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
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 | November 27, 2006 | Comments (0) | 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 | November 10, 2006 | 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
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 | November 9, 2006 | 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
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 | November 6, 2006 | 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
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
Tire Man
Writing from Tehran | October 30, 2006 | 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
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.
Writing from Tehran | | Permalink
Local Heroes
Or at least the local heroes that can be displayed on the streets.
Check out top right, bottom right.
Writing from Tehran | | Comments (0) | Permalink
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.
Writing from Tehran | | Comments (0) | Permalink
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).
Writing from Tehran | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Import Norms
Bowling lanes from the USA, shoes from China.
Writing from Tehran | | Permalink
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
Our arrival in Tehran is certainly auspicious - 3 camera crews are here to greet the plane's arrival. The focus of their attention? A trophy wielding sportman returning home to the greetings of fans and family and camera crews. Clearing customs is a synch - for once the foreigner's queue at customs goes quicker than than for the locals - its a a half empty flight, and I guess October is not the tourist season. A female colleague is politely asked to don a headscarf before her passport is processed.
Within an hour we arrive at the hotel. Turn on the TV to try and see out what kind of event the sports heroes were competing in but get side tracked by videos of the intifada on channel one. The production values of the videos being broadcast are actually close to many of the underground sk8 promos floating around, or is it the other way around? Visions of of Mssrs Shortys, Fuct, et al. watching stone throwing resisters for tips on how to keep it real. For all of sk8s hardcore pavement chic you don't get any edgier than death so chemagh wins out over hoodies.
A late walk through a rather sizeable local park in an effort to stretch my legs. By 10:30pm the remaining visitors are families checking out the animal enclosures, couples and groups of male youths. I suppose sitting on exercise machines whilst smoking is a double act or rebellion where ever you are in the world. They smile, nod and like teens the world over check out my footwear.
Many of the strategically placed two seater benches have views of greenery, and of other two seater benches. Watching me watching you. I assume to know very little about Iran (though at this stage maybe a little more than you) but there are two striking features of this park - both things that are missing from comparable parks, say in the UK or the US. The first is that the children's playgournd is, well, not enclosed. The second is that the only signs in the entire park direct people to 'Don't drink this water' or 'Drink this water'. Nothing that suggests anti-social behaviours within these grounds. Signs can tell you a lot about the norms in a culture. A lack of signs may also speak volumes.
But at what point does the public display of signs become redundant?
Writing from Tehran | October 19, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
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