Delivery Options
Centralized post boxes for a rural Hawaiian community - to pick up mail residents drive to this location and pick up mail.
Although it's a public service its not a million miles from the commercial example of splitting a package of cigarettes and selling them individually. Simply a matter of figuring out what aspects of the activity - in this case mail delivery, should be completed by whom.
Writing from Tokyo | July 29, 2006 | Permalink
Visual Clues For Knowing the Age
How do you tell the age of a palm tree?
What clues do we rely on to understand the age of a product? Why is understanding the age important? What happens when the clues we use no longer apply to products? I may be used the rings of an oak tree, but haven't spent much time understanding the innards of a palm. And to apply this (lack of) reasoning to software - are software version numbers still relevant in a fully networked world?
Writing from Tokyo | June 7, 2006 | Permalink
Presence Underfoot
What role does the welcome mat play? Can it play a similar role in the design of hybrid digital & physical services and in particular location based advertising?
Writing from Tokyo | May 8, 2006 | Permalink
Dare, Counter Dare
"This is a Dare drug free school zone"
"Dare to think for yourself"
Writing from Tokyo | April 22, 2006 | Permalink
Understanding Consequences, Affecting Actions
Graffiti/sign stencilled close to many of drains in Hilo make it harder to ignore/easier to understand the consequence of inappropriate dumping.
Fast forward, same situation, but what happens when there are numerous objects embedded with a life-time's worth of data; being able to identify (or partially identify) a person has been in proximity of that drain at a particular time; a framework of legal/social rules; and the ability to display dynamic signs based on that legal/social framework? Pro-active contextual street signage?
It's not a million miles from a real-time equivilent of this.
Given that some of the fun of life is in ignoring the (increased risk of the) consequences of some of our actions whether it's smoking (whatever), extreme sports or simply crossing the road, how will this play out when the consequences of actions can be calcuated and projected to a person in real time? There are likely to be signficant cultural differences - in terms of issues like the respect for authority and the extent to which people take a fatalistic attitude to life.
Writing from Hawaii | April 18, 2006 | Permalink
Effort Required to Help People Wayfind
How much effort to help people find their way? The consequence of not making the effort?
Marking trails at 3000+ meter altitude (Mauna Loa, above). Or directing people to a nearby toilet.
Writing from Mauna Loa | April 17, 2006 | Permalink
Anti-Social Luggage
I'm intrigued about the affects physical/digital objects can have on other physical/digital objects during everyday use. We know from multi-cultural studies on what people carry where and why that people tend to keep keys and phones in separate pockets to avoid scratching the device (this applies mostly to men, our research indicates that women are much more likely to use handbags than pockets to carry their mobiles).
What happens to other carried objects or carrying spaces such as pockets when a device is covered in gem stones? Or is defiant about being put in your pocket?
What happens to other people's luggage when a skateboard slip-mat is applied to the surface of your check-in luggage? (photo, above). How will it differ when the anti-social behaviour is digital?
Writing from Hawaii | | Permalink
Adult Content, Other Grey Market Goods & Services
The availability of adult content is restricted in China. But what does this have to do with these women standing on the side of a busy Beijing road during last December's bitter cold?
In Beijing a woman in a market street holding a baby is associated by many with selling pornography. (The seated lady in the photo above is holding a baby and has a CD visible in her hand). Pornography sellers have even been known to carry fake babies since the baby is the signifier of the goods that are for sale. I've not gone out of my way to research this topic but my assumption is that is applies to other parts of China also - a clarification from Chinese residents welcome.
Every culture has goods and services that are considered illegal, or at the very least anti-social. For consumers wishing to buy adult content or for that matter any grey or black market services, how to identify who is selling what? What is the risk of making the wrong assumptions? The transaction process is may be made more difficult through a high turn over sellers (if they are frequently busted by the authorities), the degree to which any transactions needs to be shielded from prying eyes, and the risk that the seller is in fact working for the authorities.
What lessons can we apply to the distribution of legal content? On the assumption that all stratas of society are consumers of these goods and services, how long before marketers seek to distribute advertising content through these channels? Apart from flyposting, any examples of it having happened already?
Writing from Hawaii | | Permalink
Buying Fakes With Eyes Open
Observed during a short visit to a street market in Delhi - the seated gentlemen is boxing up covers for Nokia phones.
The quality of the covers varied but the boxes were pretty obvious fakes. On the assumption that most consumers in this market will be aware are of the origin of the goods, to what extent do (fake) boxes increase the value of (fake) covers? Are there markets where taking objects out of packaging increases their value?
Hmm, what makes a fake a fake?
Writing from Hawaii | April 16, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Content Middle Men
In Delhi's Karol Bagh Market 100+ Rupees (2+ Euro) will buy you as much content as you can fit on a 512 MB memory card. Widely available digital contents includes the usual suspects: ring tones in various formats; wallpapers; themes; applications; games - including Series 60 ports of many popular Nintendo ES games; Hindi pop videos; and a couple of full length Hindi movies. Given that most of this content is available somewhere online, its interesting to note the presence of someone who takes the time to find and package the material for less networked (or less network-motivated) consumers.
Writing from Hawaii | | Permalink
What You See, Are Allowed to See
You are doing ad-hoc field data collection - what are you really seeing when you see what you see? And how much of the (data collecting) situation exists because of your presence? And given the positive and negative biases that your presence has, how can you reduce their impact?
Taking the most recent field study in Delhi as an example - being an obvious foreigner made it easier to gain access to people to a number of situations, but I'm well aware that almost all of the street interviews that I took part in only involved male participants - introducing a gender bias to my data. Gender mixed field study teams is a basic requirement, but even with a gender mixed team there are biases such as what data is given what prominence in the final report which is affected by who the primary authors are which goes back to who has what access to collecting what data?
if you study a topic such as what people carry eventually you'll come in contact with grey market activities - which given the nature of the grey market provides a number of opportunities to introduce data biase. I recall a recent street interview where the conversation veered to anti-social activities and whether I was an undercover cop - the participant pushed the convesation to this topic by first suggesting that I could be the police, then reaching the conclusion herself that I was not. At this point I tried to argue that I could be the police - the conversation went something along the lines of [her] you're not the police [me] how do you know? [her] you don't dress like the police [me] yeah, but you can't really be sure? In the event (I assume) she assumed I was not the police because the conversation and her manner was open. But ultimately was it? And whilst there is a good deal of literature on why and how we affect the data that is collected, in the field it sometimes comes down to making a judgment call, ideally with biases discussed by the team and factored in during the data analysis.
And why these photos? To work effectively the telescopes on Mauna Kea require support from Big Island residents - the use of orange low impact sodium street lighting which, like our biases, can be filtered out (in this case by the telescopes). The end result is a clear view of the night sky.
I'm in the planning process for a field study in a highly gender segregated culture later this year, and wondering how best to approach ad-hoc street data collection, if at all. Thoughts and suggestions welcome.
Writing from Mauna Kea | April 15, 2006 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Authority
Whether you believe the sign depends on a number of things including: the authority of the organisation or person that placed it there; the context (cloud covered mountain roads); and the risk of it happening to you (running into a cow with a car). It's rare to find humour in warning signs but it works well here. Do you believe?
Writing from Hawaii | | Permalink
Menu Options
Pictoral support in knowing what to order.
Writing from Hilo | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Map To Rest Room
How you get from here to there.
Writing from Hilo | | Permalink
Correlation
Mental, physical and spatial mapping.
Writing from Hilo | April 14, 2006 | Permalink
What You Are Likely To Forget
Sign to correct a common problem.
Got a few days R & R - the plan is to hit the trail for the next few days, assuming the weather lets up.
Writing from Hilo | April 12, 2006 | Permalink
Inviting Interaction
The extent to which spaces, places and technologies welcome interaction and use.
Writing from Hawaii | April 11, 2006 | Permalink
Socket Plus?
Are there any advantages to influencing use behaviour by promoting the use of one socket over another? What factors could influence which socket was used first?
Writing from Hawaii | April 10, 2006 | Permalink
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