does the inability to read and write affect the ability of mobile phone users to make effective use of mobile phones? Making and receiving calls? Creating and managing contact information? Text messaging? Using time management features? How can we design communication tools that draw on the knowledge and experiences that these users do have?
If your interest is piqued then you might enjoy the following essay entitled Understanding Non-Literacy as a Barrier to Mobile Phone Communication which explores these issues and proposes a number of possible design solutions. As with a lot of our work the original projects included a fair amount of concept development that is only touched on in this essay.
In the studies we spent time with non-literate users exploring, mapping and understanding the things they used and the tasks they wanted to achieve - from using washing machines to weighing scales to running motorbikes to re-tuning TVs to paying for things. How did they interact with objects with textual and numeric interfaces? What problems did they encounter? What strategies did they adopt to overcome these problems? Were these strategies successful? If not, why not? And how can we bring the knowledge from this research and apply it to create communication devices that are more in tune with our non-literate users?
Researching non-literate communication practices has been rewarding: it touches on a very basic human desire - to communicate across time and space; the potential payback for the research is obvious and non-trivial; and the study participants, collaboration partners and environments in which the research took place have been quite simply inspiring.
Photos taken from street research in Mumbia, Bangalore, 2004 & 2005.
Writing from Tokyo | November 20, 2005 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Where People Carry Mobile Phones
Where do you carry your mobile phone? And how will this change if the phone were to adopt some of the functionality associated with other objects that you carry such as money and personal identity? (Both payment and ticketing are already available on handsets in Japan).
We've been conducting a series of studies to understand where people carry mobile phones and other mobile essentials. The original research was driven by a need to know to what extent people notice incoming communication and to what extent this was affected by where the device was carried. After all - the usefulness of a mobile phone is diminished if the user fails to notice that someone is calling. (For the record, we assume that the user wants control over whether or not to be notified in the first place - 24/7 connectivity is a discussion topic for later perhaps?) If you observe customers in a cafe for an hour one of the most frequent behaviours related to mobile phones, especially for women, is checking whether they have missed any incoming communication. User data on device location can support product designers for example helping them decide defaults speaker volume or lanyard placement.
My colleague Fumiko Ichikawa is today presenting the first fruit of this research in a paper entitled Where's the Phone - a Study of Mobile Phone Location in Public Spaces (download pdf) at the Mobility 2005 conference in Guangzhou, China. This paper draws on data from the first 3 studies - Helsinki, New York and Milan. Whilst I was not present in the original study in Helsinki I managed to take part in the follow-ups studies including cultures as diverse as the US, Italy, South Korea, Japan, China and India. In the future we'll be publishing data for these other cultures and explore the issues related to the full range of mobile essentials (the paper above focusses on the mobile phone).
Where people carry things today is interesting enough. The ultimate goal of this design research is to predict how the primary carrying location might change according to issues like new features and form factors. (New form factors will be enabled by technologlical advances such as minaturisation, flexible components or new charging methods). The fun part is figuring how this will collide with and influence future social and cultural trends.
And finally, if you're wondering whether I travel the world just to run these studies the answer is no - the team tends to run the street surveys in conjunction with more in-depth user studies that are already going on - its a good way to utilize assistant down time, meet hundreds of local mobile phone users and get a feel for a culture.
Writing from Tokyo | November 17, 2005 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Why do People Carry Mobile Phones?
Why do people carry phones?
Why do people carry what they carry?
And if we can understand why, how can we use this knowledge in the design of future products, applications and services?
Why people carry phones might seem like a rather basic question for someone who works for a mobile phone manufacturer, but the journey to try and understand the answer has been an interesting one.
A couple of years back I carried out a multi-cultural research project with Per Persson and a number of other colleagues to figure out what objects people consider to be essential when they leave home. We spent time studying 17 urban dwellers in San Francisco, Berlin and Shanghai and Tokyo with shadowing, home-interviews, plus 129 street interviews and numerous observation sessions. One of our screening criteria for in-depth subjects was that people had to own a mobile phone although during the screening process we made no assumptions about whether they considered the phone a necessity or not.
In the cultures we studied 3 objects were considered essential across all participants, cultures and genders were keys, money and mobile phone. Whilst this may seem obvious the interesting part of the study was in understanding the reasons why people considered these objects essential (largely survival, safety & security), why they were not always present (forgetting, awareness, making a conscious decision to be out of touch) and strategies people adopted to help them remember to take these objects. A lot of times money will be carried in a wallet or purse, but when it comes down to it, the money (cash and notes) are considered the essential objects before the other objects that are also contained there.
Some of the material from this study was presented in the DUX 2005 paper - 'Mobile Essentials - Field Study and Concepting' (download paper, 0.4mb). The paper introduces three interrelated ways to understand human behaviour to explain what we learned, and at some point I'll use Future Perfect to expand on some of these issues.
Firstly the Center of Gravity describes the most likely place where you are likely to cluster and consequently find these objects. In the home the Center of Gravity is likely to be the edge of a desk, a chair and often in the case of women, a bag. Objects don't stay in the center of gravity but over time they gravitate there.
The second idea is the Point of Reflection - the moment when leaving a space when you pause current activities turn back into an environment and check you have the mobile essentials. Typically this involves looking at the Center of Gravity, sometimes tapping pockets, sometimes speaking aloud. Not seeing the objects where they are supposed to be (the Center of Gravity) can be a sign that they are already carried.
The last behavioural concept is something we call the Range of Distribution - essentially the degree to which essential objects are likely to stray from the person, or from the person's line of sight/range of touch. Range of distribution is largely based on perceived risk of theft - the higher the perceived risk the further away objects are likely to be placed be allowed to 'stray'. This way of thinking about objects is important because the more likely an object is to be out of sight the more likely it is to be forgotten, and a mobile essential that is forgotten has little use in solving emergencies. In addition as mobile phones that take on functions associated with other mobile essentials for example access/identity (key, smart-card) or payment (money) can affect where and how they are carried.
As a private, relatively safe environment the home has a large range of distribution, whilst spaces like cafes or public transport have a relatively low range of distribution. The lowest range of distribution we observed was bus commuting in Shanghai rush-hour. The most extreme example of range of distribution was given to us by a vice cop in Berlin who explained about a drug dealer that double wrapped his produce which was then stored it his mouth - if the cops tried to bust them swallowed. Waiting for the produce to clear the digestive system was often too much hassle for low level busts, and was presumably rather unpleasant and messy.
Taxis are interesting environments in that they are often treated as a temporary private space - in which people can relax and objects are likely to spread out within the natural boundaries of the environment. When combined with other parameters such as: people using taxi's whilst tired or impaired e.g. drunk/high; the likelihood of using the mobile phone in the taxi; placing objects on the seat/out of sight after use; and a pressured sequence of tasks at the end of the journey such as thinking what to do next on arrival at the destination and paying the driver, help explain why mobile phones are often left in taxis.
There are naturally many other reasons why people carry a mobile phones - for entertainment, projecting status, a sense of belonging, or capturing and communicating an experiences using a camera phone to name a few, but the commonality was essentially their ability to help us survive.
Most people consider other objects essential - driver's license (particularly in the US), medication, travel pass and lip-stick are just some that have been mentioned but these can change over the course of the day and according to context. I would argue that nearly all objects that people carry are essential, because the carrier has already gone through a conscious and subconscious selection process to select those objects from all the objects they own or have access to. Nobody carries stuff just for the hell of it. Well actually that's not strictly true - many people carry things that they are not aware they are carrying - phones increasingly have features that the owner considers useful, is not aware are on the device. In these instances the smart question is what situations trigger initial awareness of a feature, and many researchers are working on contextual understanding in part to present the user with the right feature/knowledge at exactly the right time that it is useful.
The exceptions to why people don't carry these objects are in some ways more interesting than the fact they do in the first place. Designing solutions that meet a user needs are relatively easy, but for a product to be adopted into the flow of someone's life takes a good understanding of exceptions. Mobile essentials are often forgotten, despite the strategies for remembering. Keys are not necessarily needed if you live in an extended family or in areas of high unemployment. Some people like to 'switch off' and talk about quality time without the interruption of the mobile phone (I expect there to be different attitudes towards constant connectivity with younger generations). There is also the issue of at what point in a person's life they are entrusted to carry these essentials and in the case of children, if they are lost, who is responsible to replace them?
In one sense the easiest way never to ever forget anything ever again is to have nothing to remember. This is not as glib as it first sounds - it is possible to delegate responsibility to remembering to other people or indeed to technology. (The concept of delegating can be considered as a solution to many problems except entertainment and bodily functions).
A number of interesting avenues have come out of this research:
Why people make a conscious effort to leave mobile essentials behind and in the case of their mobile phone - switched off. This loosely comes under the heading connecting people, dis-connecting people, and re-connecting people.
My colleagues have initated a study of where people in Helsinki carry their phones and whether they notice incoming communication. A paper, drawing on data from follow up studies in Milan and New York will be presented at the Mobility Conference 2005 in Guangzhou China. (I'll post it when its available)
Another theme is the role of the phone in supporting and on occasion triggering personal crisis. Not life threatening events but things like being locked out of home, being lost late at night, breaking up with boyfriend/girlfriend and yes, mobile phone theft and loss. Notice the overlap between mobile essentials and personal crisis?.
Writing from Tokyo | November 11, 2005 | Comments (1) | Permalink
By What Authority?
I'm not a train geek, but seem to spend a fair amount of times in train stations trying to find my cultural bearings. My motivation is to document and understand signage, and stations just so happen to be signage rich.
Signs tell you a lot about shifting norms in a society: indicating how society is segmented 'female waiting room only' or 'waiting room for military personnel'; what not to do 'no explosives' (Hangzhou train station); suggesting appropriate behaviours 'turn off phone'; or inappropriate behaviour 'no spitting' 'no begging'; supplying status information 'temperature 27 degrees' and so on. Handwritten signs can indicate how the design of buildings have failed their users or how the building has evolved since it was built 'for tomorrows tickets, go down the hall to the left' or the grey nature of the services they are offering 'sim unlocking, 5 Euro, 5 minutes' but that are not offerred by the establishment. They can show societal attitudes on cultural diversity - support for multiple languages or equally not, or the support of the blind and deaf.
Ignoring the observation that most signs remain unread by most people that pass them by. When signs are read, one criteria for acting upon the information in the signage is authority. By what authority is that sign placed there? By what authority should the information on that sign be trusted? Or depending on the authority, mistrusted? Case in point from this Shanghai photo taken during the recent Sars episode "Doctors Advise to Yourself and Others, Don't Spit"
How this might play out in the (naturally perfect) future? Whilst rules are not necessarily enforceable, technologies such as city wide surveillance cameras will make it easier to track 'offenders' if an organisation or individual is sufficiently motivated. 2010 is not a great time to become a celebrity and fall on the wrong side of the tabloids, or webloids for that matter.
If all or part of the message is delivered digitally, its possible to
customise to the message to a particular audience. 'Doctor [insert name of the doctor you've known 15 years] advises you not to spit"
Writing from Shanghai | July 12, 2005 | Permalink
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