Delivery Mechanisms
Water containers for stall holders in a market in Old Delhi - continuing this week's theme of photos from India.
Writing this from a hotel bed - outside Los Angeles is beginning to wake up. Body clock is a little skewed - waking up and raring to go at 10pm. In practical terms timezone ping pong means chirpily attend a teleconference that started at 4am (an abnormal hour by any stretch of the imagination) and then dealing with the body's fallout during presentations later in the day.
Writing from Los Angeles | September 21, 2006 | Permalink
Communication, Literacy, Design
Remote communication requires a means of identifying whom to contact. How do people who can't read and write manage their contact information?
This is just one of the many questions I'll be asking at a presentation on Literacy, Communication, Design to the University of Art and Design Helsinki on the evening of the 14th September. It's hosted by Teemu Leinonen and Andrea Botero Cabrera and is open to the public. It will draw on three years of research by colleagues at the Nokia Mobile HCI Group into low literacy communication practices, a journey that took us from urban and rural India to Nepal, China, Uganda and beyond.
Related research can be found here and as usual when its all done and dusted links to the slides will be posted to here.
Writing from Tokyo | August 25, 2006 | Permalink
(Support for) Hacker Cultures (Require Support)
A manual for unlocking mobile phones just one publication widely available from Delhi's Karol Bagh Market. A few things of note for what is essentially a grey market publication: documents how to unlock all major phone models; has taken advertising for the different unlock kits and the Indira Technology Institute; printed in high quality colour; and even includes a help desk number. In a world where so much is online, why is this printed at all?
Last few days I've been pulling together material for a presentation on informal cultures of repair and innovation drawing on recent research in China, India, Mongolia and Vietnam. If anyone is in proximity of South Africa's Meraka Institute on the 20th June - the presentation is open to the public. I'll post the slides on ResearchDotNokiaDotCom when they're done.
Writing from Tokyo | June 16, 2006 | Permalink
This Is It (So Value Me More)
A restaurant in Delhi advertising the fact that they only operate at one location - 'we have one branch'. To what extent is rarity part of the equation for measuring the total user experience? For which kinds of people? And how to re-inforce the rarity, or the perception of rarity?
Writing from Tokyo | May 8, 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
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 | April 28, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
To Hack Me Is To Love Me
To run a light in an alleyway outside his shop this Delhi resident simply taps into the public power supply (junction box hidden at the top of the photo).
What is to stop people from doing the same with all future 'utilities' - whether it is digital storage space, connectivity or downloading content from a as-much-as-you-can-eat subscription account? What level of leakage is privately acceptable for these modern day utility companies? And in what situations is this form of hacking beneficial to both parties?
Writing from Tokyo | April 21, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Minimalism
Testing a car stereo's CD drives to hear it works - photo of a street stall in Delhi. Minimalism of both the CD drive and the plug. A relatively common alternative to sticking bare wire ends in the socket is to support the wire position with short pieces of wood.
Writing from Hilo | April 14, 2006 | Permalink
Faith In
Writing from Old Delhi | April 6, 2006 | Permalink
Slabs of Joy
A shop selling game controllers to hook up to TV based consoles - designed for arcade use.
Example of use here.
Writing from Old Delhi | | Permalink
Privacy Lost, Never Had, A Sham
Public call office receipts litter the street in front of a shop. These receipts typically include information relating to the call - the phone number, time, duration and cost of call.
Writing from Old Delhi | April 4, 2006 | Permalink
Same But Different
Writing from Old Delhi | | Permalink
Clean Teeth
Sticks for cleaning teeth/chewing, sold to very low income workers close to Old Delhi station.
Photos from a watching-the-city-waking-up street walking session.
Writing from Old Delhi | | Comments (2) | Permalink
Aspect Ratio
Three urinals to one squat.
Writing from Old Delhi | April 3, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
How (Parts of) Delhi Wake Up
An attempt to understand the flow of the city. Team has a 6am start. The streets are already buzzing.
Writing from Delhi | | Permalink
Conversion
"Old currency changed here"
In cultures with grey and black markets for currency gullible tourists can be fooled into changing money for out-of-date local currency. Where? Well from personal experience, the Czech Republic.
How will this kind of scam play out as objects contain more meta data (such as sell by dates) and the life of those objects becomes more traceable?
Writing from Old Delhi | April 2, 2006 | Permalink
Do, And What You Do
The style of holding the money and tickets is both practical (change lined up for customers) and a visual symbol of his role (bus conductor).
Writing from Old Delhi | April 1, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Cultural Reference Points
Global cultural centers of gravity shift.
Today's Mouse will be tomorrow's mouse.
How much does your job rely on creativity?
How much of your creativity is based on your deep insights into local cultural norms?
How long will it take before the global cultural center of gravity shifts to marginalize your culture?
How long before the (global) relevance that you take for granted is gone?
How long before your job is no longer relevant?
What do you need to do to stay relevant?
Photo taken earlier this year wandering around Old Delhi.
Writing from Chengdu | December 18, 2005 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Motivations for Adopting New Technology
What motivates people to adopt new technologies and features?
Back in March, I had the pleasure of walking around Old Delhi with a friend and colleague also working in the field of user experience. I guess we were trying to get a sense of the place and basically following our noses not really minding where we were going. At one point we passed a print shop with a rather beautiful printing press churning out posters. Next to this shop was an office, and as we walked passed the glass fronted window the guys inside beckoned us inside. Two guys were hunched around a mobile phone (a 6600 as it happened) looking and laughing at the screen, whilst 3 other guys were just hanging out. This was a family business, and these were the family.
It's not uncommon in South East Asia to be beckoned to sit down, invited for a chai and hang out. Their motivation in inviting us in however appeared primarily to show us a movie that was playing on one of the mobile phones. Younghee and my Hindi is non-existent and these gentlemen spoke next to no English so communication was body and sign language and a smattering of words. They had no way of knowing we worked for a handset manufacturer, as far as they were concerned we were just to foreigners walking by.
The movie itself was made famous by the fact that it was shot on a mobile phone (no, I have no idea which model) and eventually distributed as an auction item though Bazzee.com. Baazee is owned by EBay and recently renamed eBay.in. This distribution culminated in the arrest of Avnish Bajaj CEO of Bazzee.com on the grounds of peddling adult content.
The movie was in the public domain and had gone viral - presumably passing from phone to phone - each new recipient sufficiently motivated by the desire to have a copy of the file to overcome the hurdle of pairing Bluetooth devices and going through the still-not-yet-that-easy data transfer process.
Whilst it may be possible to arrest the CEO of a high profile auction site, it is not practical intercept this content passing from phone to phone. The real power to make decisions on whether content is suitable for consumption is shifting to the individual. P2P networks are I presume to a large extent trackable. Interactions directly between devices are much less so.
Writing from Old Delhi | July 28, 2005 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Nokia V-CD
Can't ever remember Nokia making video compact disc players. But if it says Nokia on the box its got to be Nokia in the box, right? I get the impression they were stickering the logos on the product using just-in-time production techniques.
"You want a Nokia V-CD? Lemme see whats out back..."
"..."
"You're in luck, I still got one left"
From street market in Delhi.
Writing from Old Delhi | July 10, 2005 | Permalink
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