You'll Like This. Or Not.
Visitors to Pretoria Airport are greeted by signs pointing them to turn on their mobile phone's Bluetooth connectivity. Accepting the connection results in an animated GIF being sent to the phone - with special offers on duty free products.
In our (naturally wonderful) wireless world the process of discovery, knowing what services are currently available in proximity is far from painless. Whilst I rarely buy duty free I suspect that most people would find the 'special offer' underwhelming given the steps required to receive (even if connectivity was switched on) and the risks associated with accepting gifts from strangers.
Purveyors of location based services may be interested in the 2003 NTT DoCoMo's comprehensive R-Click trial in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills. By signing up to R-Click and completing a profile of interests participants were offered three services: location based advertising according to personal preferences (Koko Dake Click); information based on what was shown on LCD displays (Mite Toru Click) for example a url related to the advertising that was displayed when you were present is sent to your i-Mode equipped phone; and finally a services that monitored where the participant was going and tried to predict what offers or items of interest they would want mailed to their phone (Buratto). In other words the system tracks your every move (not dis-similar to CCTV) except that this information can be cross checked with your profile, your mobile phone, and to the profile that the system builds around your behaviours. To be fair R-Click was a trial and trials are there to, well, try out stuff. And yes, its opt-in. But the approach in the R-Click trial, in particular the Buratto service highlights a fundamental assumption about privacy, or lack of - you are there to be tracked, sold to, and you pay for the priviledge because i-mode is a pay-per-packet service.
How well did the Roppongi Hill R-click service work? From my own experience, even with my profile of interests and knowing where I was heading it was unable to provide relevant recommendations and in many ways it highlighted the challenge of providing the right person with the right information at the right time. Getting it even marginally wrong results in an unwanted intrusion.
Would I accept future special offers at Pretoria Airport? Only out of boredom. But Airports are far from boring - there are simply too many interesting people to observe.
Bootnote: Can you build a service based on killing boredom? Undoubtedly.Who is motivated by what reasons to create boredom scenarios? Cue delayed flights, trains, busses...
Writing from Tokyo | August 17, 2006 | Permalink
Slides for Repair @ Pecha Kucha
The slides from yesterdays Pecha Kucha presentation can now be downloaded via here [2MB]. Most of the material has been previously published here, though Japanese readers might prefer reading some light comments in, um, Japanese. An approximation of presentation text appears on the last three slides, though I hope what was said was more coherent than what is written.
Thank-you to Klein Dytham Architecture for hosting & KM for the timely localisation.
The top photo? The result of asking 300+ plus people to say cheese.
Writing from Roppongi Hills | August 10, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Exploratory User Research Presentation
Slides from last nights short Pecha Kucha presentation on Exploratory User Research at Super Deluxe can be downloaded from here [3MB].
Related research about what people carry where, why and how can be downloaded from here and here.
[Thanks BH for getting the material uploaded so swiftly]
Writing from Tokyo | January 26, 2006 | Comments (5) | Permalink
Quiet Before the Storm
10 days before the next in-depth user study starts, 240 hours of relative calm before the storm.
Sometimes its possible to plan a year in advance. The minimum stress free lead time is 2 months to draw up a project plan, pull together a team - typically people working in other time zones so expect late nights and early mornings working from home, sync travel plans to the study location, recruit participants, engage subcontractors for the stuff you can't/don't want to do, assess and arrange local assistants and expect to deliver something decent. The actual work load before the study is much less with access to people with the right skills.
A lot of the prep work is simply project management and logistical planning. We have processes to deal with most eventualities and I'm a self-confessed form junkie. Data consent form? Sure, what language you want it in? Probably about 75% to 95% of the plan will go as scheduled and the rest is dealing with the situation you have and getting on with it. I'm not sure how we would have dealt with Katrina though - the team left New Orleans about a week before she arrived.
During the planning phase the creative part comes in figuring out which mix of methods to use to get the data you're after: shadowing, home stay, diary varients, in-depth interviews, observations, street interviews, expert interviews, ...? Who are the most appropriate participants? Where is the most productive place to spend time with them? What data you want to collect? What formats? Why? Really Why? Really really why?
The real creativity and IMHO the value added for clients, comes in figuring out what else the participants, team and location has to offer, and finding a way to bottle and communicate the experience(s). Maybe this part of the job is not user research - but experience bottling?
Writing from Roppongi Hills | September 13, 2005 | Comments (2) | Permalink
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