March 11, 2007
Disembodied Voices
I seem to have missed a beat. At what point in the evolution of hte service industry did it become OK to look someone in the eye, say 'hi, how can I help you' and ignore the answer? Obviously I don't travel thru, um, drive-thru USA enough - where this past weekend a number of restaurant serving staff were expected to multi-task by enaging in-store customers whilst simultainiously coping with incoming drive-thru and telephone orders. The net result is a disembodied experience where all the social cues say 'you presense in this store is valued' but the words that are spoken 'you're irrelevant'.
I'd assume that most stores would train their frontline staff to adopt body language that makes it obvious where their current attention lies - with the customer in-store or a remote somebody. But how to unlearn a life time of social behaviour and cope with the multi-tasking demands of service industry managers?
BTW - the server above is an example local/remote multi-tasking done right - when micro-phone is down she's somewhere else, when in the up position she gave her full attention. The worst offender? Below.
March 10, 2007
The New Sociality
Playing around with Jeff Han's multiple input display. First thoughts? Just how social/anti-social you can be working in the same space as someone else. Yes, totally obvious but not immediately so from the demo.
March 04, 2007
Perception, Reality, Privacy
Close Circuit TV camera becoming a lightening rod for the debate on privacy. To what extent do people perceive their privacy to be violated by CCTV cameras? To what extent is their privacy actually violated i.e. the information that is collected is acted on in some way? And how big is the gulf between the perception and the reality? And is the difference irrelevant?
What design changes can be made to mitigate/extenuate the feeling of being watched?
Given the granuality of information they are able to collect, why doesn't this sticker include the name of a search engine? What does it say about our awareness of what search engines (and other services) versus physical presence? Or about the willingness to give up privacy for convenience?
February 07, 2007
How it is Communicated
February 01, 2007
Granularlity, Accuracy, Timing of Delivery of Data
Complimentary hotel newspaper adorned with weather forecast sticker.
January 28, 2007
Abstraction & Recognition
January 21, 2007
Print on Demand
Daily newspapers printed on demand by Newspapers Direct. What does the fact that this business exists in a world of ubiquitous digitial content say about our appreciation of physical content? In what ways is print-on-demand physical content different to role-printed mass-produced newspapers?
From Singapore Airport. Cheers DMc.
January 10, 2007
Analog Messaging Between Check-in Staff and Baggage Handlers
Simple analog messaging between check-in staff and baggage handling staff at Hokkaido's Chitose Airport. Group check-in luggage is preceeded and ended by empty annotated crate shown at the back of the photo.
Ah yes, what you really want to know is whether there was a decent dump of snow? Does an onsen smell of sulphur?
Cheers to the boarding crew for making it happen with such finesse. CS - next time for sure.
November 20, 2006
Mobile TV, Personal Experiences
Learn ten things you didn't know about Mobile TV in this essay.
A summary? Its all about a personal experiences; home use is surprisingly popular; watching is a small part of the whole; up to 4 people can view a mobile TV at the same time but the act of sharing changes what it means to be a phone; why accessories are a struggle; design content for changing user postures; immersion is possible but is it desireable?; interactive experiences require interaction which is difficult if the user is not holding the device; everything you wanted to know about very personal media consumption but were afraid to ask; and finally what, how and why people watch in secret.
You can download a new presentation on Mobile TV entitled Mobile TV, Personal Experiences here [4MB PowerPoint].
Want more? A paper co-authored with my colleagues Cui Yanqing and Younghee Jung (pictured in Seoul above) entitled Personal Television: A Qualitative Study of Mobile TV Users in South Korea can be downloaded here [0.2 MB PDF]. And the previously published presentation entitled An Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases can be downloaded from here [7MB, PowerPoint]
Related research as always, here.
November 13, 2006
Personal TV
A mobile phone user sits alone watching live baseball whilst sitting in Komazawa Koen, Tokyo.
One of the surprising findings of a recent research study we did in South Korea was the extent to which Mobile TV was used in the home. Given the competition in the home from large screens, good audio, high definition and known content why would anyone watch mobile TV in the home space?
Its turns out that people really value control over the watching experience. No need to negociate with other family members over control of the remote or control of the sofa. Curled up in bed with a hot cup of cocoa. Of course. Want to multi-task whilst you're instant messaging/downloading/doing homework? Why Not? Extrapolate this contol over the experience to contexts in and outside the home. The key benefit from Mobile TV is not mobility- very few people will watch whilst actively on the move - its that the experience is personal. Its time to start thinking about Personal TV.
Picked up in a recently published summary of Mobile TV research published by Dr Shani Orgad. Plus a few slides from the South Korea study can be downloaded from here with a full paper due once a suitable venue to publish is found.
In the big scheme of things does a more personal experience for you imply a more impersonal experience for the rest of us? Are your personal experiences socially connecting? Or do they cut you off from everyone except your media?
October 05, 2006
Connecting the Unconnected
Earlier this week I attended the Nokia Technology Media Briefing in Helsinki. I recommend Bob Iannucci's talk entitled Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow [1MB] and the accompanying podcast - he's a eloquent speaker. The second slide of his presentation highlights how far the telephone industry has come shows how far we still have to go to offer a simple, enjoyable user experience.
My contribution to the event? A presentation entitled Connecting the Unconnected [2MB] that introduced some of the field research methods we've been using; points to why pretty much everyone on the planet can appreciate the benefits of having access to a mobile telephone (personal, convenient synchronous and asynchronous communication, um, naturally) and introduces findings from a recent field study in Uganda and Indonesia into Shared Phone use. I'll expand on couple of points of the presentation in the coming weeks - in particular the practice of pooling resources to buy air time; the on-foot delivery of messages sent to phone kiosks - something that we've termed step messaging; and my personal favourite sente - the informal practice of sending money as airtime that effectively enables the owner of a mobile phone to offer basic ATM services (slides 37 to 40). All examples of innovation through necessity.
I'll post an annotated version of the presentation here at some point.
Visits to the Espoo mothership are always a chance to reconnect the remotely connected - spend face time with internal research clients, in-depth discussions on the implications of field studies and an opportunity to working out where next to focus our efforts. It's fair to say 2007 is lining up to be an interesting year, not that we've been sitting on our hands in '06. The speed at which research turns to actions shouldn't surprise me but it does - all credit to the development teams that make it happen.
Tomorrow I'll be waking up to the sound of Cairo, the exploratory research team rolls on.
September 27, 2006
Affecting the Perception of Preference
Audience voting at the EPIC conference. To what extent does the colour of the vote (red, green or amber) affect the perception of which is most popular?
September 22, 2006
Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases
The slides for yesterday's presentation on An Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases at the Annenberg Center for Communication can now be downloaded from here [7MB].
The presentation draws on a 2005 qualitative study into commercial S-DMB Mobile TV in Seoul, South Korea by Younghee Jung, Cui Yanqing and myself. These slides concentrate on only one aspect of the study - the three main use cases that were documented and explored - evening commuting, macro breaks and home use. Actually we uncovered a compelling fourth use case, but we'll wait until a full research paper is published before revealing what it is.
A summary? Researchers and designers often talk about use cases but to what extent do the details of the experience need to be communicated to the project team (and in what formats) in order for these scenarios to be useful? What are the elements of the experience that can make or break whether new services move beyond early adopters? The devil is in the details.
Thanks to Mizuto Ito for hosting and to HyeRyoung Ok for carrying the discussion.
September 16, 2006
The Order in Which Services Are Cut
Four phone booths, one of which was optimised for wheelchair access.
The order in which services roled out. The order in which services are rolled back.
September 04, 2006
Welcoming, Filtering, Projecting
Welcome mats of sorts - from Tokyo above, the fishing village of Kansensero and São Paulo, below. The Future Perfect of mats here.
August 18, 2006
The Art of Thinking Ahead
Noticed after conducting an ad-hoc interview in Lwamagwa with a rural Ugandan policeman.
The reason for the interview was that the spot just above the police station entrance was one of the only places in the village that had regular cellular reception (basically line of sight through a dip in the landscape to a base station). Move the phone a foot either way and the reception was lost. Making and receiving calls required dextrous use of his head set.
Related: Village Phone extended antennas.
Toilets, Muslim Toilets
Must dig up the collection of different types of waiting rooms in China and India.
August 17, 2006
You'll Like This. Or Not.
Visitors to Pretoria Airport are greeted by signs pointing them to turn on their mobile phone's Bluetooth connectivity. Accepting the connection results in an animated GIF being sent to the phone - with special offers on duty free products.
In our (naturally wonderful) wireless world the process of discovery, knowing what services are currently available in proximity is far from painless. Whilst I rarely buy duty free I suspect that most people would find the 'special offer' underwhelming given the steps required to receive (even if connectivity was switched on) and the risks associated with accepting gifts from strangers.
Purveyors of location based services may be interested in the 2003 NTT DoCoMo's comprehensive R-Click trial in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills. By signing up to R-Click and completing a profile of interests participants were offered three services: location based advertising according to personal preferences (Koko Dake Click); information based on what was shown on LCD displays (Mite Toru Click) for example a url related to the advertising that was displayed when you were present is sent to your i-Mode equipped phone; and finally a services that monitored where the participant was going and tried to predict what offers or items of interest they would want mailed to their phone (Buratto). In other words the system tracks your every move (not dis-similar to CCTV) except that this information can be cross checked with your profile, your mobile phone, and to the profile that the system builds around your behaviours. To be fair R-Click was a trial and trials are there to, well, try out stuff. And yes, its opt-in. But the approach in the R-Click trial, in particular the Buratto service highlights a fundamental assumption about privacy, or lack of - you are there to be tracked, sold to, and you pay for the priviledge because i-mode is a pay-per-packet service.
How well did the Roppongi Hill R-click service work? From my own experience, even with my profile of interests and knowing where I was heading it was unable to provide relevant recommendations and in many ways it highlighted the challenge of providing the right person with the right information at the right time. Getting it even marginally wrong results in an unwanted intrusion.
Would I accept future special offers at Pretoria Airport? Only out of boredom. But Airports are far from boring - there are simply too many interesting people to observe.
Bootnote: Can you build a service based on killing boredom? Undoubtedly.Who is motivated by what reasons to create boredom scenarios? Cue delayed flights, trains, busses...
July 28, 2006
Mobility Is Relative II
A mobile and wireless phone kiosk in Kamapala draws its power from a car battery (in the red box, photo below). Despite its bicyclesque design they were not particularly mobile - one or more tyres were often flat and they remained tethered in one place for the duration of the day.
However this design does support fine tuning the position where the telephony service is offered compared to fixed infrastructure. In what situations is mobilty is a drawback? For example, if to operate a 'street tax' has to be paid to work a particular pitch (I've got no evidence of this actually happening but bear with me) it would be easier to move non-payers away. Also easier for others to enter the marketplace and offer a similar service in close proximity.
And the country names painted on the phones? Simply a way of identifying which is which.
Spent half a sweaty sunday on the back of a boda boda trying to track down the bicycle repair factory, only to find it shut. Fond memories.
Mobility Is Relative I
Mobile phone also usable as a modem - owned and actively used by our local guide in Kampala.
Sort of related: White Phone Kiosks in Ulan Bataar.
July 18, 2006
Secondary Activities
The photo above was taken at a football match in the suburbs of Florianopolis - it captures the moment between a ball going in the back of the visiting side's net, and official confirmation of the score. If you look closely to will see two fans holding radios and another two with headsets running up to their ear (I don't know whether the headset was connected to a radio or a mobile phone - it wasn't the really the right context to ask). The stadium didn't have a score board - when the first goal went in the fans that were not jumping up and down in excitement were glued to the radio broadcast - the opposing team were naturally contesting the goal and its possible that it would be dis-allowed. In this stadium the live radio commentary provided the definitive version of what's going on down on the pitch.
Product and service designers like to think of their creations being the sole focus of the user's attention but the reality is that we increasingly live in a multi-tasking world. As devices become smaller there is more potential for them to be carried in a wider range of situations. Consider the difference between a device that requires two hands vs. one handed use vs. no handed use. The supporting role implies a degree of comfort with the object that is carried - it is considered sufficient to carry that device 'merely' to enhance the experience of other activities.
What level of interaction and sensory engagement does your service need to be understood or enjoyed? Why? How is designing for a supporting role different from designing for the primary activities? How to support switching between primary and non-primary tasks?
July 11, 2006
So New It's...
Still covered signs at the check-in counter of TAM Airlines - the moment between delivery, installation and use.
Varig appears to be cancelling a lot of flights out of Sao Paulo.
June 30, 2006
Contexts of Consumption
As media such as movies and TV increasingly shifts to mobile devices the range of contexts where media is consumed changes compared to what has gone before. The user experience of watching a movie in a multiplex or independent cinema (video club in the village of Kansensero in the photo, above) is very different compared to being curled up in bed at home or during snatches of down time in cigarette breaks at work. To what extent does context of use effect the perceived value of media? To what extent is it possible to charge differently according to the context of consumption?
A long time ago I had the pleasure of watching an Argentinean movie at Egypt's International Alexandria film festival. The film was billed as having the first legal kiss in Egyptian public cinema, and all the seats in the venue were filled
with robed punters. I recall looking around that there were two women in the whole audience - one of which was sitting with me. Being a subtitlted film the audience didn't need to concentrate on the sound track and they chatted the whole way through, until the moment of that kiss when the place went silent, which was soon followed by cheering. The memories of the experience as a whole remain vivid despite it being 10 years ago. Why do we pay for (media) experiences at the time of consumption, rather than at the time of reflection?
June 28, 2006
Rural Connectivity
Drive due south out of Kampala and in 70 kilometers or so you'll arrive at the town of Kyotera, our research base for the next few days. Continue straight on from there and you'll soon hit the Uganda - Tanzania border, head east and you're in rural backwaters, head west and you'll need a boat to take you across Lake Victoria. Kyotera is in a good location to research, well, whatever it is that we're here researching and the bonus is that our hotel can offer cold beer despite frequent power cuts.
This morning the research team rose sufficiently early to drive onto Kansensero - a fishing village on the edge of Lake Victoria. We time our departure to arrive with the boats ashore and the last of the catches being weighed and sold. The journey was pretty uneventful save for a herd of long horned bulls (yes they do have exceptionally long horns) and a quick stop at a village phone operator. Grameen Foundation USA is working in partnership with local micro-finance organisations, the regional carrier MTN and my employer to provide Village Phone kits - essentially an adapted mobile phone, an antenna with a long cable and a car battery to keep it charged. (Car batteries are a common source of power in rural Uganda). Through micro-finance lending the village phone operator can borrow enough money to buy the operator kit and for many it becomes a profitable business.
Driving along the back country roads of Rakai district there are two obvious ways to tell that Village Phone operator is offering connectivity: from a distance you can spot the antenna topped pole rising up to 4 times the height of other structures in the village (glimpsed through the tree foliage in the photo above); and on entering a village the yellow MTN sign advertising call rates looms into view. The affect of easier access to affordable connectivity on the prosperity of the village inhabitants is an worthy topic of research, but requires more time than we have today.
Kansensero has irregular GSM coverage and no mains electricity - power comes in the form of a generator or more commonly car batteries. It's interesting to understand the strategies residents adopt to make the most of what is available, but I'm also aware there are broader issues at play such as access to water (mostly it is delivered on bicycle in jerry cans) and basic healthcare. In many respects the frontier of the future perfect is not what's possible in Tokyo, Paris or London but in villages such as this - in providing access to base necessities. Time and again interview subjects bring up the topic of calling hosptials, midwives and sick relatives, or to report the death of a family member.
Despite the availability of fresh fish our local guide advises us to avoid the local menu - cholera is a factor and he can't vouch for the cooking conditions. So we pile in the car and drive up to a loading bay on the Kagera River and munch our way through a packet of digestives and segments of processed cheese. Our driver requests a photo of himself to show his family he has indeed been here on Uganda's southern border, and as I snap away one of our team conducts an ad-hoc interview. The interviewee, a policeman is chatty and his positive demeanour is set off by some pristine white rubber boots - more commonly found on the feet of local fishermen than on the police. He stands on a pile of wood, Kalashnikov in hand overseeing the unloading of a consignment of coffee beans from Tanzania and as the interview progresses we watch labourers lugging 60kg sacks to a nearby truck. This isn't an official border crossing and if tax is normally charged it's not being levied here.
Its hard to turn away from a border without crossing, but that's a journey for another day.
June 22, 2006
Security & Telephony
Despite the sign (above) this location did not offer connectivity. When are signs (merely) advertisements?
And for the marketeers amongst you, when are advertisements merely signs?
June 11, 2006
Learning (Not) To Trust Mirrors
Mirrors are a common feature of Tokyo's narrow streets, a way of spotting not only oncoming vehicles but more often than not to avoid hitting cyclists coming the wrong way up a one-way street. Bicycles have it pretty easy here in Japan compared to, well, pretty much everywhere I've traveled and it's fairly common for example, that police ignore cyclists running a red light. As a newcomer here it took a while to learn what you could see in the mirror and what was missing, but now a back-street ride to the office is not complete without using street mirrors to see what lies ahead. And there in lies a potential conundrum.
There are a myriad of strategies and technologies that can help us avoid collisions in our daily travels, and with an increasing number of (GPS enabled) location aware mobile phones these options will only increase. What are the consequences of not looking at the road ahead, but instead relying on a filtered view of the road ahead?
Now think about what information could be overlaid on your journey. Would you drive differently if you were made aware that an oncoming car had a 'baby on board'? Or driving through a neighbourhood's narrow street your vehicle sensed youngsters playing nearby? Or that your feed of insurance company data highlights an accident trouble spot on the route ahead?
And given all this, who is motivated and by what reasons to manipulate your driving and navigating behaviours by re-filtering the data on which you base your decisions?
Pottering with K around Sangenjaya today, leaving the station we walked behind a PSP playing kid who negotiated the entire route from his seat on the train, through the crowded platform, up the stairs, through ticket barriers, up to ground level all without interrupting his two-handed game play. What is already achievable indeed.
June 04, 2006
Tangible Reminders, Shortening The Path
Spent a few days this week working on a service concept with design team colleagues. This photo reminds me that having a compelling service is just the starting point. How long is the path to get to your service? How can you shorten the path by even one step? QR barcode from a shop around the back of Daikanyama.
June 01, 2006
Feedback Loop
When you walk into a bank how do you know which teller will offer the best service?
Device for obtaining feedback from customers spotted in the Gulangyu branch of the Bank of China. Once the transaction is complete the customer selects satisfactory, average or dissatisfied, and the number of stars updates to reflect the service level.
Putting aside the issue of how the number of stars is calculated, how does a high or low number of stars affect how the quality of service is perceived? If the only option when you walk in the bank is a teller with 2 stars what are your service expectations? And armed with this knowledge how does it affect how the bank calculates the number of stars?
Whilst this system is crude, in situations where service is poor it provides a simple mechanism to let customers voice their anger (the customers in this branch were however, pleasantly vocal in providing negative feedback). I'd expect to find this kind of up-front feedback mechanism in a culture where people are less likely to want to be seen to be angry or losing face. Japan could be such a culture but in five years its almost impossible to think of an example of bad service in five years of being here.
May 24, 2006
Responsibility Plus
Illustration done by a child on the side of a home, and close to a school in Hukeng, China.
What are the factors that make this socially acceptable?
May 21, 2006
Perspectives Learned In Childhood
Map of the world (right-hand illustration) with China at its center, from a wall at the Rixin school close to Hukeng.
When people draw a map of the world - they often give away the country where they grew up - the center of the globe marks the spot. Learned in childhood, difficult to forget.
Path & Error Tolerance
May 19, 2006
Scars As Conversation Starters
A nice moment in Jiang Tou Phone Market where we get to compare body scars. He'd had some major surgery on his head, arms and chest. How behaviours are affected by assumptions of shared experiences? How this might be manipulated?
Another design 'homage' from the same market, below.
Motivations For Failure
A public call box and private IP telephone kiosk in close proximity.
Which customers would have a preference to use which service? How do the services differ? Are there any postive effects for one another from them being so close together? Whilst the owner of this shop has not damaged the kiosk (below) the phone simply isn't installed yet, does the IP kiosk receive more business if the public infrastructure be vandalised?
May 17, 2006
Apartment, Typhoon
An advertisement close to Xiamen University (below) for an apartment with 2 bedrooms, kitchen and washroom space for1500 RMB (150 Euro) a month. I've not managed to get a photo of it yet but looking at the larger apartment blocks you know what apartment is for rent because a large banner with a phone number is draped over the balcony. The presence of the banner is enough to know the basic service that is offered (an apartment being rented), and the location of the apartment, the background colour indicates the company doing the renting, and the telephone number provides the contact information. The whose thing is stands out from the road below.
It's a simple, direct, highly efficient form of advertising with limited downsides: the banner is a micro eyesore; and in cultures where squatting is common (not sure if China applies) and seen as a problem it identifies the exact apartment that can be squatted.
Meanwhile we've spending then next two days on data analysis. Outside its already raining heavily and getting heavier - there's a chance that Typhoon Chanchu will hit our island. If it changes direction to Taiwan, we're in its path. Update: more info here.
May 16, 2006
Caller ID
IP telephone kiosk.
May 15, 2006
How A Poster Gets From Here To There
On the theme of trains a poster in a dis-used shop in Shanghai (above) and a noticeboard in a back alley in Gulangyu Island (below). The gentleman figured in the picture is wanted in connection with planning train station bombings in China.
For all our assumptions about 24/7 connectivity how to reach the people who either prefer to spend time offline or don't have online access? At what stage does information swtich from digital to physical? And who does the conversion?
May 13, 2006
Love Knows No Bounds
Obscure graffiti from a back alley in Xiamen, obscure in that this China and it's in English, and the writer looks like they are handy with a piece of chalk. An english teacher perhaps?
May 08, 2006
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?
This Is It (So Value Me More)
A restaurant in Delhi advertising the fact that they only operate at one location - 'we have one branch'.
To what extent is rarity part of the equation for measuring the total user experience? For which kinds of people? And how to re-inforce the rarity, or the perception of rarity?
May 01, 2006
Indicators To What Goes On Inside
The skylines of Ho Chi Minh City - knowing what people do inside their homes by what you see outside their homes.
April 28, 2006
Recordable Surfaces
Small, cheap and thin displays finding their way into Taxis - this model is showing a loop of TV programmes. A way of coping with Shanghai traffic perhaps? A simple example of the extending reach of moving image displays.
April 27, 2006
Defacing As an Art Form
The extent to which graffiti is covered up is notable since my last visit here. As with Seattle the defacing of the defacing becomes an art-form in itself.
Motivations for
Walk along a street in a Chinese town or city and you are likely to see numbers stenciled on the walls. Street stenciling in China very much geared towards advertising - 'id cards' - without one a person who has migrated to work in a city might not be covered for health insurance, 'plumbing services', 'coke delivery' - coke for burning, not ingestion. The stencil describes the service and includes a mobile phone number.
Trees stenciled with advertising from Shanghai, above.
Leaves carved from Hawaii, below.
How does the object that is stencilled or defaced affect how the message is perceived?
April 22, 2006
Dare, Counter Dare
"This is a Dare drug free school zone"
"Dare to think for yourself"
Unlikely Symbols of Power
Pilgrims on their circuit of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa walking past an innocent looking plastic table.
Why a symbol of power? This is where the police sit.
April 15, 2006
Menu Options
Pictoral support in knowing what to order.
April 12, 2006
Your Rights Are Irrelevant. If Anything, Demand Trust
A sign that reads: "Can you keep an eye on our workers to stop them stealing?" would not go down that well in this Delhi coffee shop - yet this is basically what this sign says. Another example of using customers as a resource.
April 09, 2006
Larger Small Print
Long queues to clear security checks at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International airport providing plenty of time for looking around and passenger watching. Due to the size of the sign the small print on the advertisement on the left is relatively large and noticeable - *conditions apply and *only in Delhi departure.
Four trends that might affect how this plays out in the future perfect: the increase of advertising across digital medium is not constrained by physical limits and provides greater scope for more small print; more people will carry personal devices capable of accessing related information; an increased quality of search engines to help you track down just what you are looking for; and an aging demographic with poorer eyesight demanding alternatives to today's small print.
Are more informed consumers better off? An opportunity to increase consumer understanding assumes that all parties benefit from having informed consumers - whereas in the real world conflicts abound.
It's Easy Getting Objects Carried
Like many shops in Delhi the Rama Color photo studio in Bengali Market uses advertising handouts to get their logo carried and displayed by their customers. One side of the advertisement depicts a god and the other side a calendar. During wallet mapping studies I'm often surprised at the ease by which people accept objects which are then carried, at least until the next time the wallet is cleared out. One of the most prevalent of these objects in modern urban centers is the buy-10-get-one-free coffee 'loyalty' card, but in India if the religious depiction doesn't grab a person's attention then the calendar will. It's not even the functionality that draws people to take the object, but the perceived functionality - the fact that it might be useful and that it's, well, free.
At what point is it economically feasible for stores to give away, by today's standards, richer more complex objects? Electronic flyers for example. To be picked up in the first place one thing will remain the same - they object will have a perceived functionality. What will be different is that they can act independently - designed to take advantage of the proximity of being placed in someone's purse, pocket, handbag or wallet to collect and report proximity data. To some people the physical space of your wallet will be just another real-time commercial battleground. Knowing what you have in there and how frequently you use is valuable data - disabling the opponent in whatever way will be a bonus. Its tempting to use the word Trojan or parasite, but by being self-sustaining and self-maintaining a self-reporting free-bee is more accurate.
And in a world where this is widespread how will this affect what we decide to pick up?
April 07, 2006
Events Which
Demonstration in Delhi recorded by the demonstrators.
What consequences of the widespread availability of media gathering and reporting tools.
April 04, 2006
Media Delivery
Newspapers delivered over the last meters by throwing, a practice similar in the US.
In the UK newspapers are mostly delivered directly into a home mail box. Why the difference in delivery styles between these cultures? Factors include: the risk of theft; the perceived value of the papers; the size of properties and the location of the mail box on the property; whether gates are locked; the size of mail boxes; the size of papers; a culture of putting other things in the mail box? The risk of being rained on does not appear to be a factor - Seattle probably gets a similar amount of rain to many parts of the UK.
This gentleman managed to throw the paper into a tree. Is throwing efficient? For whom?
April 03, 2006
Out of Office Reply
The door to the office of an advocate includes both his mobile and residential numbers.
How easy is it to provide contextual information to deal with being out-of-office? In what situations is it useful?
March 18, 2006
Unexpecting the Expected
Close to midnight, after giving up on me being a customer, 3 rick-shaw drivers are fine to just hang out around Barkhor Square, Lhasa, chat about the day's events and and smoke heavy chinese cigarettes. Somewhere a phone rings and one driver unexpectedly pulls a Razr phone out of his trouser pocket and takes a call from his wife.
It was the middle of winter and there were relatively few passengers. The cost of this device related to his income? My perceived cost vs. his actual cost. A practical design choice in his line of work? Does it matter?
March 16, 2006
Notice, Notification
Discouraging the anti-social behaviours of dog owners through actions that many other people would consider anti-social, even if it involves graffiting one's own wall. The close proximity of the words to where the dog-defecation takes place is a nice touch and shows the effort of the writer.
Signage typically includes information about the authority of the sign-poster e.g. 'the park is locked after 6pm' 'by order of the mayor of Brighton'. Who has what 'right' to post what infrormation where? By whose social/legal/moral authority? How is this information perceived by the signage readers? (How) are behaviours affected? And how can affects be multiplied through other factors - such as the presense of a remote control camera?
March 13, 2006
Pointer, Sent
Following a request for pointers to papers and articles, I particularly enjoyed Paul Dourish writing about the evaluation of ethnographic research papers in HCI - paper online here and his related research here. He ends with:
"Frankly, I doubt that this is the last CHI paper on ethnographic work that will find itself forced to end with "implications for design" ... but it is certainly nice to think that this is a possibility"
Which in a round-about way leads me to the question - what motivates you to do what you do? And how far are you willing to go to communicate this to others? Coming from a corporate research lab - my starting assumption is that none of the research or design we do is by default relevant for anything or anyone. The relevance comes from all the communication that occurs around the edges of the actual research from observing, listening and debating, anticipating other people's next steps whether it is 15 months or 15 years from now, and trying to figure out the smart questions in that space before they get there (whether we are successful at doing this is another matter entirely).
And, bringing it back to the closing statement of Paul's paper - where do conferences fit in with all of this? Like researchers, conferences need to fight to first gain relevance, and then continue to fight to maintain relevance.
Thanks VT for the link - the book is on its way.
March 07, 2006
Things That Are Spoken
In China a number of VOIP phone, such as a phone in Beijing above, speak the cost of the call once the call is completed. Audio feedback in the context of the shop is a potentially useful feature in a number of ways: it projects to others the services that are available in store - enabling sales; the audio feedback provides an additional layer of transparency (yes - an oxymoron, indeed) since it is more difficult to inflate the cost of a call to a customer or between customers if the price is announced; the shop owner can attend to other things without having to keep an eye on the customer - the end of the call signals the need to collect payment (assuming the call is completed); and in places where illiteracy is an issue it supports users who are less equipped to comprehend the alternative visual feedback.
Examples of spoken features on mobile phones? The Nokia 1110 and 1600 targetted at emerging economies provide speaking alarm and clock functionality - the latter provided through a long key press on a dedicated button. Related research here and here.
There are of course potential drawbacks to providing audio feedback not least annoyance. But being the cultural tourist that I am, the sounds are part and parcel of being in China.
March 04, 2006
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?
March 03, 2006
Bottlenecks
The possibilities for social proximity applications perhaps enhanced from a human bottleneck (Vancouver immigration, above). How might bottlenecks, or other group dividing or clustering behaviours be manipulated to enable applications? Who gains and who loses in these situations?
March 02, 2006
Delivery Mechanism Trade-offs
Newspaper delivery mechanism = value of what is delivered vs risk of theft vs risk of damage vs effort taken to deliver. Digital equivilents?
January 29, 2006
The Value of You, Is That You Are Here
This photo was taken on the escalator transporting passengers from the Keio Line exit of Shibuya Station and disgorging them into Tokyo's busy Friday night streets. In close proximity to the foot of the escalator there are 11 people representing 5 organisations hawking free magazines. They are not there because they love to dress up in lime green and red uniforms they are there because someone pays them to be here, someone sees a business opportunity. You can see something similar in urban centers all over the world - but why? What are the properties that make these spaces so popular for targeting pedestrians?
Quantum physics aside, being physically located in one space implies that someone is not physically present somewhere else at the same time. The value to the hawkers is partly based on the rarity value of a physical presence being in that exact location at that time, and from the possibility that that persons consumption behaviour might be influenced by first taking a magazine, then browsing, sufficiently absorbing and using information within it. (I'll resist the urge to write about the level of sensory engagement though its probably relevant here).
At some point in the future automated or semi-automated devices will be moving around these urban environments carrying out everyday chores on our behalf. The first of these are likely to be extensions of today's personal vehicles - who needs valet parking when your car includes a self parking feature? But before long the range of tasks they can complete, and that we feel comfortable allowing them to carry out on our behalf will extend. The view from the escalator will include non-human hawkers and non-human ped-estrians.
If devices are moving around and negotiating spaces on our behalf, what is their value to the hawkers? What happens to a person's value when its based on rarity, when something is maintains a physical presence on their behalf?
And what will the future hawkers be hawking?
January 19, 2006
Topping Up
How you top up credit for an online game if you have no credit card? Scratch cards available from internet cafe about 60 km from Beijing (above) and a wider selection from an electronics market in Beijing, below.
Whilst topping up game credits by mobile phone is possible (it may even already be offered by the game companies - I've not researched the topic), it is a less compelling proposition where most people in the market are using pre-pay.
January 18, 2006
Drawing on User's Prior Experience?
Above, wireless ordering device from a restaurant in Beijing loosely based on mobile phone user interface. Below, push button fixed line phone spotted in Seoul adopts rotary dialler for key pad layout.
Lazy design or smart design?
Update: Reader Jeff Howards points to an article on the original AT&T TouchTone Keypad Layouts [PDF 632k]
January 15, 2006
Smart People, Dumb People
This person is smart. She owns a mobile phone and she's using public infrastructure to make a phone call. But why? A mobile phone lets her communicate when she likes, with whom she likes, from where she likes, pretty much how she likes (ok, as long as its voice call or text message).
Whilst the mobile phone offers the key benefits of personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication people often opt to use and will go out of their way to use public infrastructure because its simply cheaper. Some of you are reading this and thinking 'so what?' But if you work in the telecoms industry (which a number readers of this site do) you are likely to be out of touch with most people's reality. When is the last time you looked at your phone bill? Most people consider the cost of a call, of sending a message weighing up the pros and cons of the available alternatives. Economists call this utility maximisation. Utility maximisation is most obvious in highly price sensitive markets such as India, China and Mongolia (photo below shows privately operated public phone kiosk in Ulaan Bataar) but in the study of communication habits, you can find it in any part of the globe.
We found a subtler form of this behaviour in a study of public call offices (PCOs) and STD booths in India. A STD shop (photo below) is often made up of a couple of phones on the counter, with additional phone booths somewhere inside the establishment. The phone booths offer a higher degree of privacy and some form of seating yet in many cases customers opt to use the phones on the counter. Why? They are opting for convenience over privacy. Their conversations can be overheard, the noise from the street will flow into the conversation but it simply doesn't matter compared to the money that can be saved.
Lessons? Owning a device is not the same as use; carrying a device is not the same as understanding what it does; carrying a device will not necessarily lead to use; and when use occurs it will not necessarily be what you expect it to be. When a mobile phone is primarily used as a phone book to facilitate kiosk phone calls, how does this change the way the product should be designed?
And who are the dumb people in this equation? We are if we assume that people will not try to make the most of what they've got.
January 05, 2006
Gaming Services
Location based services will use proximity interaction to identify users, and in some cases the implications of being in a particular place at a particular time or with a particular frequency will lead to 'rewards'. To what extent will location based services that rely on proximity interaction be gamed? By whom? By 2010 proxy-proximity interaction services will be available to carrry out proximity interactions on your behalf, much like the developing and selling of characters in online worlds today.
Hmm, will these kinds of scenarios will be covered in this book?
In research into what people carry, I spent time interviewing people about so-called 'loyalty cards'. A summary of their comments is that they had a vague perception that using the card provided 'benefits' but were mostly unable to articulate what the benefits were. It highlighted how easy, and with relatively little cost it is possible to get a (branded) card into a person's wallet and for it to be carried at least for a few weeks.
December 28, 2005
Adoption. Adaption?
Traditional (often black and white) physical prints are scanned and adapted in PhotoShop before being re-printed.
Came across something similar during a user study of the communication habits of low income manual workers in China - the liviing room/bedroom/study had a Photoshopped photo of the wall showing the couple dressed as bride and groom. The photo and backdrop taken years after the event because they did not have formal photos of the event.
Mainstream availability of the tools to re-write history? Who will re-write what (personal) history? Why?
December 25, 2005
Icon, Iconic
What You See When You Travel Where You Travel
A street of sign makers in Ho Chi Minh City, 30,000 VND (2.6 Euro) and a couple of hours wait you can have pretty much any sign made to order. The shop itself offers insights into local (design) tastes, brands and concerns. Warning signs in particular highlight popular problem issues - based on the signs prepared for customers to this shop I'd say the top two issues are theft, and risk of electrocution from exposed power lines.
December 16, 2005
Oversight
Internet cafe appears to be used for online gaming 99% of the time, 1% for communication related tasks.
Net Presence
It's 10am and I'm today's first arrival in this internet cafe. It is however far from empty - half a dozen bodies are slumped dozing into red armchairs covered by blankets, and another half-dozen are still online half-heartedly playing a first person shooter - these are the remnants of last nights online gaming session. The place smells like an ashtray and somewhere a toilet has overflowed.
December 15, 2005
What Is Communicated
A comment book in a cafe popular with back-packers.
Most of the entries are written in Japanese, with a smattering of English, Korean, Polish and French. Is it that Japanese are more inclined to write comments, or is it an accurate reflection of the cultural background of the visitors to this place? The entries detail places to visit, stay, travel tips 'the guides tend to under-estimate the travel times for fear of frightening you off', and occasionally longer posts about the how Tibetan culture is changing over time.
According to the cover this is their fourth book.
Convergence
Radio, cassette, alarm clock and flashing light display. The most popular media formats here are tape cassette for audio and VCD for video.
December 09, 2005
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"
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?
White Phone Kiosk
December 08, 2005
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.
December 07, 2005
Anticipating What Services Are Offered
Anticipating services from observing infrastructure.
Source of Power, Activities Related To
Charger as a suggestion of presence. What activities are implied by the kind of charger? Cable? It could be so much more.
Knowing that use is affected by whether or not something is plugged in - the plug works itself loose when someone tripped on it, the door opened and a quizzical/annoyed face looked out.
December 04, 2005
Processes & Errors
Purchasing phone top-up credit from street vendor in Beijing.
The current process has plenty of scope for introducing errors. Alternatives available.
December 03, 2005
Artifacts
Momentarily seeing the near-present as the ancient past.
Workbench in a ceramics plant in Beijing.
December 01, 2005
Adapt
Beijing resident adapting to small font size on public newpaper display.
November 28, 2005
Custom No. Super Custom Yes
The photo above from a customer of Bowery Kitchen, Komazawa.
The super-customisation of mobile phones is gaining some traction here in Tokyo. Various shops in Shibuya will adorn your mobile phone (or iPod or digital camera) with rhinestones charging anything from 7,000 yen (50 Euro) for a pre-designed P900i cover to around 50,000 yen (350 Euro) for the full front and back design-to-order bling. Mostly but not exclusively for female clientel - men are starting to order quite gothic designs.
Jewel encrusting services can be found as an annex of some phone shops in popular shopping areas of Tokyo. Now nail shops are extending their offering to include mobile phone customisation - it's possible to order matching nail and phone designs.
(In my mind this is somehow all a logical progression from an analysis of 6447 used mobile phone covers and quick and dirty customisation)
I started out a sceptic but I have to admit some of the funkier pixel-art designs have started to grow on me.
November 26, 2005
Learning to Push, Learning to Talk
Drumming up interest in the new push to talk services outside the teen girls shopping mecca - the 109 Building Shibuya. Step into a booth and have a pushing and talking walkthrough.
I'm intrigued to see how push to talk takes off in Japan and for that matter other new markets where it is rolled out. How use and perception of the service differs from the established service in the US? The push to talk use case is relatively easy to understand, but mainstream consumers will have relatively little cultural reference points other than movies, cop shows or occasionally from mountain rescue teams (Japan is covered in mountains so if you've ever been up one coming across walky-talky outfitted mountain-guides is not wholly uncommon). But this is a culture where people spend more time on crowded trains than in cars and where talking on the train is (still) largely socially unacceptable.
From a point of view of a foreigner the DoCoMo 902 series handsets are remarkable in their un-push-to-talk-esque - pretty much looking like every other handset out there. No chunky hand grips to support pushing and well, talking.
These forms are not following this function. What does that tell us?
When you're selling products into a global marketplace - how best to demonstrate new products, services and features to markets with relatively few cultural reference points?
November 20, 2005
Non-Literate Mobile Phone Communication
To communicate with someone outside your immediate proximity requires at least 4 things: something to communicate; tools to create what you want to communicate; an infrastructure to carry the communication; and a means of identifying with whom to communicate. There are an estimated 799 million non-literate peoples world wide. If you can't read and write how do you manage your contacts?
This simple observation was the starting point to conduct a series of (ongoing) exploratory research studies in India, China and Nepal - our aim to understand the communication needs of non-literate users. For mobile phone manufacturers who wish to address these needs: How does the inability to read and write affect the ability of mobile phone users to make effective use of mobile phones? Making and receiving calls? Creating and managing contact information? Text messaging? Using time management features? How can we design communication tools that draw on the knowledge and experiences that these users do have?
If your interest is piqued then you might enjoy the following essay entitled Understanding Non-Literacy as a Barrier to Mobile Phone Communication which explores these issues and proposes a number of possible design solutions. As with a lot of our work the original projects included a fair amount of concept development that is only touched on in this essay.
In the studies we spent time with non-literate users exploring, mapping and understanding the things they used and the tasks they wanted to achieve - from using washing machines to weighing scales to running motorbikes to re-tuning TVs to paying for things. How did they interact with objects with textual and numeric interfaces? What problems did they encounter? What strategies did they adopt to overcome these problems? Were these strategies successful? If not, why not? And how can we bring the knowledge from this research and apply it to create communication devices that are more in tune with our non-literate users?
Researching non-literate communication practices has been rewarding: it touches on a very basic human desire - to communicate across time and space; the potential payback for the research is obvious and non-trivial; and the study participants, collaboration partners and environments in which the research took place have been quite simply inspiring.
Photos taken from street research in Mumbia, Bangalore, 2004 & 2005.
November 09, 2005
Traces of Communication
What resources are consumed to generate what we want to communicate?
What trace is left by what we communicate?
Who has access to the traces of our communication?
And for how long?
Given the option, would user's like greater control over the trace of their communication?
What is the optimal way of presenting these options to users?
This gentleman writing with brush and water.
November 02, 2005
Proximity Interaction
Tags constrained by tagger's reach, and perhaps imagination.
What happens when future technology help people project physical manifestations of identity beyond what is physically possible?
October 30, 2005
Knowing Which Way the Wind Blows
October 29, 2005
False Hope
October 20, 2005
Touch Interaction
Poster extolling the virtues of proximity touch interaction.
October 10, 2005
Attention to Detail
The little details that enhance the purchasing experience.
Assumptions About Connectivity
An assumption people often make when thinking about the future is that the wireless technology, whatever it is will have 100% coverage and will have 100% uptime - the seamless 24/7* connected user experience. The current experience is a good lesson in how things will play out. Today in the US one of the major purchasing decisions is the quality of the local cellular coverage - and whether carrier X has good coverage in your home, your route to work, the places you hang out. Signal strength meter watching and negotiating a space to find the best signal is for many part of the cell phone user experience. it's not just the US - the photo below is taken from an involuntary half day spent in the departure lounge of Kathmandu airport . Flights were grounded because the cloud cover at the destinations were too dense to land - a lot of time for people watching. Every time a further flight delay was announced a number of Nepali business men would take out their mobile phones and attempt to make calls. It would surprise me if they calling to inform someone of a new arrival time - given the relatively flexible approach to time keeping, but at the very least they were using the time waiting to get in touch. GSM coverage in Nepal is limited a minimalist version of the Cingular GSM coverage in the US for example.
The cellular coverage in the airport was good but the base-stations were overloaded with people trying to make calls - a common situation in Nepal. Your experience of making a call is probably something like:
1. Select contact
2. Press send call
3. Hold phone to ear and
4. When the person at the other end picks up, talk.
The experience for a Nepali mobile phone user is more like:
1. Check coverage
2. Select contact
3. Press send call
4. Keep looking at screen to check call status message to see if call is connected
5. When disconnected repeat steps 2 to 4. Eventually see that the call has been put through and
6. Put phone to ear, talk.
It's far from seamless but it works.
Sooner or later someone will provide cheaper, faster, richer, more convenient ways to connect so even if this issue is largely solved for cellular it will apply to whatever next the user decides to use. How to accurately inform users what services currently available on their device without them having to take out their phone and look at the signal strength icon(s)? What functionality is available when the device doesn't have connectivity? How to design the user experience to account for involuntary dis-connectivity and downtime?
* In the spirit of utopian connectivity perhaps 24/7 should be extended to 60/60/24/7/356 etc
October 07, 2005
State of Play
Buy 1 get 4 free.
September 29, 2005
Momentum, Underground
Study is picking up pace - all the prep work is paying off. Finally spending some time on the streets and underground - Seoul is very much a city that moves by subway. It feels good to be surrounded by people - listening to, and adjusting footsteps to the local rhythm. I sometimes wonder what its like to follow our team for a day. We could be hustlers, pickpockets, undercover somethings maybe? Always trying to see things from a different angle. Getting ahead of people, falling behind, moving from carriage to carriage. Engaging, disengaging. A visit to the main railway station - signage and infrastructure noted. What is the real user experience of doing y? Did I really see what I think I saw? Double takes. And the occasional surprise when the footage is reviewed.
Yes it all looks good online and in the brochure - what would you expect? And the reality? The pre-home out of the box experience, the niggles, the set-up, the broken promises. We start with dumb questions (well they were smart in an earlier iteration). Progress is asking less dumb questions. And we still have a few days to move up the smart-question-scale, then our opportunity for asking is gone.
To be closer to collaboration partners staying in guesthouse rather than downtown hotel. Room comes with American Forces Network which appears to be aimed at 16 year olds. Oh - it is? Upside of staying here? After 3 days of an ear & throat infection, finally getting energy back. Tomorrow should start with a pre-breakfast hike to the summit of an admittedly modest hill for the local view of the Seoul skyline.
September 28, 2005
Shortening the path
Coffee cup includes search term on local search engine. Less to type and presumably easier to remember than a URL. Any other benefits, drawbacks? Apart from AOL Keywords haven't seen much keyword advertising - any other examples you can point me to?
September 23, 2005
Captive, wanting to be free
If there isn't a law about advertising to captive audiences there should be - one hour waiting to clear customs watching an endless loop of Samsung Mobile and Korea Tourist Board advertising. Perhaps this is what augmented reality could come in - overlaying advertising spots with white walls and calm? But if Samsung made the head mounted display that you used to augment reality would it have a built in non-filter to still allow Samsung adverts? Sometimes it all comes down to money and what the consumer is willing to pay, or not pay as the case may be.
Spending just over a week in Korea to run the first half of a user study, then tag with a colleague who will take over and debrief a week later. I know what I know, but have a day or so to figure out some of what I don't yet know. Takes a fair bit of energy to understand how to work in and gather appropriate data from a new environment. Where do people hang out? What are condusive environments for observing xyz? What will interest the folks back home? The primary study is all set to go, the side studies - typically the stuff that becomes the value-added will emerge after a few days. Value added can be anything from a blinder of an off-topic interview to stumbling on a sub-culture that intentionally or otherwise relates to stuff happening in other parts of the world. Joining up the global dots. One of my favourites side themes is asking about what people lose or leave behind in an environment, the implications of that loss and how they recover if at all.
September 20, 2005
Hearts, Minds, Wallets, Address Book Entries
Some industries are more cut-throat than others. To my mind the male and female escort service industries in Kabukichou, Tokyo must be somewhere at the top of the competition list. Slap down a couple of hundred Euro and their silky smooth conversation skills plus whatever else you can negotiate will presumably be yours for the night. Given the money floating around and the intense competition for that money it makes sense that they'll do what they can to have a presence in the minds, wallets and mobile phone address books of prospective clients.
So it is unsurprising to find a business card shop in the heart of Kabukichou offering to print QR (2D) bar codes onto otherwise standard business cards. (The photo above shows the mockup/advert from that shop). I'm not particularly enamoured with QR bar codes, but they seem to pop up with increasing regularity here in Japan - in magazines advertising mobile phone services, on receipts, on collectables. My gripe with the design is that the barcode graphic is by and large damn ugly, and tends to dominate whatever they are printed on. However, with camera phones from all the Japanese carriers equipped with software to capture and interpret the information from the bar codes they are one fairly ubiquitous way to provide short cuts to information. Don't want to type in that URL? Switch on the camera, point and click and its transferred to your phone. Don't want to enter the details of a contact? Names, URLs, email addresses, phone numbers, mail addresses can all be embedded and saved to the phone.
I'm given a lot of business cards and have only ever come across the use of QR bar codes printed on the business cards twice - both times from people working in the mobile phone industry. For most people the effort involved with generating a personal bar code and having it upset the balance of the card design are two barriers too many compared to the potential benefit to the person whom receives the card.
The task of exchanging contact information typically involves effort from both the giver and receiver of the information. With QR barcode reading software already installed on the receiver's camera phone a suitably motivated giver of the information can take over some of the task-burden from the receiver. On business cards its seems this currently equates to escorts, and mobile phone geeks.
September 12, 2005
Sign Painter
To continue on the thread of choosing whether to have a hand painted mural or not. The fact that we have a choice is our relative luxury. These photos are of a sign painter's shop in Pokara, Nepal. One feature of these individual designs is the ability to customise - I was particularly enamoured with the hand painted licence plates with the clasped praying hands.
August 18, 2005
Writing/Texting
Tonight trying to conduct interviews in a cafe in Louisville, Kentucky. Particular challenges are: bad lighting conditions meaning either long explosures or having to use night vision; the cafe is hosting 4 rather loud bands so interviews occur between live sessions or outside on the back porch with the smokers; and the team is starting to flake from 4 straight days on the road.
Found some rather sweet messages written on a scrap of paper on the counter...
"blah blah blah"
"yada yada"
"boobs!"
"YES!"
etc etc
Not to dissimilar from some text message conversations, briefly fun to read and accessible to all.
Are there contexts where it's desireable to visualise text message conversations away from the mobile phone? Or are messages destined to remain in in-boxes and folders?
August 16, 2005
Steal Me
Night light from hotel bathroom in Cleveland. Of sufficient value to be stolen, cheap enough to give away - a subtle way of getting advertising in the home. Another example - salt and pepper shakers inscribed with 'Stolen from Virgin Atlantic'.
July 28, 2005
Motivations for Adopting New Technology
What motivates people to adopt new technologies and features?
Back in March, I had the pleasure of walking around Old Delhi with a friend and colleague also working in the field of user experience. I guess we were trying to get a sense of the place and basically following our noses not really minding where we were going. At one point we passed a print shop with a rather beautiful printing press churning out posters. Next to this shop was an office, and as we walked passed the glass fronted window the guys inside beckoned us inside. Two guys were hunched around a mobile phone (a 6600 as it happened) looking and laughing at the screen, whilst 3 other guys were just hanging out. This was a family business, and these were the family.
It's not uncommon in South East Asia to be beckoned to sit down, invited for a chai and hang out. Their motivation in inviting us in however appeared primarily to show us a movie that was playing on one of the mobile phones. Younghee and my Hindi is non-existent and these gentlemen spoke next to no English so communication was body and sign language and a smattering of words. They had no way of knowing we worked for a handset manufacturer, as far as they were concerned we were just to foreigners walking by.
The movie itself was made famous by the fact that it was shot on a mobile phone (no, I have no idea which model) and eventually distributed as an auction item though Bazzee.com. Baazee is owned by EBay and recently renamed eBay.in. This distribution culminated in the arrest of Avnish Bajaj CEO of Bazzee.com on the grounds of peddling adult content.
The movie was in the public domain and had gone viral - presumably passing from phone to phone - each new recipient sufficiently motivated by the desire to have a copy of the file to overcome the hurdle of pairing Bluetooth devices and going through the still-not-yet-that-easy data transfer process.
Whilst it may be possible to arrest the CEO of a high profile auction site, it is not practical intercept this content passing from phone to phone. The real power to make decisions on whether content is suitable for consumption is shifting to the individual. P2P networks are I presume to a large extent trackable. Interactions directly between devices are much less so.
July 23, 2005
Cellular Coverage & Exploratory Behaviour
Txting from the summit of Mt Fuji.
Despite, or perhaps because of being the tallest mountain in Japan - 3776 meters, someone decided to put base station up here (3G coverage map of Mt Fuji area, index of GSM Association coverage worldwide).
How does installing publically accessible communications infrastructure change the way people treat their environment? To what extent does it encourage exploration or exploitation by day trippers, explorers, settlers?
May 17, 2005
Conversion
Public phone box in London's Earls Court converted to accommodate an ATM.
British Telecom has been fairly pro-active about finding alternative uses for its high-street public infrastructure. Whilst the rise of mobile phones means there is less demand for public phones the physical structure of the phone box still provides users with shelter, privacy and dampens street noise. And it saves other people from the torture of listening to one side of a conversation.
Should mobile phone carriers/manufacturers be paying for public infrastructure to support mobile phone use? Do they already?
May 12, 2005
Top-ups Via Vending Machines
Top-up phone credit via vending machine.
Remarkably graffiti-free for Berlin.
May 11, 2005
Emailing From Public Terminals
Public email kiosks + free email accounts =
This has evolved very quickly. Photo from London's Victoria station.
April 18, 2005
IP Kiosks / Caller ID
Caller ID is not on your mobile phone. Caller ID is the number of your booth.
In China to prepare for a user study we are running later this year. So hire a car and driver for a day, head out of Beijing and keep going until we hit some of the smaller towns and villlages.
Most semi-urban high streets include at least one IP telephone kiosk. They have an interesting dynamic - they're typically noisy and don't offer much privacy. But they are cheap, and immencely popular.
The numbered booth brings a new meaning to the term Caller ID.
