Cultures of Repair, Innovation
Update: a slightly more print friendly version of this post appears here and the slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB].
In an effort to understand the total user experience I've taken time out during recent field studies in emerging markets to explore local repair cultures. The journey has taken me to cities such as Chengdu, Delhi, Ulan Bataar, Ho Chi Minh and Lhasa with recent brief stopovers in Kampala and Soweto. They all contain clusters of shops and market stalls selling a mixture of used and new mobile phones, and whilst (in this instance) size does not necessarily matter, they often operate on a scale not seen in cities such as London or Tokyo. The mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market for example stretches across number of streets and shopping arcades and includes 100's of small shops and stalls. If you want a snapshot of urban mobile phone consumers in emerging markets this is a good place to start.
What sets these locations apart from cities in more 'emerged' markets? Aside from the scale of what's on sale there is a thriving market for device repair services ranging from swapping out components to re-soldering circuit boards to reflashing phones in a language of your choice , naturally. Repairs are often carried out with little more than a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning contact points) the right knowledge and a flat surface to work on. Repair manuals (which appear to be reverse engineered) are available, written in Hindi, English and Chinese and can even be subscribed to, but there is little evidence of them being actively used. Instead many of the repairers rely on informal social networks to share knowledge on common faults, and repair techniques. It's often easier to peer over the shoulder of a neighbour than open the manual itself. Delhi has the distinction of also offering a wide variety of mobile phone repair courses at training institutes such as Britco and Bridco turning out a steady flow of mobile phone repair engineers. To round off the ecosystem wholesalers' offer all the tools required to set up and run a repair business from individual components and circuit board schematics to screwdrivers and software installers.
How are mobile phone repair cultures different from the everyday repair shops for other mainstream electronics filled with televisions and video recorders? For a start consider the volumes of mobile phones in the marketplace compared to other electronics. Network effects soon kick in - it's easier to find a dead RAZR to cannabalise for spares than spares for a Sony DVD drive drive quite simply because there's more of them about. The physical size of the products to be repaired is also an factor - consider the space required to store and repair 200 mobile phones vs CRT televisions. As objects that many consider essential tools for everyday life mobile phones are carried, dropped, sat on, run over, submerged in a wide variety of situations leading to use cases outside the parameters of most phones. Finally, for many emerging market consumers the phone is considered an essential tool for conducting a successful business whether it's a boda-boda driver in Kampala (gentleman on moped in photo, below) or a midwife in Xiamen. If a person has the choice between repairing a television or a (shared) mobile phone which do you think he or she would choose first?
Each of the cities mentioned above offers more formal repair services, usually officially through customer care service centers, but the scale and sophistication of what is on offer informally is way beyond what many readers of Future Perfect will be familiar. And yes, many of the places mentioned already have networks to (from my observations) efficiently recycle, repair and re-use a wide variety objects including electronics . But in the spirit of the Future Perfect let's start with a very basic question - why do these informal repair cultures exist at all? What is so different between London and Lhasa or Helsinki and Ho Chi Minh?
The informal repair services that are offered are quite simply driven by necessity - highly price sensitive customers cannot afford to go through more expensive official customer care centers and even if they could their phones are unlikely to be covered by warrantee - having been bought through grey market channels, been sent as gifts from friends and relatives abroad, or were locally bought used, second or third+ ownership. In many cases these users cannot afford to be without their mobile phone, not in the social sense of being out of touch (which is valid enough), but in many instances because their livelihoods depend on it. On the supply side there is a ready pool of sufficiently skilled labour, ready access to tools, components and above all knowledge.
It's worth acknowledging that grey and black goods and services are also part of the mobile phone market ecosystem - whether it's passing faked goods off as originals or offering pirated software. Some markets also sell a wide variety of phones that copy the industrial designs of other products, examples are shown here and and example of how it can unfold here (these two links are unrelated). These are however, only a part of the whole market ecosystem and from my understanding are small in scale within the context of the physical markets' themselves, compared to the repair services on offer. And before you ask - no, I'm not arguing that piracy is a minor issue.
For consumers the informal repair culture is largely convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, reducing the total cost of ownership for people for whom a small drop in price may make the difference between having or not having a phone. The culture of repair also increases the lifetime of products lowering their environmental impact (though this could be offset by other factors such as inefficiency of using old batteries).
What can we learn from informal repair cultures? Aside from the benefits, what are the risks for consumers and for companies whose products are repaired, refurbished and resold? Given the benefit to (bottom of the pyramid) consumers are there elements of the repair ecosystem that can be exported to other cultures? Can the same skills be applied to other parts of the value chain? And, turning to my original interest in this topic and the work we do in the Mobile HCI Group, given the range of resources and skills available what would it take to turn cultures of repair into cultures of innovation?
I'm at Cape Town University today discussing qualitative research methods and Informal Repair Cultures. The slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB download] and related presentations here.
Writing from Cape Town | July 3, 2006 | Comments (4) | Permalink
Your Warrantee Became Void at 17:32:42
My translator negotiates a 3 month warrantee for used phone in Ulan Bataar's mobile phone market. Batteries came with a one week guarantee.
Products can store their own histories - from where they were bought to where they've been, how they interacted with what kind of objects, related behaviours such as 'I see you've been downloading from the darknet, weighting risk assessment', and even your little mishaps. That time you dropped the phone from balcony? Logged. Tried to squeeze your iPod into the back pocket of a pair of low riders? Logged. In the future perfect products are in essence their own warrantee. On the one hand no more looking for where the documentation is stored so you can take it to the store and argue it out with the sales rep, on the other hand no pretending that it wasn't dropped.
Lets start with a basic question - why do companies offer warrantees for their products? Why do people pay extra for 'extended warrantees'? And how does this landscape shift if much of the negotiating to and fro that happens today is logged, automatically? How will people's behaviour change to manipulate the log? How will companies change the conditions of the warrantee in response to these behaviours?
And in a world where bits of data are increasingly communicated in real time why do we have fixed and not relative warrantees?
Writing from Tokyo | June 9, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Mobile Phone Kiosks
This is technically a mobile phone. But if I'm completely accurately its actually a mobile phone kiosk - part of a service offered by local entrepreneurs in Ulan Bataar.
The first time I ventured onto the street of UB I encountered an individual on the street holding what appeared to be a white landline, shifting from foot to foot in the intense cold (similar to the three ladies in the photo below). My first hunch was that they were selling used phones. As the day wore on, and more sellers were encountered it became apparent that they weren't selling phones, but rather telephony.
A number of the so-called white phone sellers offer infrastructure akin to a traditional phone kiosk to support making a call - and this ranged from a wooden stand to hold the phone to a cushioned seat. Cigarettes and chewing tobacco were also for sale. To be frank it was a little unnerving, to see a white phone customer walking along the street with the white phone seller walking along side them holding the body of the phone, the cable dangling between them. Mobile, yet tethered to one another.
MobiTel, the primary mobile carrier in Mongolia rents wireless battery powered white phones for around 100,000 Tughriks (70 Euro) for 3 years. The seller of the service must make a 10,000 Tughrik deposit to be able to make and take domestic calls from the phone, and a 100,000 Tughrik deposit is required for international calls. The price of the service for consumers fluctuates according to where the phone is located - generally the more competition the cheaper the cost.
For me this is an interesting example of a largely public service (telephony) offered by private individuals. Unlike fixed line phones, of which there appeared to be few in UB, the seller of the service is able to relocate to where there is most demand for the service. As with many street vendors - the location of a pitch once obtained is closely guarded - so there is not true mobility in the sense that anyone can conduct business anywhere without concequences, but when there is an event for example a bout at the Wrestling Palace, then the more white phone sellers can gather to offer sufficient service to an increased number of punters. Just like any other vendor be it a hot-dog stand or to stay within the Mongolian context a Mongolia Booz seller.
The major benefits of mobile phones come from being tools that offer personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication (possibly also the time and location shifting of experiences but lets save that for another day). Fixed line phone kiosks offer a degree of privacy and typically more shelter and the white phone kiosk users forsake privacy for convenience.
As more services go mobile a new challenge arises - how to notify customers that a service is offered in a particular location?
Writing from Tokyo | March 4, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Barriers to Market Entry
You buy and sell second hand phones. What steps do you need to take before deciding whether to purchase a second hand device? How easy is it to check that the device works? And given that, what is the minimum infrastructure you need be able to operate? What are the barriers to entering the market?
A sign, a display case, somewhere to sit and something to sell. Photo from the extensive mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu.
Writing from Tokyo | January 22, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Checked, Validated
You want to get your mobile phone repaired via the grey market (photo Ulaan Bataar, above), rather than via more formal repair shops certified by manufacturers. How sure are you that the repair has been properly carried out? What recourse do you have based on formal or social agreements if it turns out not to have been repaired properly?
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Negociations
First off, negociate the price of a translator.
Next the translator negociates the price of a repair.
Lastly, negociate your way out of a crowded market with a proven reputation for pick pockets.
Photos from some time this month, Ulan Bataar.
Writing from Tokyo | December 23, 2005 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Phone Number As Identity II
Mobicom [the primary Mongolian carrier] offers a student sign-up package. Part of the deal is a mobile phone number with the pre-fix 9961
"It's a good deal, but if I went for a job and gave a [student] phone number they would want to pay me less"
Writing from Ulan Bataar | December 9, 2005 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Battery
Hologram seal on non-Nokia battery for Nokia phone.
Quality assurance or perception of quality assurance?
Writing from Ulan Bataar | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Steamed
It looks like frost escaping from a freezer when it is in fact the reverse.
Steam from basement workshop freezes on coming in contact with the cold (-20 to -30) air.
Writing from Ulan Bataar | | Permalink
Expectations Out of Sync
Wandering around UB and chance up disciples playing football in a temple complex. They invite me into the warmth for a reason - to mine the memory of my phone of all its value. Half a dozen files transferred from my device - particularly interested in obtaining photos of women from Japan.
Writing from Ulan Bataar | | Permalink
Phone Number As Identity I
What does your phone number say about you?
Numbers for sale in Ulan Bataar (photo above) and Beijing (below).
Mobicom - the primary Mongolian carrier has semi-automated the process (photo below) with in-store phone number selection. Baby steps on the way to something more sophisticated?
Totally redesign the way we make, keep and manage contacts. What could your phone number say about you?
Writing from Ulan Bataar | | Comments (1) | Permalink
White Phone Kiosk
Writing from Ulan Bataar | | Permalink
Motivations for...
Writing from Ulan Bataar | | Permalink
Comparison Shopping
A walk from the Container Market to Tomorchiin Gudamj takes you through an aisle of parked cars. In each one thick wads of different currencies - roubles, yen, dollars and renminbi folded and squeezed between the dashboard and the windshield. This market is very much for locals.
The car is converted into an effective money exchange - warm for the exhanger, sufficiently secure, and easily identifiable for repeat customers. One thing that is missing is notification of exchange rates - making it difficult as a consumer to know which seller to approach first. It's unlikely that they are simply not organised enough, or that the rates fluctuate too frequently. The act of exchanging money is legal but advertising it is not? A ploy to force customers to approach a car window and engage in negociation? Making comparison shopping harder?
Roll forward 5 years - everyone has mobile tools enabling easy, non-proprietary, sufficiently secure, proximate communication and increasingly the phone is used as a store of money and call credits. How will this scene be different?
Writing from Ulan Bataar | December 8, 2005 | Permalink
Pirate TV (Sloppy Seconds)
Cable channels here are an interesting mix: the Simpsons dubbed into Mongolian, Korean & Indian dramas, Mongolian-rap videos, Chinese news, Russian cop shows and a Voice of Amerika. One channel is broadcasting back to back ripped DVDs. Really? Three subtle clues: the English movie is showing subtitles in English but to a different movie; one of the movies was a screener - just ok video quality but echoey audio; and the clincher - they also broadcast the DVD menu before the movie starts.
Writing from Ulan Bataar | | Permalink
Anticipating What Services Are Offered
Anticipating services from observing infrastructure.
Writing from Ulan Bataar | December 7, 2005 | Comments (0) | Permalink
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