The Art of Never Unpacking
To arrive back in Tokyo is to confront the rituals of physically and mentally unpacking.
Today there isn't a field research kit but in its place the tangible result of too much time spent in swiss and french delicatessens. Hotel laundry beats washing at home, unopened mail on the desk, grocery shopping. The absolute pleasure that comes from properly-properly cleaning the dust from another country from the camera lense.
Bodily time-zone adjustments that either just work, or that take days to figure out. And the the solitude that comes when, like today, the day starts at midnight and 'lunch' is preceeded by a 5am ride through the city. It takes a hard hour's riding to follow the expressway though central Tokyo before curving around the Imperial Palace and heading for home. After 8 hours in 54H the sounds and smells of the city are inviting. The mental clarity that comes from the wee-hours is only tempered by the effect that jetlag has on loved ones later on. Everything has a cost, you just need to figure out what it is.
In many respects home-life stands still for the traveller for the duration of these travels - that list of things that really should be done can take months to be crossed out simply because you're not here; food stuffs that would normally be eaten in a fortnight last half a year; projects that require a physical presense take an age to get off the ground and everyday relationships are put on hold.
When you travel a lot theres a part of you that never unpacks. Its not good or bad, but it is.
Writing from Tokyo | February 17, 2007 | Permalink
Space Saver
Relatively common in and around Tokyo.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | September 1, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Waving Not Drowning
I'll be hosting (possibly co-hosting) a workshop at the EPIC 2006 Conference in Portland entitled Waving Not Drowning: Practical Tips for Staying on Top of Photo Field Data.
The 3 hour session will be a forum for discussing topics such as: processes for handling large volumes of photo field data; techniques for before during and after the study; moral & legal issues; ensuring relevant data is easy to retrieve and use. It will draw on the experiences of both attendees, myself plus those of my colleagues at Nokia's Mobile HCI Group. There are 8 places, 4 are already booked. Attendees will spend more time on their next study waving and less time drowning.
Workshop details here or download flyer here [0.5MB].
Is the EPIC Conference for you? I've not attended before but you might like to read Steve Portigal's review of last year's conference (the review kicks in about half way down the page). A summary of the workshop including a creative commons version of the workshop material will appear here if for some reason you can't make it.
Writing from Tokyo | August 5, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Signs Articulating Cultural Norms.
The widest selection of Do Not ... signs for sale in Tokyu Hands are Do Not Use Your Mobile Phone, No Smoking and No Cameras. What does it say about Japanese society that they did not sell any signs for No Spitting, No Explosives, No Cooking or No Begging?
Custom sign painter's shop in Kampala below, similar services on offer in Ho Chi Minh City, Pokara, Nepal.
And finally - a reminder of the importance of context in understanding by thinking about signs in a Delhi marketplace.
Writing from Tokyo | July 10, 2006 | Permalink
Friday Pop Quiz: Cultural Differences
You might recall we've carried out various studies into where people carry their phones and other mobile essentials. The studies are usually run with at least 100 participants, but based purely on the anecdotal evidence of a single Sowetan mobile phone repair shop owner there are two simple questions for you to answer:
1: What the most common mobile phone fault of his female mobile phone customers?
2: Why is this fault far less likely to be found with female phone users in Japan or Korea?
A selection of Japanese design goodies from D & Dept shipped to the person with the most accurate answer to both of these questions.
Update: Answer and winner in the comments. And yes the detail of the photo (below) was loosely related figuring it out.
Writing from Tokyo | July 6, 2006 | Comments (19) | Permalink
Trains, Planes, Automobiles
Applying for entry visas hasn't recently been a problem (not since an, ahem, unscheduled exit from Vietnam a few years back), but during a busy work week a trip to an embassy can eat into the hours. It doesn't help that a certain residential home that used to function as an embassy has now been converted back into a home. (The Ugandan Embassy in Tokyo has now moved to Daikanyama).
On an unrelated topic - wrote to an embassy of a certain Middle Eastern country inquiring whether permits were required to conduct what would essentially amount to guerilla street research. They asked my partner to make the application on my behalf. Mental note to self - add gender to email signature.
Off to another field study tomorrow - new experiences and new challenges lie ahead.
Writing from Tokyo | June 19, 2006 | Permalink
Mind Games
The extent to which milk poured from a bottle is preferred to milk poured from a carton, the extent to which it affects taste.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | June 18, 2006 | Permalink
Food Delivery, Definition of Food
Xiamen above. Photo of a McDonalds Tokyo below (but ultimately it could be anywhere, including Xiamen).
Writing from Tokyo | June 15, 2006 | Permalink
Knowing Which Is Which
Writing from Tokyo | June 11, 2006 | Permalink
Unwelcome Mat
"Be Quiet." Really.
Related research here.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | June 4, 2006 | Permalink
The Origins of Tangible Digital Species
For goods and services that start out in the digital domain, if and when they are made tangible what shape or form should they take? The origins of tangible digital species indeed.
And what tenuous link to the certificate and luggage tag, above? Make a donation to Carbon Neutral, and the company promises to balance out your carbon emissions by investing in forestry and climate friendly energy projects. Donations are made electronically and a tangible receipt and/or certificate is optional. Given the goals of the organisation, the tangible representation of the digital certificate is somewhat crass. A digital certificate could take many forms, but why one so unimaginative?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Resolution, Error Rates
Sewn 2D bar code into beanie. Sufficient resolution to be read, but what level of read-error rates?
Writing from Tokyo | February 27, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
The Traces of Traces
These guides to paint the road markings were first laid down in November 2005 and are still visible 3 months later. Understanding the process of how something is designed and built can raise or lower its perceived value in the minds-eye of its users.
In what contexts is it desireable to include traces of processes? Or fake traces? Is there a point at which traces should disappear?
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | February 23, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
The Value of Traces
How long do you want the digital traces of where you've been to last? Who should be able to see them?
To what extent does seeing traces of prior movement and interaction influence your own movement and interaction?
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | January 22, 2006 | Comments (3) | Permalink
Considered Consumption
Recycled ash tray + plant = plant pot.
Components from D & Department Tokyo Project's warehouse store, a purveyor of everyday household, surgical objects and contemporary Japanese furniture (though used furniture doesn't appear on their web site). They specialise in re-cycling, re-furbishment and re-use. They also make a rather fine English/Japanese bi-lingual hotel-lounge 'please turn off your cellphone' sign.
Writing from Tokyo | January 21, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Perception of Weight
This Skype phone is on sale in Japan. The space which in a wireless phone would house a battery is filled by a removable metal weight - seen standing upright on the desk. In our smaller/faster/cheaper future we have the option of making today's objects lighter.
What is the ideal weight of a mobile phone? How will the perception of the ideal weight change over time? And what factors will affect that change? Should a gold coloured phone weigh more than silver coloured phone?
(And which will fall faster in a vacuum?)
Writing from Tokyo | January 16, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Emotional Charging
When is the last time you smiled inserting a plug into a power socket? What would it take to make that happen?
Writing from Tokyo | January 11, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink
Tickets, Stubs Of Tickets
In most cultures airlines take the body of the ticket and leave you to board with the ticket stub. I was trying to figure out why Sichuan Airlines does the opposite - keeping the stub and leaving the passenger with the body? Is it because as a newish airline they have more landing slots further away from the gates requiring bus transfer to the plane, (from experience) increasing the potential for passenger mix-ups and the larger ticket body is more suited as an additional check. It is possible to rip off part of the ticket body (the UI equivalent of a one way switch) and still retain the necessary information for boarding and seat allocation.
E-tickets particularly from low cost airlines such as Ryan Air have changed mainstream perception of what makes an (airline) ticket. What is essence of a ticket? How will this change as the tools to read and scan information digitally are in more and more hands?
Writing from Tokyo | December 23, 2005 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Space & Learning
36 hours to go before the next trip - almost a full month on the road, in the skies and if things work out according to current loose plans - spending time at altitude in cold climes.
It all starts this week with a day of street research in Beijing. To be followed up by a couple of workshops - opportunities to catch up with colleagues, discuss past collaborations, learn, share, debate and then plan activites for next year. Maybe write the framework to a paper or two, or maybe something more.
After that it's anyone's guess. A ton of stuff to read, ideas to filter, write, spending time in places with people with strange faces, and along the way pushing to see what gives.
The interesting part will be to see what gives.
Writing from Tokyo | November 27, 2005 | Permalink
Discarding Content
Is there a digital equivilent to this?
How and why will people want to discard very personal media?
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | October 23, 2005 | Comments (5) | Permalink
Everything-I-Touch, Everything-U-Touch
How to capture meaningful user data remotely?
As much as I'd love to spend a month on location (cough, in Hawaii) to run a user study the reality is compressing it into up to two weeks (and more likely to be Hackney or Hangzhou than Hawaii, damn). Well before the team touches down in a new location we will have screened the study participants so one option is to ask them to self-gather data prior to our arrival. A typical self-gathering tool is asking them to keep some form of written, photo and/or video diary.
At best diary methods provide insights into people's context that can be followed up in interviews, and primes the user and the research team for the next stages of the study. At worst they are a waste of time - with participants mis-interpreting or re-interpreting the diary brief, unable to use the tools provided, consider the whole thing one big hassle, and only note down indecipherable comments.
One diary method which has a higher success rate than most I've tried is the eponymous Everything-I-Touch Photo Diary. Using a digital camera the participant is asked to take a photo of everything they touch for at least half a day sometimes from the moment they get up. The method was originally tried in 2001 as an attempt to understand the range and properties of objects/things that a person comes in contact with during the course of a day and was followed up as part of user exploration to develop concepts around Magic Touch / Near Field Communications. What objects and things do we interact with? What range of user interfaces, user experiences do we encounter? What enables or forces us to interact with the same things in different ways? For example turning a light switch on with your hand, but with both hands engaged in carrying turning the same switch off using your nose. How often do you flick that light switch on or off? Open that door? What does your alarm clock, shower knob, front door, fridge, breakfast, key-ring look like? What brands do you use? What interaction experiences are unique to those brands? When is the last time you had a novel tactile experience? Is it possible to go through the day without touching any objects that you haven't touched before?
If you like user research data, the results are a rich orgy of the mundane.
The method was successful enough in achieving its original aims, but also yielded other interesting data such as highlighting the flow of the day, the order in which tasks were completed - people likely to pee before checking the weather in the mornings, and understanding the range of contexts where the user spends time. A sufficient number of photos included enough perspective to show what else was happening, what other things the user could be doing.
Making the photos ready for use in the study is relatively easy. If the camera's time & date is accurately set up then it is easy to import the photos into a software programme such as LifeBlog, view the photos as a time line and add comments. Most of the things we do involve touching something or another and by capturing the touch moment it is possible to gain insights into that context. The time line can be printed and presented to the user for additional comments or as an interview guide. Some of the pilot subjects (Juergen, Matt) kept a diary and posted them to their blogs, though the final format of the photos from study participants tended to be more first person shooter than on these sites.
To encourage comprehensive data collection participants were given a comprehensive sample diary from the life of yours truly, that in turn acted as a form of social reward - a case of I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
There are a number of weaknesses with this diary method. The participant needs to be sufficiently motivated take continue to take photos - the novelty of snapping everything wears off after about an hour. Things that are touched multiple times in a short space of time will be only photographed once - though this is easy to follow-up in the interview. If you are trying to understand micro interaction issues you need to consider the user's dominant hand and are probably better off videoing the session. A user may record photos for the diary with their right, dominant hand for example forcing them to unnaturally use their left hand for carrying out tasks. The volume of photos can be overwhelming to process so shooting at a low resolution makes the volume easier to process.
Ultimately the user frames what you end up seeing. Whilst it is possible this will lead to carefully staged/boring this-is-my-life-isn't-it-wonderful photos, keeping the participant in control of the data collection process means being more likely to get photos of personal moments. The photos from one participant in Milan, Italy were so inspiring to be publishable as a stand-alone book.
If anyone wants to try this out get in ahem, touch and Ill send you more information - if you show me yours, I'll show you mine.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | October 14, 2005 | Comments (6) | Permalink
Sunday Pop-Quiz
Sharpen pencils, today we have a short quiz....
This is a 'what would happen if I lost my phone' scenario:
1. Without looking at your phone address book how many phone numbers can you remember from memory?
2. Do you have a paper/digital backup of phone numbers somewhere?
3. Assuming your backup is out of sync... How many contacts would you lose if you lost your phone?
4. You are in a foriegn city with no money, who would you call in this emergency situation?
5. How sure are you that the 'emergency' phone number is accurate?
6. Any significant phone numbers you can't remember?
Post answers in the comments please.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | September 18, 2005 | Comments (13) | Permalink
Experience Dining
Whats the difference between a good (dining) experience and feeling like you're part of a manufacturing/manufactured process?
Good dining: Bachi Bachi (photos) is an busy, informal, friendly 1950s themed okonomiyaki restaurant in Sakura Shinmachi, Tokyo. Sufficiently lived in, and popular with the local community.
One to avoid: themed Ninja Restaurant in Akasaka. Good food, but all guests are taken on a guided tour of the 'ninja village' by an appropriately dresssed ninja prior to finding your seat. Never mind that some guests were struggling with luggage, and the tour ended up back at the entrance dispelling any sense of mystique.
Writing from Sakura Shinmachi | April 24, 2005 | Permalink
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