The Art of Remembering in a Nano World
Typical behaviours when carried objects go below a certain size: attaching similar objects together such as key rings; grouping similar objects together - the wallet being a commonly carried example; enlarging such as adding straps. Clustering is somewhat like a mobile center of gravity. Straps serve multiple purposes and I'll write about the nuances once I've sorted out the research.
What happens when more of what we carry is designed and minaturized using nano tech? Will we become a society of attachers, groupers and enlargers? At what point do objects become so small that these strategies fail? At what point do objects that evolve into services become so distant that these strategies fail? Example - a carried key evolves into a remote monitoring service that provides access to the secure places and objects in your life - your car, home, diary. Embedding or attaching nano-objects to the body is one solution, but will another category of object arise - that of placeholder? An object whose only purpose it is to remind and support our use of some minutely small other object (or naturally clusters of minutely small other objects). Placeholder's already exist - the business card is a common example. How will tomorrow's placeholders be different than todays?
When an object can be any shape or size what shape or size should it be? When does form not follow function?
And the photos above? A Japanese bondaged bunny attached as a strap to an easy-to-lose USB drive.
Writing from Tokyo | November 3, 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
Mobile Essentials
Presentation by Per Persson, Mikko Aarras, Petri Piippo & Tetsuya Yamamoto & myself to last year's Designing the User Experience conference can now be downloaded from here [2MB].
Slides include photo examples of how to think about carrying behaviours including Center of Gravity, Point of Reflection and the Range of Distribution. A conclusion? The easiest way to have nothing to forget is to have nothing to remember. Whilst you might be tempted to enterpret this as a form of Zen philosophy, it is actually more about the art of delegation.
Related research here and here.
Writing from Tokyo | March 22, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Don't Do As I Do
2 sets of apartment blocks in Ho Chi Minh City. One literally overflowing, the other externally more ordered and possibly sterile.
Which would you prefer to look at?
And which would you prefer to live in?
Writing from Tokyo | March 19, 2006 | Permalink
Double Wrap
The smallest example range of distribution of objects that I've come across during behavioural research was interviewing a vice-squad policeman in Berlin. He discussed drug dealers double-wrapping their product in clingfilm which was then carried in the mouth. At the point of sale one item is taken from the mouth and handed over. If the police tried to bust them they swallow the produce and since the drugs take time to clear the digestive tract it meant putting dealers behind bars at least overnight for what often amounted to a small bust.
The range of distribution more affected the consequence of discover by the wrong person (in this instance the police), rather than risk of theft per se.
Do I know the origin of the Double Wrap shop name (half way between Harajuku and Shibuya photo above)? I do not.
Writing from Tokyo | March 15, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Identity, Memory
A simple and expressive example of how a restaurant overcomes the problem of guests forgetting their coats - an issue probably caused by the coats being located out of the line of sight when people leave. This restaurant is well warmed by the sun, and a number of guests arrive by car (relatively unusual for Tokyo) so remembering a coat may not be a high priority.
Our paper submitted to DUX last year proposed the concept of the range of distribution to describe how far people allows allow objects to stray from their person. Range of distribution is not just about distance, but also location in relation the body such as out of the line of sight and/or out of the range of reach.
Understanding the range of distribution for objects is interesting primarily because objects that are placed out of sight are more likely to be forgotten - and objects that are forgotten are less likely to be used, and people tend to value and eventually pay for things that they use. Another non-trivial issue is that the performance of wireless devices may be affected by how far objects stray from one another - some RFID readers have a range of millimeter's, Bluetooth has a range of meters. Its not just about data transmission but can also affect battery life as devices scan to relocate one another.
Back to the restaurant cloakroom... guests are given a toy (shown in the box below) that matches the one on the hanger (photo above). When leaving the restaurant the toy acts as a reminder that the coat needs to be taken, and perhaps more obviously acts as a ticket to identify the right coat. Simple, fun and elegant very much keeping with style the restaurant itself.
Writing from Tokyo | March 8, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Perceived Threat, Perceived Security
Street market in Lhasa sells a wide range of underwear with security pocket for men (shown but not tested) and women. We've had blind user study participants in India who used scent amongst other criteria to know the denomination of bank-notes, and I wonder to what extent the inevitable smell of sweat/urine/blood would affect this understanding? In what other contexts will objects pick up a physical or digital scent?
It's easy to underestimate how the perceived risk of theft affects how objects are carried and then positioned when not in use, and how for people living in that environment it becomes second nature.
Spent a couple of hours in coffee shop in Chengdu - observed the same behaviour on two separate tables: person A sits down and (is later proved to be) waiting for person B. Person A takes off coat and hangs it on the inside of the back of the chair and waits 10+ minutes for person B to arrive. Person A has strong tactile feedback with the coat. Person B arrives and takes off coat and hangs it on the outside of the chair - minimal tactile feedback to the coat. Person B is able to rely on the eyes of Person A to notice a theft attempt of the the coat itself, whereas Person A needs to fend for herself for a while at least and hangs the coat in in a manner that makes its removal more noticeable.
Yes, should have taken a photos to explain this, but it simply wasn't the right thing to do in the context. And yes, 80 RMB (8 Euro) for a cafe presse with fresh ground coffee was a little steep.
Writing from Beijing | December 20, 2005 | Comments (5) | Permalink
Location Shifting
What percentage of mobile phone users have straps?
How is location of device in trouser pockets influenced by strap usage?
What are the design implications for device interaction and use?
More figuring out where, how, why people carry phones.
Writing from Dashanzi | December 2, 2005 | Permalink
Summary Spaces
In cultures where people remove shoes at the entrance to the building the shoe removing space provides an easy to digest visual snapshot of the people that are already there. In environments where the people who inhabit the space are largely known - at home for example, not seeing a particular pair of shoes implies the person is not present. It also implies how the space can or cannot be used - 'mother is not yet home so I can get away with using the PlayStation a while'.
Incidentally my old kick-boxing dojo had a wonderful collection of shoes and boots at its entrance. There were usually one or two pairs of dainty high-heels whose owner's somehow transformed from petite Daikanyama shopperholics to grunting gladiators.
The shoes above were from a restaurant off the back of Shinjuku - construction workers on their lunch break.
Writing from Shinjuku, back of | November 19, 2005 | Permalink
Where People Carry Mobile Phones
Where do you carry your mobile phone? And how will this change if the phone were to adopt some of the functionality associated with other objects that you carry such as money and personal identity? (Both payment and ticketing are already available on handsets in Japan).
We've been conducting a series of studies to understand where people carry mobile phones and other mobile essentials. The original research was driven by a need to know to what extent people notice incoming communication and to what extent this was affected by where the device was carried. After all - the usefulness of a mobile phone is diminished if the user fails to notice that someone is calling. (For the record, we assume that the user wants control over whether or not to be notified in the first place - 24/7 connectivity is a discussion topic for later perhaps?) If you observe customers in a cafe for an hour one of the most frequent behaviours related to mobile phones, especially for women, is checking whether they have missed any incoming communication. User data on device location can support product designers for example helping them decide defaults speaker volume or lanyard placement.
My colleague Fumiko Ichikawa is today presenting the first fruit of this research in a paper entitled Where's the Phone - a Study of Mobile Phone Location in Public Spaces (download pdf) at the Mobility 2005 conference in Guangzhou, China. This paper draws on data from the first 3 studies - Helsinki, New York and Milan. Whilst I was not present in the original study in Helsinki I managed to take part in the follow-ups studies including cultures as diverse as the US, Italy, South Korea, Japan, China and India. In the future we'll be publishing data for these other cultures and explore the issues related to the full range of mobile essentials (the paper above focusses on the mobile phone).
Where people carry things today is interesting enough. The ultimate goal of this design research is to predict how the primary carrying location might change according to issues like new features and form factors. (New form factors will be enabled by technologlical advances such as minaturisation, flexible components or new charging methods). The fun part is figuring how this will collide with and influence future social and cultural trends.
And finally, if you're wondering whether I travel the world just to run these studies the answer is no - the team tends to run the street surveys in conjunction with more in-depth user studies that are already going on - its a good way to utilize assistant down time, meet hundreds of local mobile phone users and get a feel for a culture.
Writing from Tokyo | November 17, 2005 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Why do People Carry Mobile Phones?
Why do people carry phones?
Why do people carry what they carry?
And if we can understand why, how can we use this knowledge in the design of future products, applications and services?
Why people carry phones might seem like a rather basic question for someone who works for a mobile phone manufacturer, but the journey to try and understand the answer has been an interesting one.
A couple of years back I carried out a multi-cultural research project with Per Persson and a number of other colleagues to figure out what objects people consider to be essential when they leave home. We spent time studying 17 urban dwellers in San Francisco, Berlin and Shanghai and Tokyo with shadowing, home-interviews, plus 129 street interviews and numerous observation sessions. One of our screening criteria for in-depth subjects was that people had to own a mobile phone although during the screening process we made no assumptions about whether they considered the phone a necessity or not.
In the cultures we studied 3 objects were considered essential across all participants, cultures and genders were keys, money and mobile phone. Whilst this may seem obvious the interesting part of the study was in understanding the reasons why people considered these objects essential (largely survival, safety & security), why they were not always present (forgetting, awareness, making a conscious decision to be out of touch) and strategies people adopted to help them remember to take these objects. A lot of times money will be carried in a wallet or purse, but when it comes down to it, the money (cash and notes) are considered the essential objects before the other objects that are also contained there.
Some of the material from this study was presented in the DUX 2005 paper - 'Mobile Essentials - Field Study and Concepting' (download paper, 0.4mb). The paper introduces three interrelated ways to understand human behaviour to explain what we learned, and at some point I'll use Future Perfect to expand on some of these issues.
Firstly the Center of Gravity describes the most likely place where you are likely to cluster and consequently find these objects. In the home the Center of Gravity is likely to be the edge of a desk, a chair and often in the case of women, a bag. Objects don't stay in the center of gravity but over time they gravitate there.
The second idea is the Point of Reflection - the moment when leaving a space when you pause current activities turn back into an environment and check you have the mobile essentials. Typically this involves looking at the Center of Gravity, sometimes tapping pockets, sometimes speaking aloud. Not seeing the objects where they are supposed to be (the Center of Gravity) can be a sign that they are already carried.
The last behavioural concept is something we call the Range of Distribution - essentially the degree to which essential objects are likely to stray from the person, or from the person's line of sight/range of touch. Range of distribution is largely based on perceived risk of theft - the higher the perceived risk the further away objects are likely to be placed be allowed to 'stray'. This way of thinking about objects is important because the more likely an object is to be out of sight the more likely it is to be forgotten, and a mobile essential that is forgotten has little use in solving emergencies. In addition as mobile phones that take on functions associated with other mobile essentials for example access/identity (key, smart-card) or payment (money) can affect where and how they are carried.
As a private, relatively safe environment the home has a large range of distribution, whilst spaces like cafes or public transport have a relatively low range of distribution. The lowest range of distribution we observed was bus commuting in Shanghai rush-hour. The most extreme example of range of distribution was given to us by a vice cop in Berlin who explained about a drug dealer that double wrapped his produce which was then stored it his mouth - if the cops tried to bust them swallowed. Waiting for the produce to clear the digestive system was often too much hassle for low level busts, and was presumably rather unpleasant and messy.
Taxis are interesting environments in that they are often treated as a temporary private space - in which people can relax and objects are likely to spread out within the natural boundaries of the environment. When combined with other parameters such as: people using taxi's whilst tired or impaired e.g. drunk/high; the likelihood of using the mobile phone in the taxi; placing objects on the seat/out of sight after use; and a pressured sequence of tasks at the end of the journey such as thinking what to do next on arrival at the destination and paying the driver, help explain why mobile phones are often left in taxis.
There are naturally many other reasons why people carry a mobile phones - for entertainment, projecting status, a sense of belonging, or capturing and communicating an experiences using a camera phone to name a few, but the commonality was essentially their ability to help us survive.
Most people consider other objects essential - driver's license (particularly in the US), medication, travel pass and lip-stick are just some that have been mentioned but these can change over the course of the day and according to context. I would argue that nearly all objects that people carry are essential, because the carrier has already gone through a conscious and subconscious selection process to select those objects from all the objects they own or have access to. Nobody carries stuff just for the hell of it. Well actually that's not strictly true - many people carry things that they are not aware they are carrying - phones increasingly have features that the owner considers useful, is not aware are on the device. In these instances the smart question is what situations trigger initial awareness of a feature, and many researchers are working on contextual understanding in part to present the user with the right feature/knowledge at exactly the right time that it is useful.
The exceptions to why people don't carry these objects are in some ways more interesting than the fact they do in the first place. Designing solutions that meet a user needs are relatively easy, but for a product to be adopted into the flow of someone's life takes a good understanding of exceptions. Mobile essentials are often forgotten, despite the strategies for remembering. Keys are not necessarily needed if you live in an extended family or in areas of high unemployment. Some people like to 'switch off' and talk about quality time without the interruption of the mobile phone (I expect there to be different attitudes towards constant connectivity with younger generations). There is also the issue of at what point in a person's life they are entrusted to carry these essentials and in the case of children, if they are lost, who is responsible to replace them?
In one sense the easiest way never to ever forget anything ever again is to have nothing to remember. This is not as glib as it first sounds - it is possible to delegate responsibility to remembering to other people or indeed to technology. (The concept of delegating can be considered as a solution to many problems except entertainment and bodily functions).
A number of interesting avenues have come out of this research:
Why people make a conscious effort to leave mobile essentials behind and in the case of their mobile phone - switched off. This loosely comes under the heading connecting people, dis-connecting people, and re-connecting people.
My colleagues have initated a study of where people in Helsinki carry their phones and whether they notice incoming communication. A paper, drawing on data from follow up studies in Milan and New York will be presented at the Mobility Conference 2005 in Guangzhou China. (I'll post it when its available)
Another theme is the role of the phone in supporting and on occasion triggering personal crisis. Not life threatening events but things like being locked out of home, being lost late at night, breaking up with boyfriend/girlfriend and yes, mobile phone theft and loss. Notice the overlap between mobile essentials and personal crisis?.
Writing from Tokyo | November 11, 2005 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Listening Station
Very busy saturday afternoon in Shibuya's HMV. User creates a comfortable and private bubble for listening to music. By squatting her bag just touches the ground taking most of the weight off her shoulder.
Writing from Shibuya | October 23, 2005 | Permalink
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