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
Stoking What is Hot
From a street walk in South Delhi.
Writing from Tokyo | August 1, 2006 | Comments (2) | 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
Coping With Legacy Systems
Writing from Tokyo | May 6, 2006 | Permalink
Where Thin is Not In
This small, simple and relatively elegant Sony Ericsson phone belonging to a tea-house owner in South Delhi. The product design team will have spent countless hours massaging the components into the smallest possible form factor, selecting materials for the optimal tactile experience, and making the detailing just right. The overall elegance and perceived thickness of the device may have been a factor in its purchasing decision but ultimately this consumer bought a thick plastic cover to protect it from dust and scratches (photo below).
The need and consequent practices of covering and protecting consumer products varies according to cultural practices, individual tastes, climate and contexts. Whether it's a plastic coated car seat in New Orleans, individually wrapped sweets in Japan (in part to cope with intense summer humidity), plastic sheets on a hospice bed, or covered calculators and phones in India. The advertisement for dust free switches in South Delhi (photo, below) is only enhanced by the extremely dusty shop backdrop.
Of these products mobile phones are somewhat unique in that they have to cope with conditions in a wide range of contexts - from when the owner gets up to when s/he goes to sleep and everything in between. Whilst women are most likely to be carrying phones in hand bags the desire to be contactable and to communicate often leads them to be carried in the hand for short periods of time. For men the situation is compounded by the extent to which the phone is carried in pockets - close to the skin and consequently exposed to more human moisture & sweat.
There is currently a lot of noise about who has the thinnest phone, and the thickness of the RAZR was undoubtedly a factor in its worldwide success. But as the adoption of mobile phones spread the reality for many of the world's population is that protection is paramount. My personal take on device thickness is that thin devices have their pros e.g. perceived elegance and cons e.g. an tendency to break more easily, but that things will only become genuinely interesting in this space as and when true flexibility is introduced.
The after market for protective phone covers in India is well developed and is quickly able to cater for new phone form factors, even down to coping with sliding mechanisms. How can mass market products be re-designed to cope with the need for greater protection? (the dust free keypad on the 1101 is a good example). And given that the two factors are often mutually exclusive, is it possible to design products that are able to offer increased protection when needed, but can shed their protective cladding when the need for elegance is paramount? Finally, when new materials and manufacturing techniques enable forms of protection that are not visible to the human eye how important will the design be to the perception of protection?
Writing from Tokyo | April 23, 2006 | Permalink
Coping With Shared Use
Shop owner in South Delhi limits employee access to his land line phone. Similar solution used at a security checkpoint in Lhasa.
For devices that are shared, hold private information and can incur costs for use, like um, mobile phones how to restict access to features?
Writing from Tokyo | April 19, 2006 | Permalink
Micro Breaks, Macro Breaks
A security guard settling into another hour seated in front of a closed store in South Delhi (above), motorcyclist checking text messages whilst smoking a cigarette in Tokyo (below) and a bus stop indicating how long before the next bus arrives, Brighton (end photo).
Micro and macro breaks are the time we have between defined tasks: waiting for a bus to arrive; for a traffic light to change; for friends to turn up; to smoke a cigarette (assuming the act of smoking is not seen as a primary task). If you design mobile devices, applications or services you should be interested in micro and macro breaks - as a commonly carried mobile essential there is a fair chance that the mobile phone will be used during that break.
Not all all breaks are equal: some are planned, some not; the ability to predict how long a break will last affects how the time is used and whether tasks are started; some we have degree of control over how long they last; and the contexts in which breaks occur can vary considerably - just think of the range of situations you find yourself in.
What are the characteristics of micro or macro breaks? How do they differ between cultures? For that matter, how does the pace of life, the perception of time and how it 'should' be filled differ between cultures? How long do these breaks last compared the time it takes to complete a task such as sending a text message, locating information on a mobile web site or to go to a more topical application - tuning into signal for a mobile TV station?
And why the bus stop? Quite simply - knowing when the break will finish affects what tasks will be started.
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Motivations for Ranking
[Corrected] Coaching institute in South Delhi publicises the students that have excelled on a billboard outside the school. The effort required to put up a printed billboard suggests that the ranking will be valid for a long period of time. In an increasingly real-time world what is a meaningful way of ranking people, events or other statistics?
This reminds me of two things: Awards are generally given out by people who like to be seen to be giving out awards to people who like to be seen receiving awards; and the easiest way to get an award is to first set up an award ceremony - what goes around will eventually comes around.
Writing from South Delhi | April 9, 2006 | Comments (3) | Permalink
Cultural Conversions
Chai house worker wearing LIVESTRONG bracelets, somethings which were spotted on a number of young males around Delhi. The rubber bracelets are good triggers for charitable donations in part because they are so cheap to produce - more of the donation can go to the charity. This same property makes the statement-bracelet trend viable in highly price/cost cultures such as India.
Whether the intentions of the original statement for these bracelets is relevant to the wearer is another matter entirely. To what extent does the additional cultural distance travelled change the message?
Writing from South Delhi | April 8, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Protect To Serve
Writing from South Delhi | | Permalink
Local Insights, Insights from Locals
Being local doesn't qualify someone to be a local guide. Being a foreigner doesn't dis-qualify someone from having insights into a local culture. Something that enables a decent specialist to be able to specialise (and, um, be, er, special) is their ability to apply their expertise and work effectively in foreign contexts. And some specialists are ultimately not that special.
With these provisos in mind it's fair to say that our ability to gather meaningful data in foreign climes is dependent on having good local guides. The most obvious reason to hire guides is to provide cultural insights enterpret the local language. Less obviously a good local guide will use her social network to find appropriate study participants (when not using a recruiting agency); will know where to find what you want and negociate decent prices on anything and everything; makes the team aware of local sensitivities such as how to behave during meetings and where not to point the soles of your feet; dealing with local nuances such as power cuts; and even such simple but moral boosting things as knowing a decent neighbourhood restaurant. Also, in situations where gender is a barrier to gathering data having someone of the opposite sex around provides more options which ultimately leads to more data gathering opportunities.
Much like the rest of us, guides need a clearly described brief to be able to perform well. Given that the brief often changes as the project progresses we make an effort to keep everyone in the loop regarding the range and quality of the data that is being collected. It's worth bearing in mind that asking questions can be seen as a strength or weakness depending on issues as cultural norms, age and the personality of the individuals and that positive and negative feedback can be enterpreted in a number of ways.
Thanks to our cultural guides this past week: Priyanka, Smriiti, Aashish, Samir and Surbee - your insights were much appreciated.
Writing from South Delhi | April 7, 2006 | Permalink
A Sufficiently Focused Group
Lo-tech setup for home based focus group - a wire connecting the video camera with the TV in the observation room. The space used for the focus group is normally someone's home, and in this instance the observation room is a converted bedroom - there are no seats so the observation team is perched on the edges of a large double bed. The setup works surprisingly well, with the participants relaxed in the surroundings and the proceedings sufficiently focused.
A backup battery sits in one corner of the home a sign that they are used to having power cuts. The host informs us that if the power does go for any length of time then the TV in the observation room will cut off, and given that it is a windowless room presumably we will be plunged into darkness.
But for once I'm able to say I spent a half day lounging around on a bed (there were no chairs), sipping tea and watching (the participants on the) TV and all in the name of work.
Writing from South Delhi | April 5, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
(Out of the) Out-of-Office
We've set up a mobile office here in Delhi, but this afternoon's office is, well, out of the out-of-office. I'm perched on the edge of a street stall in South Delhi sipping hot sweet chai. A black and white TV is balanced on a high shelf and is blaring out a Harry Potter movie in Hindi. On my left the owner takes a pot of the boil and pours chai into 6 glasses - one of which ends up in my hands. Two rows of customers, mostly children, line the walls and most are intently watching the movies. They don't appear to be drinking anything.
The chai is pleasant enough, but if I'm honest I don't actually want or need it. The same can be said of a number of purchases today - the chai before this and the chai before that. I also didn't need the haircut, the shave, the picture frames, stickers, manuals, pens and a multitude of other things that were bought at various stalls in this neighbourhood market. But what all these things have in common is that they enable me to slow down social interactions to the point where an ad-hoc interview can take place.
Writing from South Delhi | April 3, 2006 | Comments (2) | 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
Motivation to Protect
High quality cover for mobile phone to protect against damage and to a lesser extent dust.
From most angles the phone's appearance is similar with and without this transparent cover with the exception shown above. Beyond reducing the risk damage what are the motivations to use covers? To what extent does this choice boil down to appearance now vs. appearance later?
Writing from South Delhi | April 2, 2006 | Permalink
Game Play
The range of motion of hands shown by the dirt-scraped clean areas.
Is it possible to conduct accurate, longitudinal hand-placement usability tests using dirt as a boundary marker?
The weight of the TV is a counter balance to the pressure exerted on the buttons and joystick.
Writing from South Delhi | March 30, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Wear and Tear
Supple skin on the hands of a South Delhi barber. The shaving process included a face massage and the liberal application of raw aloe.
Dead skin on the hand of a rickshaw driver - his other hand was similarly worn in the same place.
Writing from South Delhi | March 29, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
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