Taipei Archives
The Promise of Human Contact
Mar 20, 2009 | 31 Comments
The following photos from Taipei's Eslite Bookstore - one of the world's most comfortable large bookstore spaces for hanging out, reading and human watching. Not that I have a photo to hand - but most convenience stores in Japan have magazine racks inside the glass fronted window - the people browsing the rack are a draw for anyone outside - a big hit in a 24 hour city where an increasing number of people live in small single-occupancy apartments.
Los Angeles is a city where most people hop from island to island in single occupancy vehicles and the promise of honest-to-allah human contact in this environment is a particularly juicy draw - the prime 'corner-office' real estate of the local Border's book store includes a magazine section with deep-window ledge seating, strewn magazines and littered with the bodies of breathing. fleshy. people. The pace, variety and lack of pressure to buy makes book and magazine racks sticky, the clustering of humans makes them stickier.
I'm not a believer in the discount-coffee-voucher-to-your-phone location based advertising this being a particularly bad example of the genre. But we're not too far from someone offering a mainstream compelling you-here-in-this-space-now service.
Is there a point when book stores offer online services that leverage people's deeper driver's i.e. Border's make's more from online match making services than the magazine's themselves? And given the potential for real time awareness (think Sense Networks+) what factors increase the likelihood of creating an ad-hoc honeypot?
Your recommendations for best people watching shops in your city?
The Future Of In-Your-Space Advertising
May 14, 2007
Advertising boards strategically placed on Taipei's streets. It may not look like much but this is the future.
Why? Because nobody paid to rent the space to place these items here. And because when autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles start appearing in public spaces - think personal transport and personal assistants in modern Asian cities some of these will be co-opted as advertising hoardings, and will find a space and sit there until moved along. Who are the winners and losers when physical advertisements become autonomously mobile?
Cross reference this with yesterday's roof-top parking lot - each vehicle is a potential advertising canvas. What is the value of your vehicle when it is parked and advertising versus, say the cost of parking itself? What is the value of your vehicle when the advertising it displayed is coordinated with all vehicles. And yes, who co-ordinates?
And if you're recoiling in horror at an advertising saturated world - perhaps you'd like to take a lead by removing that logo from your sweatshirt, vehicle, bicycle, sunglasses and shoes?
The fun starts when autonomous advertising spaces are reclaimed by the people whose spaces are invaded. Too far-fetched? See you in the future perfect.
Modal Challenges
May 14, 2007
RFID embedded Taipei Metro token has a form factor that is condusive to being inserted - much like a coin. Except that at certain stations the only option is to press the token on the flat reader surface - much like an office ID card.
Passengers unfamiliar with the train station exit gates i.e. non-locals who are more likely to buy one-off tokens rather than travel cards, are required to change their grip at short notice.
Perceptions of Mobility
May 14, 2007
Whether something is able to move changes our acceptance of it as an object in 'our' space?
Apartment, Milk Delivered
May 14, 2007
See also Shanghai milk box designs.
Stopping the Spread of Infectious Diseases/Ideas
May 14, 2007
"To prevent the bird flu virus from spreading do not carry poultry and birds into the station" above.
"Election campaigning is prohibited inside the station" below.
Extensions to Known Formats
May 14, 2007
This poster from outside a Taipei design department store includes links to photographer's galleries on Flickr.
Why is it interesting? It's not simply the use of web addresses (rather than QR bar codes, physical addresses, or phone numbers) but the assumptions about what you will or will not find when you link to a Flickr address. The poster may have SEX writ large, but do you expect to find this kind of content on a corporate sub-site to hosting material by howhao, chenyian, myberyl or wangshuwe?
Exactly.
And at what point in the race for media-consumer mindshare it is possible to reduce a web site address from http://www.flickr.com/photos/chenyian down to flickr/chenyian, and still be understood by the mainstream? Why not just chenyian?
Which is of course not a million miles away from keywords. Which is why anything that can shorten the path - taking information from the world around us and making it easier to apply to tasks that we want to complete, has significant potential. PC and mobile search tools are evolving and indeed make search engines/ad agencies a fair income. But it is frankly limited compared to search where if you can see it or think it you can search for it.
The Need For (Implying) Speed
May 14, 2007
ADSL advertising.
Straw Norms
May 14, 2007
For drinking this.
Technological Disparity
May 13, 2007
Monocle currently includes a manga pull-out that is a mixture of Shinjuku boys-own adventure and not-so-subtle product placement. But when the storyline (and presumably sponsors) demand - how to introduce the concept of QR bar codes to a technologically dis-interested audience?
Click to enlarge and read the potted explanation, in photo below.
Taipei Cafes Are More Fun
May 13, 2007
On the assumption that current do not signs are an accurate indicator of what people actually do, obviously more fun.
Height and Weight Surcharges / Discounts
May 13, 2007
As with Bangkok the Taipei metro allows children under a certain height to travel for free - the height gage appears to the right of this photo.
In a world where so much more of everything is recorded and measured when will we start seeing more price segmentation based on height, weight, shoe size, gait? How will local rules apply to people with very different physiological traits - for example from other cultures?
What is the likelihood that airlines will be the first to start charging more for passenger's of 'excessive' weight? And given the sensitivity of this issue how will these surcharges be disguised?
View From, Payment Of
May 12, 2007
The positioning of cars in this Taipei car park - in particular the clustering of vehicles next to stairwells.
Assumptions about: the time of day people entered the car park based on the number of empty spaces; weather conditions at the time of parking - both good or bad weather might induce a driver to park on the roof level or park somewhere else; the density of cars on the other floors based on people choosing to park on the roof level; and the perception of the likelihood of airborne pollutants / bird originated airborne projectiles and the ease/cost/convenience of having a car cleaned
Fast forward a few years: vehicles negociating their way to 'better' parking spaces when they become available - you don't need to remember exactly where you parked your car when you have real time access to its location, and vice versa; the extent to which the notion of car parking becomes moot when cars have 'self-valet' features; car parks charging more for individual spaces clustered closer to the exits - this already exists to some extent - entire car parks charge more/less based on their proximity to, say, airports - the opportunities for segmenting the market becomes that much easier with more granular data; car parks automatically providing cleaning discount vouchers for drivers whose cars are hit by bird originated airborne projectiles. And yeah - the extent to which car cleaning service providers would employ remote drones to launch airborne projectiles to induce customers to their cleaning services.
Iconographic Norms
May 12, 2007
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