Augment
The easy way to track dimensions.
With a camera phone, augmented reality, a size reference point, and enough processing power, dimensions are only a button press away. Or are they? In an augmented world - what to measure, acceptable margins of error?
Writing from Daikanyama | April 9, 2007 | Permalink
Stretching in 2 Dimensions
Writing from Tokyo | March 25, 2007 | Permalink
Play On,
Uma is Japanese for horse.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Localised
Graf includes a Japanised version of the Ronald McDonald face.
Writing from Tokyo | March 22, 2007 | Permalink
Advertising in 3 Dimensions
Physical advertising for Kenzo in a Daikanyama cafe includes supplying and stocking bamboo furniture, product samples, framed aren't-we-in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia/Thailand photos for the walls, and a rather weak movie projected on the walls.
Writing from Tokyo | March 14, 2007 | Permalink
Expiry Dates Affecting the Perception of Validity
During a routine credit card transaction recently in the UK the sales person took the card, checked the expiry date and tutted “It’s just about still valid” - it is due to be replaced in 03/07. A gentle example of how people treat things with expiry dates and times, whether credit cards, parking meters, foodstuff, differently the closer it comes to being due. Another common example, particularly amongst the male bachelor of the species is sniffing milk before pouring - trusting the sense of smell over the date on the side of the packet.
As we continue to learn how to control what happens at the nano + bacterial level there is greater scope to communicate current expiry status: ID cards that visibly or olfactorily depreciate closer to that time; money that feels different when you’re down to your last ten Euro note - prompting a visit to the nearest ATM; containers that tell you much more about the condition of what is held inside.
Writing from Tokyo | February 25, 2007 | Permalink
Transitions
Writing from Tokyo | January 16, 2007 | Permalink
Tokyo Park Sign: No Practicing Golf Swing
No practicing your golf swing joins the more common no cycling, no dog waste, no fires, no littering and no picking flowers on this sign at the entrance to a park in Daikanyama. It's not surprising given the passion for golf here. On a shinkansen ride through Japan the tallest structure in many local communities is the massive net covering the golf driving range. Combined with a distinct lack of practice space - balconies in Japanese apartments are not big enough to swing a perfectly manicured chihuahua much less a golf club and golfer's desire to practice in the local park is understandable.
Other sign norms? The lack of park signs in Tehran as an indicator of where the energies of officialdom lie i.e. not regulating what people do in parks; the use of humour in this 'Beware of the Invisible Cows' sign in Hawaii; signs to support illiterate users in multi-lingual and high-illiteracy India; and severe weather warnings at a toilet entrance in Dallas.
And sign shops in Ho Chi Minh City, Kampala and Pokara Nepal.
Writing from Tokyo | January 14, 2007 | Permalink
Tokyo Wayfinding
Writing from Tokyo | December 2, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Opening Rituals
Exhibition opening at stich Daikanyama.
Writing from Daikanyama | November 6, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Line, End
Signal, Daikanyama attempts to brand the end of the line. Urban spam? How could it be cleverer?
Cheers to the Tokyo crew - you're what Sunday's in Tokyo are about.
Writing from Daikanyama | November 5, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
It Is, I know, Thank-you
The photo shows a fairly typical scene - a motorbike parted under the bushy canopy of a small tree - positioned to protect it from some of this week's continious Tokyo rain. Except that, despite the apparent shielding properties of the tree the rain has still soaked the motorbike.
With vehicle mounted (weather) sensors and positioning tools its possible to collect highly localised weather information - trucks, cars, motorbikes and bicyles recording and sharing in real time as they drive around the city. As you are looking where to park you know not to leave it there in that exact position because despite appearances you know the statistical likelyhood of it geting wet. For such as system to exist, who would be motivated by what reasons to share real time weather data? Who would seek to manipulate this data and in what contexts?
The challenge with all this is not to gather or even to share the data, but to sufficiently understand the user's context to present the data in an appropriate format and time. All non-trivial tasks.
CS - thanks for the invite tonight. Safe travels.
Writing from Daikanyama | June 19, 2006 | Permalink
By Pedestrian's, For Pedestrians
Writing from Tokyo | June 13, 2006 | Permalink
Tokyo Queues
Anyone who has spent time in central Tokyo on a weekend will pretty soon come across a long queue of people waiting for a store to open. It's not that queues are necessarily rare elsewhere in the world, after all scarcity or creating the perception of scarcity is, um, scarcely novel. But here queues stretching 100 meters or more are not uncommon, with especially hired security to ensure its all done in an orderly manner and without annoying the neighbours.
Observing queues also provides insights into how people relate to and interact with one another, highlighting things like the acceptable social space between people and it is after all a chance to see what people do when they wait. Everyone lined up with with shared yet conflicting goals.
I often pass the weekend Daikanyama Supreme store queue on my way to the Daikanyama pool. The queue starts three hours before the store opens, and can reach a couple of hundred meters long. Everyone politely waiting, everyone decked out in very similar gear, everyone looking up with the same level of expectation. Everyone queueing politely for a store that prides itself on being associated with street and skate? What's that about?
And from the perspective of a researcher if you're trying to find people who meet a particular profile, let's face it, they've already formed an orderly queue.
Photos taken from two original panormas of 30+ photos available here and here [1MB download].
And the queue above? A worthy object from a far flung corner of this earth sent to the first person who can say what these people are queueing for.
Writing from Daikanyama, back of | June 7, 2006 | Comments (25) | Permalink
Wayfinding
Mobile with GPS and map application. So you want to make a map reference in a hurry?
"It's easier to just ask someone"
In many instances so it is.
Writing from Daikanyama | November 23, 2005 | Comments (3) | Permalink
Counter Intiuitive Experiences
The frame of these Swans goggles forms a perfect seal with the face, doing away with the need for rubber padding. Very comfortable, counter-intuitively so since the padding should make it more comfortable, right?
Any other examples of counter-intuitive experiences you can think of?
An hour to kill before my next meeting starts in the vicinity of Daikanyama pool. What to do?
Writing from Daikanyama | November 15, 2005 | Permalink
Why You Do, What You Do
What draws you to get out of bed to go and do whatever it is that you do?
Money? Fear? Apathy? Passion?
Somewhere along the line you made choices to get to where you are. My choice has been to make Tokyo my home for the last 5 years. My original calling was user interface design, having attended the inspirational UI Master's course run by Robert Scane at City Polytechnic (London Guildhall University as it's now known). My logic for moving here was - where better to learn the UI trade than the home of electronics companies and a marketplace that is really an experimental product design playground that produces stuff that you simply won't see anywhere else in the world?* In Tokyo every time I step outside the door to my apartment I expect to learn something new, and am rarely disappointed.
The stuff that interests me - new experiences, learning about people and the cultures they inhabit, inventing stuff, sometimes re-arranging old stuff in new ways, and (second)guessing the future has morphed into my current job. These are my reasons for getting out of bed in the morning, and occasionally, if the big idea comes at 3 in the morning, they become my reason for getting up in the middle of the night.
But whatever you're calling at some point you simply need to get your head down and work, and work though what-ever it is you do. In user research there's a point in any in-depth user study when you're unable to absorb new data, so overwhelmed with new experiences that you struggle to maintain perspective. The constant, admittedly self-imposed pressure is to take every opportunity to gather more, delve deeper, go that bit further. On international studies you know when you arrive and you know when you leave, and that's your (usually ambitious) time frame. And if the study includes conducting contextual ad-hoc street interviews there is no next time and there is no tomorrow, only missed chances, so breakfast's, bus rides, flight delays and that night off that you promised yourself quickly become reasons conduct one more interview or go into observation mode. (I sometimes think that if I worked for a toothpaste company there would be easy boundaries to my work, but try researching something as ubiquitous as the mobile phone). Even with the best planning, it's easy to become overwhelmed. For example we have the processes for a research team in the field to affectively deal with incoming photo data as quickly as it can generated, but consider that a research team can end up with 3,000 relevant still photos from a single city 10 day user study. If you like to pick up a camera this job is almost like aversion therapy. To do something so intensely that it's bound to sometimes create an adverse reaction.
The last few days have been good - back home with everything that entails: family, a semblance of a familiar rhythm. Today I managed to pick up the camera through choice and cycled the city to see what grabs. Capturing the world around me just because there's so much still to learn, and for now at least Tokyo is my backyard.
In case you're wondering, I came across the gentleman above tonight on my cycle ride home from a pleasant night out in Ebisu. Non-Japanese often make a big deal of the uniformity of Japanese socieity - group behaviour/harmony and so on. The reality is IMHO somewhat different. Creativity here is hard to explain, but in many, often subtle ways eclipses cities such as London and NYC.
* There's good reason why you don't see many of these product's for sale outside Japan - but thats another story
Writing from Ebisu | September 7, 2005 | Permalink
Shared Experiences
Came across this couple sharing headphones, walkman remote clipped to her shirt sleeve. The loss of audio experience - listening with only one ear made up for by shared experience.
Writing from Daikanyama | July 22, 2005 | Permalink
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