Frankfurt Archives

Urban Choreography & Pace

May 10, 2009

A sign in Frankfurt nudging cyclists to cycle at a walking pace - the delightttfully termed 'Schritttempo'; and the desire to avoid meiwaku - annoyance/disorder by adopting a payment mechanism that is at least as swift as everyone else in the queue.

The acceptable pace of everyday urban life, and the touch points where the people, objects and infrastructural assumptions are (more/most) likely to collide - convenience store queues, ticket machines, ticket gates, slip roads , escalators. Our future systems ability to cope with changes in pace based on personal preferences; education; disability; time of the day/week/year/life; weather; ...

How our own pace is affected by others' use of the system? Indeed for spatially/temporally dispersed systems - whether we even know whether others are present and the effects of our behaviour on their use or experience? Whether and how to feedback?

Further reading: this paper by Maurer, March & Mainwaring on meiwaku in the context of electronic payment systems.

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Japan » Tokyo

Surplus Inventory

May 10, 2009

I wouldn't say the streets of Frankfurt were saturated with rental DB bikes but, Sunday morning there sure was a lot just hanging around.

For any micro-marketable good or service left in the public domain, the costs to other players in the city to having access inventory?

Location: Germany » Frankfurt

Audio Denial

May 16, 2008

This research malarkey is becoming geekier by the minute.

Collecting audio samples this week the sounds of a train platform in Tokyo above and ambient hotel corridor noise Helsinki below. Feels weird standing still for three minutes in a hotel corridor - them being transient spaces n' all. At 5am not a lot of stirring from within the rooms fortunately, but enough ambient noise to populate a scene from eraserhead or half life.

Tokyo boarding.

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Germany

Power for the People

May 16, 2008

Frankfurt airport - laptop user's tastefully segregated from genpop.

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Germany

(Smiley)

May 16, 2008

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Germany

Sausage Bounce

May 16, 2008

A quick stopover in Frankfurt on the way home means: catching up with relatives via telephone - there's nothing like being within the same national boundaries to trigger a bit of (still remote) family bonding; stocking on top notch German dental products; finding time for a hefeweizen and a cheeky wurst.

Above - the Lufthansa lounge work spaces include these rather foreboding power sockets.

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Germany

Ihre Meinung

Nov 20, 2007

Passengers clearing immigration in Frankfurt airport are given copious opportunity to feedback about the quality of service via this relatively lengthy form.

Jumping over to China - passengers arriving in Beijing airport can give immediate likert feedback on an electronic feedback tool - tricky to get a photo since its in Chinese immigration but very similar to this in the Gulangyu branch of the Bank of China.

For each mechanism: the motivation and satisfaction that comes from giving feedback; the extent that satisfaction is affected by immediacy; the likelihood that the feedback affects an outcome; and given that the opportunity to give feedback can engender the passenger with a degree of control, the extent to which the actual feedback is irrelevant i.e. the feedback mechanism is the message.

Japan immigration has just started photographing and fingerprinting foreign visitors. Welcome. Really.

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Germany

Raised Awareness

Nov 20, 2007

This dental gel packaging includes braille - visible on the top part of the box. But why does braille appear on this product and not on their regular toothpaste? The gel should not be used more than wochentlich - once per week whereas the toothpastes on the same shelf are twice daily. Norms. Exceptions.

Leave colleagues in a German pharmacy for ten minutes and they buy up the shop. Also guilty as charged.

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Germany

Formal / Informal

Nov 06, 2007

The re-designed First Direct site includes an un-bank like vocabulary in it's footer: "We're obsessive about the quality of our service, so we monitor or record calls to make sure everything's tickety boo." An extension of First Direct's branding of being an un-bank like bank.

A night's stopover in Frankfurt on the way to Accra - jetlag providing an opportunity to catch up (un-)banking admin.

Location: Germany » Frankfurt / Germany