India Archives
Coin Return
Jan 25, 2010
Challenge the whole notion of putting something in, having to remember to take something out.
Thoughts for today: for any given service the difference between what is required and what is used; what happens to the surplus - whether it will find its way back to the customer, reclaimed by the service provider as excess profit (or waste) or through the magic of connectivity is location shifted to someone else, or time shifted to your future (or past, heh) self.
Object Protection
Jan 23, 2010
And how it affects the role of the calculator in the negotiations for more expensive, haggle-worthy objects?
Localisation
Dec 23, 2008
Growing up in a stable part of the world it's easy to assume that borders are fixed, or that the likelihood of them changing is a once in a lifetime event - if you develop a location based service pretty soon you need to consider the real-politik of regional disputes where they are in the world. From a design perspective it means the service design team needs to maintain a geo-political awareness, a clear policy for highlighting disputed territories, and provide mechanisms to update and correct the maps to reflect and communicate the situation on the ground - as well as a mechanism for rapidly responding to disputes and/or feedback. Update: from this press release it appears an error was made in an earlier version of the maps, which has since been corrected.
Of course in a world of user-generated content - where the user can add or edit content (such as Google Maps) it can be the user that decides where the border lies on their own version of the map, although the distribution of personalised versions of maps or map filters create their own set of headaches if new user's are unaware of the authority behind the edited versions.
Kind of related: A discussion of whether to ban China Mobile phone sales in India after the recent Mumbai attacks ('China Mobile' geneally refers to any cheap, poor quality, often feature rich mobile phones made in China rather than a specific brand). And the banning/non-banning of the sale of Matsushita phones in China for showing Taiwan as an independent state.
Photos: whilst Afghanistan's borders with it's neighbours are relatively stable who actually controls those borders and the rest of the country is not.
As a reminder - these opinions are my own and not those of my employer.
Tools for Life
Nov 04, 2008
Related to yesterday's Human Development Forum session at the World Bank: my employer is now offering Life Tools targeted at non-urban/rural consumers in emerging markets - it offers consumers price and availability data on seeds, fertilizer and pesticides, and education services encompassing language lessons and general knowledge questions (would have mentioned it directly, but it was freshly launched in India today). To some extent it overlaps/competes with the Tradenet service in Africa - both are driven by SMS, although Life Tools includes a pre-installed Java application on the phone. Ultimately the success or failure of the market-prices service will depend on collecting timely and reliable information from the field, a non-trivial task.
Photo above of the application in action, being demoed by Jawahar Kanjilal the global head of emerging market services on a recent trip to Espoo.
Spent the last few hours wandering around a pre-dawn election day DC. The streets are quiet and the snipers (on the Whitehouse rooftop) seem relaxed. Ah, democracy in action.
The Warm Feeling of (Someone Else's) Design in Context
Jun 10, 2008
Last day in Ahmedabad - and an opportunity to push a little and see what gives, heading out into the Old City with design team colleagues Duncan Burns (co-author on the recent Street Hacks presentation) and Josephine Gianni. (A fourth team member from our LA design studio Tom Arbisi is here in spirit in the form of appearance models, we left them safely secured at the hotel). India is the kind of place where the 'not from around here' is a passport into most situations, including any number of work or boy-its-hot-here sweat, shops. Along the way we walk into a plastic bag print works.
A pleasant surprise was in store - the owner owned two mobile phones including one industrial designed by Duncan .
When you work for a big-corp it's challenging to point to a "I did that' on what is shipped out the door - so many people being part of the process. I can imagine it's especially grating for employees of companies that play on the cult of personality or project the notion of the star designer in that even if you can point to something you created, someone else steps in and takes the credit. But back here in the midday heat of Ahmedabad - I'm standing next to a glow of quiet satisfaction.
To be honest it was surprising to find such a business looking phone in this very manual workspace. I don't know whether his profile matched the market segmentation model for an expected consumer, but I doubt it. Whilst the six degree of separation and its shorter variants have been well documented for human relationships there will be a day when the nth degrees of separation are measurable for a wider range of objects. The implications are significant: for some it will place an increased value on the notion of the 'new'; others will want to play up the reused or upcycled ; there will be a shift from our current idea of what constitutes 'ownership'. Bear in mind the backdrop to this is the gradual shift from selling a product to selling a product + service + service upgrades. Newness redefined.
Ten+ days on the road. It's time to head home.
Take Away Norms
Jun 09, 2008
Bag of chai and three plastic cups.
Sports Variations
Jun 09, 2008
Hoop not bails.
Motivations for Urban Annotation
Jun 08, 2008
Boundary line for street cricket.
Significant Numbers
Jun 07, 2008
For every culture, an equivilent.
Portion Norms
Jun 07, 2008
Water offered by the bottle for 5 Rupees (0.07 Euro) or one-time stomach full per person for 2 Rupees.
Whether anyone has come up with a business model where the cost of food or drink is subsidised by charging for (inevitable) toilet services?
Contextual Understanding
Jun 05, 2008
Homeward bound and one of our local crew ad-hocs his way along the train. Me? Just along for the ride. And yeah, we're in the upper deck seating until something came available at ground level.
Mobile device and service designers are often asked to consider commuting as a prime use case - to what extent does commuting differ around the world? For example for Mobile TV in South Korea - check out slide 32 onwards in the presentation below for a breakdown of contextual factors affecting adoption for commuting in Seoul.
Rewards and Learning Curves
Jun 05, 2008
Passengers of the Ahmedabad to Mumbai train getting to grips with the the highly intuitive and instantly gratifying photo browse on the iPod Touch/iPhone. For every product or service - what level of gratification is achieved in the first 5 seconds of use? What is the learning curve for more complex features? The only down side in this rosy situation - the interest in the product and the need to maintain a bright display soon killed the battery.
One of the questions we've been trying to get my head around this past week has been the extent that rural populations i.e. much of India, have an awareness of different types of technology and services. Without going into what we've learned fair to say it challenged our assumptions.
By the way, the gent in the top photo was using a stylus to navigate his own (smart) phone prior to handing him this piece of fruit.
Custom? Efficiency?
Jun 05, 2008
Customisation of this grain weighing station weighing machine. Whether customisation is desirable or not and to whom? Sort of related: presenting prices with a flourish in this Tokyo snowboard gear shop.
Body Scars
Jun 05, 2008
The extent that wearables and embedded technologies will find a natural home in (sub) cultures that already include these practices. How does this related to this photo? Check out the ears. Click on photo to enlarge.
Today's Commute
Jun 05, 2008
The journey to today's office is a little saltier than usual, as the extended team heads out and spreads out for rural interviews++. Our eight-strong team silhouetted on a commuter train trundling out of Ahmedabad
Temperatures nudging the high forties.
Familarity, Protection, Comfort, Acceptability
Jun 05, 2008
Faith, Location, Belief
Jun 05, 2008
Three complimentary cultural artifacts on the wrist of one of our research crew.
New Media
Jun 04, 2008
Poison Packaging Norms
Jun 04, 2008
What Wears Out First
Jun 04, 2008
The availability of dust/dirt free flat surfaces affecting whether laptop user's are likely to use an alternative input device, such as - say, a mouse. Cultural differences in preferences of input accessories and how this affects wear and tear on the main device?
Ad-hoccing in Ahmedabad.
Text, Aligned
Jun 03, 2008
The practice of using guidelines to write signs in Hindi compared to say Japanese or American English.
A Hotter Cup
Jun 03, 2008
Use of foil in Ahmedabad (above) - I suspect to reduce the risk of spillage on the rough and ready local roads - and a plugged spoon in Tokyo (below).
Clothes, Pegged, Pegless
Jun 02, 2008
Clothes washing services on the banks of the River Sabarmati, and a pegless way of hanging.
Hardly unique I'm told. Must get out more.
Collective Sighs
Jun 02, 2008
A late night visit to the airport.
Equipment released a few hours before our first interviews start. Time for bed.
Search Strings
Jun 02, 2008
A water gauge on the banks of the easily flooded River Sabarmati.
In a world of improving image recognition and augmented image manipulation (and the widespread adoption of personal devices through which it's practical to augment) - the water scale is a search string waiting to happen. A simple and contextually relevant way to discover media - be it photos, video, newspaper headlines related to the water at different levels.
Extrapolate for every recognisable form in the cityscape. Evolve the quality and modes of interaction over time.
And when the practice of object manipulable search heads towards mainstream - how does it change the way that the city is both measured, notated? The blurring of the digital and physical.
Textures of the Court
Jun 01, 2008
Death by Paper, Weight
Jun 01, 2008
A daunting foray into the Indian legal system in the form of the Bhadra Session Court. Our goal? To obtain the documents required to prise our equipment from Ahmedabad airport customs.
Dismounting the auto-rickshaw we pass through a narrow stone gateway that opens out into a courtyard dominated by a huge banyan tree that shelters and smothers the assembled practitioners of the court and ultimately most visitors of this legal outpost. A stern looking gent, the only person present wearing a full western style suit sits with his back to the tree, arms resting on a desk. I follow our local fixer through a moat of parked mopeds - drawn in part by the pull of his authority and in part by the need to start somewhere with someone and he being as good a place as any. Explaining our predicament – he introduces himself as an advocate and his nonchalant grimace turns to a nonchalant smile.
The courtyard is a feast of sights of sounds – worthy of more than a mere bit part in our field study: layers upon layers of signs advertise legal services; crows squawking overhead only to be overruled by the whine of a distant rickshaw; the chai seller announcing his trade by tapping a handful of saucers with a cup; typewriter’s perched on suitcases bearing the languages that are proffered - mostly Gujarati and English. The small grey suitcases serve the cross-legged typists well – being of the right size and sturdiness to support the light use of a heavy typewriter. Clack, clack, clack, ting. The 'desk' brings back memories of our field study in Ghana where a luggage shop displayed a row of suitcases - it took a few home visits to confirm that the luggage was indeed largely used in the home as furniture – a relatively robust cupboard, certainly cheap and, should the reason arise - portable.
One of the trick's to what we do is about having just enough process to be able to get the job done (in the worst case scenario without screwing up) and not so much that it takes the team's energies away from more interesting pursuits. It's fair to say that the Indian legal system is process-heavy: every little thing handled by a different person; everything in duplicate or triplicate; stamps that are not valid without counter-stamps. Today, the advocate is our homeboy and barriers melt away.
If technology is everything that was invented after you were born, then technologies that have been superseded are historical artifacts. Except here in this time warp of a courtyard – where the ancient typewriter continues to be nothing less than a computer with a built in printer and an unlimited power supply. Oh, and it sings with a clack, clack-clack, clack, ting.
Kid Koala, eat your heart out.
Processes and Responsibilities
May 31, 2008
Modal UI
Jul 09, 2007
Light sequences on an extension cable used to communicate its various modes.
Classy. Unusable.
Experiences by the Meter
Jul 09, 2007
Within minutes the view from the love seat has already paid for the price of admission - the sights and sounds of the Mumbai suburbs crawl and drawl by.
Massive segments of 3 meter diameter drainage pipes sit perpendicular to the road, spanning the trench that will, at some point will become their home. As we drive by each segment reveals itself as if choices in a competition: in the first young kids sit facing one another across the curve - a Sistine’s worth of chalk scrawled handiwork on the oxidised surface; a gaggle of ladies using the second as a sheltered bridge to cross to the other side; the third has squatting workmen smoking bidi’s; and in the last a horse stands tethered, sheltered from the rain unnaturally out of reach of anything edible. A flash-back to my last meal before shipping out here - horse-meat sashimi making the rounds on a Tokyo conveyor belt. Flash forward to the wholeness that will come from arriving home.
Urban modes of transport might sound the same on paper - a bus is a bus is a bus right? Except that every locale offers up something unique whether taxi meters that track the separate fare of up to four separate passengers in Tehran, or payment barriers a third of the way down the bus in Florianopolis.
One might expect a taxi driver plying his trade in the heart of Bollywood to offer a decent soundtrack to the city – but despite the speaker stacks found on many a rear-dash, we had hardly any tunes in two weeks of hopping around the city. The one minor exception – a young driver who was cajoled by my female companions into using his Sony Ericsson wedged between the dash and the windshield into boom box. Decent enough audio, until that point three songs later when he started worrying about the music player draining his battery. The simple act of power management, no?
A 40 minute ride to the outskirts of the city leaves plenty of time to mull the numerous design tweaks and compromises that make the Mumbai taxi experience what it is.
Most obvious is that the fare meter sits outside the cab above the left side wheel arch – an odd choice for a right-hand drive country - the driver is required to first lean across the passenger seat, stick his arm out of the window and lean over the meter every time he wishes to start and stop the fare. The display of the meter is optimally angled for passengers sitting in the back seat and the end of each ride the driver is required to shimmy his butt across the front seat to get a better view.
The meter is not illuminated so most cabs have a bare 10 watt bulb mount welded to the top inside-left corner of the windshield (pictured above) – positioned in such a way to minimize the chance of being smashed, but also so that it barely throws enough light on the meter to make a difference. Not that reading the fare is the end of the story – a conversion table is required to calculate the meter amount into today’s rupees. If you ever get hustled by a driver who is missing a conversion table Hutch provides a text message service to covert the meter reading. Some readers may enjoy perusing the local mobile phone services offered to Indian subscribers, including a section on devotional services here.
In one ride a car cigarette lighter was draped over the rear view mirror – at first glance to pray to the gods Cavanders and Jaisalmer. However as the journey progressed the clues to its real purpose revealed themselves: a packet of Chandan Agarbatti in the foot well; the subtle hue of ash residue on the front seat; and a small incense holder welded to the dash.
In another sign of devotion a plastic model of Ganesh obscures the speedometer – something that would be considered a problem in many cultures, just not here: going above the speed limit is be challenge for 25 year old Padminis even if the potholes and back to back traffic jams allowed it. The speedometer is in good company – the fuel, amp and temperature gauges also don't work.
Microplex Experiences
Jul 06, 2007
And hand pushing the entrance door to a unlicensed movie theatre in Dharavi, Mumbai - the movie playing can be seen through the peep hole. Similarly styled service offerings can be found in the back streets of Chinese cities such as Chengdu. What are the similarities/difference between Chinese and Indian microplexes?
In Dharavi 5 Rupees (10 Euro cents) buys you sitting space on blanket covered floor; those in the front ‘row’ are required to lie down to see the screen; in the company of a male-only audience - packed even in the middle of the day. The schedule is drawn from a huge selection from world’s most vibrant cinema culture.
In Chengdu 2 - 3 Yuan (20 - 30 Euro cents) buys you: a seat on a wooden bench in the company of male manual workers; a cup of green tea, and the latest Chinese action movies shown on an over sized TV. Punters who are unhappy with this particular action movie can pop next door to a competing cinema to watch a different action movie.
Oh, and just because its unlicensed doesn't mean it’s untouched - someone, somewhere will be receiving a kickback to 'allow' it to operate.
A Cover for Covers
Jul 06, 2007 | 3 Comments
Additional protection from the monsoon rains - a splash proof phone, in a protective case, in a plastic bag. Justifiable paranoia for a business tool that may well have cost a month's wages, carried by a person who will at some point be soaked to the bone.
Kind of reminds me the economics of economics, the politics of politics, or even the experience of experience design.
Which reminds me, who is the poster child for poster children?
Friday Pop Quiz: A xxxxxxx of Data
Jul 06, 2007 | 12 Comments
Your opportunity to attain the acknowledgement of your peers and win a little on a balmy Mumbai friday afternoon.
I'm looking for a word to describe that sweet spot in the field study process when you know you've found the thing you've been looking for even if you can't yet articulate it, but prior to the long dark descent into information overload.
Right now were there, and the only thing thats missing is a word to describe it.
A couple of small local goodies shipped to the person who comes up with the best answer. Competition entries in the comments, below.
Evil Warded
Jul 06, 2007
How to ward off digital evil spirits?
Repair, Retire
Jul 06, 2007
Fly poster advertising "Boys Wanted for Mobile Repair"
Too old by what age?
Retail Light Switch Norms
Jul 06, 2007
Regret, if there is such a thing is not having enough time to document light switch arrays in the local retail outlets. What, if anything is interesting about these wall mounted wonders?
Typically placed close to the entrance the light switch array stands within easy reach of the proprietor, usually found perched on a stool handling the cash register. The information architecture of the switches (and occasionally also power plugs) bears no resemblance to the layout of the lighting in the store itself but is rather is a cross between the creative frustrations of the electrician and a twisted sense of status of the owner.
A modest example from Dharavi above, more flamboyant to follow if I have time to pull 'em from the archive.
Define Freedom, Fighter, Freedom Fighter
Jul 06, 2007
Then pay their pensions.
Priorities
Jul 06, 2007
The proximity of faith related icons to the money, the act of completing a transaction, or simply in proximity to an oft repeated task - using the cash register?
And the chai delivery order book below. Faith that customers with a tab will pay?
Bangle Packaging Norms
Jul 06, 2007
Context misunderstood.
Kohl / Kajal Packaging Norms
Jul 06, 2007
On a market stall in a primarily Muslim community.
Hit Me
Jul 05, 2007 | 1 Comment
What drink do you associate with a hit of salt? Tequila? Neat vodka? A soda water?
Salt and soda water? At least two explanations why locally, it is being served this way: useful way to replenish salt lost through sweating; salt helps reduce the heavily carbonated water.
Salt rimmed neat vodka, from a night out in Mumbai, below.
Bonus question - what food do you associate with a slither of lime? Indeed.
Today’s Office
Jul 02, 2007
Today’s office is in a neighbourhood of Mumbai’s Dhavari, on a day the monsoon really starts to kick in.
The father of the family picks us up at a landmark restaurant, hand-shakes for greetings, and motions us to tail him. For a good ten minutes we walk, skip and wade our way through the back alleys that house the bulk of Dharavi’s residents – weaving between dense two story housing, ladder-steep staircases, buckets put out to catch clean water pelting down from the sky and the occasional resident lathered with a sachet’s worth of shampoo positioning themselves under the urban waterfalls.
He eventually leads us through a ground floor doorway into his home, a room of no more than 6 square meters, where we are greeted by the lady of the house. She gently restrains the energy of one of his two daughters, whilst their second - little more than a baby sleeps contentedly on a blanket laid out on the floor behind the door.
The seating arrangements are surprisingly simple for such a tight space - everyone sits with their backs to the wall, everyone except our erstwhile guide who squats between the kitchen and bathroom - in effect the only space big enough to house his light frame. The only remaining white space - a patch of floor in the center of the room is bordered by wayward feet, and its there that the microphone sits, its red light occasionally flickering as the audio is written to memory. “Since we don’t have a perfect memory, and because everything you say is important to us, with your permission we would like to record this session…” so there it sits, the mouse in the room.
How to ensure participants feel comfortable with our presence? With the presence of our technology: small but never-the-less protruding microphones; flashing lights; consent forms; interchangeable lenses; pens; paper?
The ebb and flow of the interview is conducted in Hindi leaving me with plenty of time to think about the everyday rituals conducted in this 1 room family home. What do we expect to learn from being here? Are we there yet? And what is still missing to help us on our way?
The view from the frame of the doorway: the colourful hood of a plastic cape pulled tight over the face of a young lady crouching in the alley as she scrubs the household pots; man bent-double hobbles past, supported by a soaked child protecting him with an umbrella; kids walk into view, stand and stare, seemingly unaware of their temporal beauty and their place in these surroundings. Monsoon rain is a playground sent from the sky. If you’re a kid, its proof there’s a god.
A neighbour motions me to brave the rain and cross the alley, introduces herself with in a gentle Mumlish lilt of and encourages me to take a portrait her son. He stands, only just sheltered from the downpour and faces the camera. Formalities aside, his mother offers a chai and minutes later, when I’m back with the team in the interviewee’s home, the chai arrives in a small aluminum tea pot.
Our plan is to return for a follow up interview. Mental note to self print a photo of her son. Whether, and how to go beyond making people feel comfortable with our presence? Whether and how to evolve the relationship between one of interviewer interviewee.
Every field study comes with its own set of unique challenges and exploring and pushing what we already know helps us move from here to somewhere out there. How to meaningfully engage with close knit and sometimes defensive communities in the relatively short time that we have, and do it in such a way that benefits the individuals involved, the community and our employer? How to ensure the health and safety of an expanded team of 18, working during the monsoon in one of the world’s poorest urban centers?
Just when you think the rains can’t get any harder, its turns it up a notch. The rains remind me of a wiry kick boxer I used to see training in my Daikanyama dojo, able to churn out a consistent flurry of blows from a physique that simply couldn’t contain that much energy. And just when you thought he couldn’t turn out anything more, he would start with big body shots.
By the time we leave, the open sewers that run along many of the alley ways have flooded, their contents spilled into the stream that now makes up our path. The risk of infection wading through knee deep water is very real but it’s currently the least of our worries - the uneven river bed, including the open sewer provides numerous opportunities to gouge and sprain legs and feet.
Home is the safety of a lodge. A hot cup of tea and the liberal use of Dettol awaits.
Designs on Participation
Jul 02, 2007
How to engage with the local community in design?
Rent a photo studio for ten days, fly-post a competition, offer daily prizes, meticulously document winners posing with said designs, and invite the best of the best to an award ceremony.
A process worth writing up in due course.
Wall To Car Wall
Jul 02, 2007
Every inside surface of the taxi carpeted, except for the floor.
The Price of Privacy
Jul 01, 2007
Using local contact numbers during the field research lowers the communication barrier for would-be participants – and the arrival in a new city heralds in a new, temporary 10 digit identity (otherwise known as a phone number) for each member of the team. Within a day of activating the Hutch SIM card the barrage of spam starts - both text messages and automated calling (Interaction Voice Response).
Locals in the know send a text message to opt out, a process that, according to Hutch’s automated response takes at least three days to activate: “We respect your privacy. Please give us 72 hours to include your number on our Do Not Disturb list. Thank you” and an unspecified amount of time this to filter through to the companies that already have you on their disturb list.
The revenue generated by selling your privacy in the first place vs. the risk of losing you as a customer.
The inertia of changing utility suppliers - whether it's for water, gas, electricity or personal connectivity. Disruptions - legal frameworks /emerging technologies that reduce/increase the inertia.
God In My Pocket
Jun 30, 2007
Literal
Jun 30, 2007
Cooler, Tastier, Happier
Jun 29, 2007
A slither of scaldingly hot chai swiftly placed and then slurped from the palm of its chef. The gentle chai-tanning of his palm.
The food and drink cultural interaction norms whether drinking water from a bottle (without allowing the bottle head to touch one’s lips) to the range of foods that it's acceptable to eat by hand. In what ways might these norms affect device and infrastructure interaction?
A busy, hit-the-ground-running start to our Dharavi research.
Activity & Waste Residues
Jan 24, 2007
Bin used as a spitton from Gangtok above, paint shop in Lhasa below.
Related: the residues from scree running and skateboarding.
How to Avoid Becoming Road Kill
Jan 01, 2007
The striking thing about the journey between Rangpo and Gangtok apart from: taking chai breaks from a packed Mahindra; the scenery - tropical forests clinging to the Himalayan foothills; and packs of monkeys lining the route - are the multitude of signs extolling drivers of the dangers of the road. Arrive in peace, not in pieces, don't gossip let him drive, and my personal favourite because of its proximity to a particularly cliff-like cliff drive, don't fly.
The past days in the Himalayas have been physically and mentally tough (in ways you might not expect) and recent travel experiences have put a lot of things into sharp focus. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger right?Tomorrow starts the final leg of my winter journey - heading to Hokkaido for fresh powder and onsen. The future (perfect) can wait a few more days.
Shoe Norms
Dec 29, 2006
Shoes off facing in, or shoes off facing out? Whilst different cultures share sensibilities about clean and dirty spaces are there cultural differences in the way these spaces are entered and exited?
Reasons for Opposites
Dec 29, 2006
Airplane window shade pulled up rather than down. Emergency exit, where the vertical space above the window is otherwise used.
Hear My Tunes
Dec 28, 2006
Plank Order, Lock Positions
Dec 28, 2006
Outsourcing, Relativism
Dec 27, 2006
Documenting You, Documenting Me
Nov 09, 2006
A Cairo waiter shows off his photo of this researcher above, and a more traditional studio photographer in Delhi below.
With the tools to capture experiences in the hands of more and more people its not surprising that one of the experiences that ends up being documented is, um, the process of being documented. How does being watched affect how we (researchers) work? when will we have the first Rodney King style documentation of a mis-behaving field researcher?
Delivery Mechanisms
Sep 21, 2006
Water containers for stall holders in a market in Old Delhi - continuing this week's theme of photos from India.
Writing this from a hotel bed - outside Los Angeles is beginning to wake up. Body clock is a little skewed - waking up and raring to go at 10pm. In practical terms timezone ping pong means chirpily attend a teleconference that started at 4am (an abnormal hour by any stretch of the imagination) and then dealing with the body's fallout during presentations later in the day.
Literacy, Communication, Design Presentation
Sep 20, 2006>
The slides from last week's UIAH presentation on designing for illterate users can now be downloaded from here [6MB]. The presentation draws a lot of its material from this essay on research into illiterate communication practices that weve been doing.
A synopsis? Don't frame the question by 'designing for illiterate people', think about the skills that are necessary to use the core features on a device - something which we term device competency. Consider the different types of literacy that users do have. To what extent do risks & consequences affect device exploration? Why iconic support and voice prompts can be part of a solution but are far from being the solution - instead look to a range of solutions on the device, on the network, and in user's ecosytem. The eco-system can be anything from (task or device) literacy classes to posters on walls. Last but certainly not least that it is better to solve the problem (illiteracy), than design work-around solutions for dealing with the problem (illiterate users stumped by text driven device interfaces).
Why should you be interested designing for illterate people? For selfish reasons of course - illiterate people make excellent lead users - solutions that meets their needs may well point the way to ease of use for the rest of us. I'm sure you can think of other reasons too.
The download is a somewhat condensed version of the original presentation. One slide I removed plays the devil's advocate - that textual literacy is itself a work-around for other forms of communication. At what point does human kind evolve to the point where literacy as we know it becomes redundant? A topic for another day perhaps.
Thank-you to Teemu Leinonen and Andrea Botero Cabrera for hosting the session, Media Lab students for posing questions worth answering and a lively discussion and of course to the extensive team of colleagues who made it all happen (slide 2 of the presentation since you ask).
Related illteracy research here, related presentations here. To be sent notification of new Future Perfect publications, presentations and presentation downloads send an email to info @ janchipchase dot com with the word 'subscribe' in the subject line.
Communication, Literacy, Design
Aug 25, 2006
Remote communication requires a means of identifying whom to contact. How do people who can't read and write manage their contact information?
This is just one of the many questions I'll be asking at a presentation on Literacy, Communication, Design to the University of Art and Design Helsinki on the evening of the 14th September. It's hosted by Teemu Leinonen and Andrea Botero Cabrera and is open to the public. It will draw on three years of research by colleagues at the Nokia Mobile HCI Group into low literacy communication practices, a journey that took us from urban and rural India to Nepal, China, Uganda and beyond.
Related research can be found here and as usual when its all done and dusted links to the slides will be posted to here.
Mobile Location Based Advertising
Aug 04, 2006
Mobile advertising From Shanghai (above), Sao Paulo, Ho Chi Minh City and Delhi (in sequence, below). If these vehicles and the majority of people are carrying connected high capacity devices what kind of services does this enable? What will be your criteria for judging whether to connect or not?
OK, technically the Delhi photo is announcing a funeral.
Manual to Auto (And Back Again)
Aug 03, 2006 | 1 Comment
Sign for drivers running trains through to Old Delhi station.
A big part of user interface design is deciding what to present to users when. Most things can delegated - either to other people or to technology. The question is what to delegate, to whom, and when. To what extent is delegation driven by efficiency? To what extent does delegation remove a sense of achievement? Does the Delhi train driver have a more enjoyable job taking care of the signalling manually? Is this a mundane task that technology can take care of? Or is this an important task that should not be left in the hands of a mere mortal?
In an increasingly automated world how to indicate changes beween automated and manual states? How to cope with exceptions to those states? How to present changes in state to us mere mortals?
Stoking What is Hot
Aug 01, 2006 | 2 Comments
From a street walk in South Delhi.
Street Refill
Jul 29, 2006
Ink refilling services in Ho Chi Minh City above and Delhi below.
Smaller. Happier?
Jul 26, 2006
Re-sellers catering for highly price sensitive customers whether its cigarettes sold individually (Sao Paulo, above), shampoo & soap powder and tobacco (Delhi, below) or small units of call time in the Philippines. To what extent can what elements of goods and services be broken down into smaller parts? If manufacturers are unable or unwilling to directly cater to this market themselves what design elements support secondary markets? What are the limits of this approach?
Why does the Sao Paulo shop not offer a service to pair up customers who cannot afford to buy the sole consumption rights to a cigarette? Why is there not an aftermarket for second or even third hand smoke & nicoteen? What are the limits indeed.
Signs Articulating Cultural Norms.
Jul 10, 2006
The widest selection of Do Not ... signs for sale in Tokyu Hands are Do Not Use Your Mobile Phone, No Smoking and No Cameras. What does it say about Japanese society that they did not sell any signs for No Spitting, No Explosives, No Cooking or No Begging?
Custom sign painter's shop in Kampala below, similar services on offer in Ho Chi Minh City, Pokara, Nepal.
And finally - a reminder of the importance of context in understanding by thinking about signs in a Delhi marketplace.
Motivations for Customisation
Jul 07, 2006
Customisation of a fishing boat hulll in Kansensero Uganda and of stop signs on the back of auto-rickshaws in Delhi.
Cultures of Repair, Innovation
Jul 03, 2006 | 4 Comments
Update: a slightly more print friendly version of this post appears here and the slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB].
In an effort to understand the total user experience I've taken time out during recent field studies in emerging markets to explore local repair cultures. The journey has taken me to cities such as Chengdu, Delhi, Ulan Bataar, Ho Chi Minh and Lhasa with recent brief stopovers in Kampala and Soweto. They all contain clusters of shops and market stalls selling a mixture of used and new mobile phones, and whilst (in this instance) size does not necessarily matter, they often operate on a scale not seen in cities such as London or Tokyo. The mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market for example stretches across number of streets and shopping arcades and includes 100's of small shops and stalls. If you want a snapshot of urban mobile phone consumers in emerging markets this is a good place to start.
What sets these locations apart from cities in more 'emerged' markets? Aside from the scale of what's on sale there is a thriving market for device repair services ranging from swapping out components to re-soldering circuit boards to reflashing phones in a language of your choice , naturally. Repairs are often carried out with little more than a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning contact points) the right knowledge and a flat surface to work on. Repair manuals (which appear to be reverse engineered) are available, written in Hindi, English and Chinese and can even be subscribed to, but there is little evidence of them being actively used. Instead many of the repairers rely on informal social networks to share knowledge on common faults, and repair techniques. It's often easier to peer over the shoulder of a neighbour than open the manual itself. Delhi has the distinction of also offering a wide variety of mobile phone repair courses at training institutes such as Britco and Bridco turning out a steady flow of mobile phone repair engineers. To round off the ecosystem wholesalers' offer all the tools required to set up and run a repair business from individual components and circuit board schematics to screwdrivers and software installers.
How are mobile phone repair cultures different from the everyday repair shops for other mainstream electronics filled with televisions and video recorders? For a start consider the volumes of mobile phones in the marketplace compared to other electronics. Network effects soon kick in - it's easier to find a dead RAZR to cannabalise for spares than spares for a Sony DVD drive drive quite simply because there's more of them about. The physical size of the products to be repaired is also an factor - consider the space required to store and repair 200 mobile phones vs CRT televisions. As objects that many consider essential tools for everyday life mobile phones are carried, dropped, sat on, run over, submerged in a wide variety of situations leading to use cases outside the parameters of most phones. Finally, for many emerging market consumers the phone is considered an essential tool for conducting a successful business whether it's a boda-boda driver in Kampala (gentleman on moped in photo, below) or a midwife in Xiamen. If a person has the choice between repairing a television or a (shared) mobile phone which do you think he or she would choose first?
Each of the cities mentioned above offers more formal repair services, usually officially through customer care service centers, but the scale and sophistication of what is on offer informally is way beyond what many readers of Future Perfect will be familiar. And yes, many of the places mentioned already have networks to (from my observations) efficiently recycle, repair and re-use a wide variety objects including electronics . But in the spirit of the Future Perfect let's start with a very basic question - why do these informal repair cultures exist at all? What is so different between London and Lhasa or Helsinki and Ho Chi Minh?
The informal repair services that are offered are quite simply driven by necessity - highly price sensitive customers cannot afford to go through more expensive official customer care centers and even if they could their phones are unlikely to be covered by warrantee - having been bought through grey market channels, been sent as gifts from friends and relatives abroad, or were locally bought used, second or third+ ownership. In many cases these users cannot afford to be without their mobile phone, not in the social sense of being out of touch (which is valid enough), but in many instances because their livelihoods depend on it. On the supply side there is a ready pool of sufficiently skilled labour, ready access to tools, components and above all knowledge.
It's worth acknowledging that grey and black goods and services are also part of the mobile phone market ecosystem - whether it's passing faked goods off as originals or offering pirated software. Some markets also sell a wide variety of phones that copy the industrial designs of other products, examples are shown here and and example of how it can unfold here (these two links are unrelated). These are however, only a part of the whole market ecosystem and from my understanding are small in scale within the context of the physical markets' themselves, compared to the repair services on offer. And before you ask - no, I'm not arguing that piracy is a minor issue.
For consumers the informal repair culture is largely convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, reducing the total cost of ownership for people for whom a small drop in price may make the difference between having or not having a phone. The culture of repair also increases the lifetime of products lowering their environmental impact (though this could be offset by other factors such as inefficiency of using old batteries).
What can we learn from informal repair cultures? Aside from the benefits, what are the risks for consumers and for companies whose products are repaired, refurbished and resold? Given the benefit to (bottom of the pyramid) consumers are there elements of the repair ecosystem that can be exported to other cultures? Can the same skills be applied to other parts of the value chain? And, turning to my original interest in this topic and the work we do in the Mobile HCI Group, given the range of resources and skills available what would it take to turn cultures of repair into cultures of innovation?
I'm at Cape Town University today discussing qualitative research methods and Informal Repair Cultures. The slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB download] and related presentations here.
(Support for) Hacker Cultures (Require Support)
Jun 16, 2006
A manual for unlocking mobile phones just one publication widely available from Delhi's Karol Bagh Market. A few things of note for what is essentially a grey market publication: documents how to unlock all major phone models; has taken advertising for the different unlock kits and the Indira Technology Institute; printed in high quality colour; and even includes a help desk number. In a world where so much is online, why is this printed at all?
Last few days I've been pulling together material for a presentation on informal cultures of repair and innovation drawing on recent research in China, India, Mongolia and Vietnam. If anyone is in proximity of South Africa's Meraka Institute on the 20th June - the presentation is open to the public. I'll post the slides on ResearchDotNokiaDotCom when they're done.
This Is It (So Value Me More)
May 08, 2006
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?
Actual Speed?
May 06, 2006 | 1 Comment
Not just crossing, but in a hurry. How close is this sign, from New Delhi, to the reality? To what extent does exaggerating the actual situation affect initial behaviour? Subsequent behaviours?
Coping With Legacy Systems
May 06, 2006
Interactions With a Skin-Like Interface
Apr 30, 2006 | 1 CommentI came across this tap attached to a water barrel during our getting-to-know-how-a-city-wakes-up walk around Old Delhi. I've been trying to figure out whether the design deliberately imitates the shape of male genitalia (I know it's small in the photo but, um, click to enlarge). The function - passing water maps well enough to the body, but the colour is not an accurate reflection of local skin pigmentation and I guess the design misses the opportunity to introduce modality. But the resemblance is there.
User interface designers like to tap into what their users already know - and in this vein the desktop metaphor relies on the basic assumption that users know that objects can be placed on and moved around a desktop. In an increasingly globalize world is there domain knowledge that is universally known across cultures, ages, and genders? What are the things that you have spent the most time with in your life? What has been there through thick and thin, good times and bad, and has been there in your most intimate moments?
High on this list is your body or at least the parts that you can easily see such as the back of your hands, or easily touched such as your shoulders, chest, front of legs, bum, face and yes genitalia. (There's also the stuff inside you that you feel - anything from the pressure of a full bladder to aching limbs but that's a discussion for another day). What if skin-like materials were just another tool in the designer's toolbox? Today we have mass-produce able pleather. With a desire to rebuild wounded soldiers and in particular treat burn victims leading research into growing body parts and skin is mass produced skin-like materials really that far behind?
Your first reaction is probably gentle, chiding revulsion - triggering of thoughts about eXistenZ and looking again at the photo you're thinking that the tap design (and this post) is just plain tacky. But pause and think. Given a life-time of getting to know and interaction with your own body and the knowledge of your shapes, scars, textures, preferences is there something there that can be tapped to design more optimal products? What I'm not proposing is cyborgs or human like robots. But put simply, what if your 12th generation iPod casing felt like, looked and behaved like your own skin? Supple, warm, tender. How would it respond to gentle squeezes, flexes, stroking, a tug or a pinch? What kind of interaction would play or stop a song? If you wanted to customised it would it be with a piercing? Or a tattoo?
If realistic skin was widely available it wouldnt take long before it was wrapped around body-part-like shapes. What would the inherent characteristics of those body shapes be? What functions could map to tapping a 'shoulder'? Rubbing a 'foot'? Nudging an 'elbow'? How would interactions differ depending on the age, gender and cultural background of the interactor? How would interaction preferences differ for the same? I may have a weak grip and rough flaky skin but that doesn't mean I just want to interact with skin-like products that feel the same as me.
And how would and should our skin-like products wear and tear? Would they age? Succumb to sun burn? Require a shave? Treatment for lice? End up with cancer? Can they be restored with the liberal application of aloe or would it require something more drastic such as botox or a nip and a tuck?
And given all of this do we even want to go there?
Motivations for Defining Boundaries
Apr 28, 2006
Motivations for carving out boundaries in public spaces: An Old Delhi street cafe above, Shanghai building site below.
For shared services, devices or projects how to signify who has control over what? What signals can the layout of the space send to imply inclusion or exclusion for members of the public? Does this map to the digital realm? How?
Where Thin is Not In
Apr 23, 2006
This small, simple and relatively elegant Sony Ericsson phone belonging to a tea-house owner in South Delhi. The product design team will have spent countless hours massaging the components into the smallest possible form factor, selecting materials for the optimal tactile experience, and making the detailing just right. The overall elegance and perceived thickness of the device may have been a factor in its purchasing decision but ultimately this consumer bought a thick plastic cover to protect it from dust and scratches (photo below).
The need and consequent practices of covering and protecting consumer products varies according to cultural practices, individual tastes, climate and contexts. Whether it's a plastic coated car seat in New Orleans, individually wrapped sweets in Japan (in part to cope with intense summer humidity), plastic sheets on a hospice bed, or covered calculators and phones in India. The advertisement for dust free switches in South Delhi (photo, below) is only enhanced by the extremely dusty shop backdrop.
Of these products mobile phones are somewhat unique in that they have to cope with conditions in a wide range of contexts - from when the owner gets up to when s/he goes to sleep and everything in between. Whilst women are most likely to be carrying phones in hand bags the desire to be contactable and to communicate often leads them to be carried in the hand for short periods of time. For men the situation is compounded by the extent to which the phone is carried in pockets - close to the skin and consequently exposed to more human moisture & sweat.
There is currently a lot of noise about who has the thinnest phone, and the thickness of the RAZR was undoubtedly a factor in its worldwide success. But as the adoption of mobile phones spread the reality for many of the world's population is that protection is paramount. My personal take on device thickness is that thin devices have their pros e.g. perceived elegance and cons e.g. an tendency to break more easily, but that things will only become genuinely interesting in this space as and when true flexibility is introduced.
The after market for protective phone covers in India is well developed and is quickly able to cater for new phone form factors, even down to coping with sliding mechanisms. How can mass market products be re-designed to cope with the need for greater protection? (the dust free keypad on the 1101 is a good example). And given that the two factors are often mutually exclusive, is it possible to design products that are able to offer increased protection when needed, but can shed their protective cladding when the need for elegance is paramount? Finally, when new materials and manufacturing techniques enable forms of protection that are not visible to the human eye how important will the design be to the perception of protection?
To Hack Me Is To Love Me
Apr 21, 2006 | 1 Comment
To run a light in an alleyway outside his shop this Delhi resident simply taps into the public power supply (junction box hidden at the top of the photo).
What is to stop people from doing the same with all future 'utilities' - whether it is digital storage space, connectivity or downloading content from a as-much-as-you-can-eat subscription account? What level of leakage is privately acceptable for these modern day utility companies? And in what situations is this form of hacking beneficial to both parties?
When Everyone Finds Their Rhythm
Apr 20, 2006 | 1 Comment
Reviewing photos taken in the last month came across one that evokes many postive feelings.
It shows two of our team sitting in garden in our hotel/guesthouse in Delhi, my laptop is in the foreground and I'm sitting with my back to a tree. It must be around 7:30 am and the city heat has yet to descend. Despite having all the windows open the lack of breezes and the mosquito nets meant that at this moment the guesthouse is somewhat stuffy (though by 9am it will be cooler inside the building than outside). They are both wearing headsets plugged into laptops and are transcribing the previous days interviews. I'm not sure exactly how long they've been up or what time they slept but they were working when I awoke. We'd all been chucked out of the breakfast room by the housekeeper who was eager to set the table.
And the positivity? A mixture of coming together in a flexible and condusive space, seeing old friends, having a common, agreed and understood purpose, everyone getting on with the job without having to be asked, and everyone working within the boundaries of their own rhythm (a couple of the team were still asleep but then they'd been working late). Sometimes the jetlag can play havok with getting the job done, but this time everyone synced just fine.
It also reminds me how sterile regular corporate approved hotels can be.
Coping With Shared Use
Apr 19, 2006
Shop owner in South Delhi limits employee access to his land line phone. Similar solution used at a security checkpoint in Lhasa.
For devices that are shared, hold private information and can incur costs for use, like um, mobile phones how to restict access to features?
Micro Breaks, Macro Breaks
Apr 19, 2006 | 1 Comment
A security guard settling into another hour seated in front of a closed store in South Delhi (above), motorcyclist checking text messages whilst smoking a cigarette in Tokyo (below) and a bus stop indicating how long before the next bus arrives, Brighton (end photo).
Micro and macro breaks are the time we have between defined tasks: waiting for a bus to arrive; for a traffic light to change; for friends to turn up; to smoke a cigarette (assuming the act of smoking is not seen as a primary task). If you design mobile devices, applications or services you should be interested in micro and macro breaks - as a commonly carried mobile essential there is a fair chance that the mobile phone will be used during that break.
Not all all breaks are equal: some are planned, some not; the ability to predict how long a break will last affects how the time is used and whether tasks are started; some we have degree of control over how long they last; and the contexts in which breaks occur can vary considerably - just think of the range of situations you find yourself in.
What are the characteristics of micro or macro breaks? How do they differ between cultures? For that matter, how does the pace of life, the perception of time and how it 'should' be filled differ between cultures? How long do these breaks last compared the time it takes to complete a task such as sending a text message, locating information on a mobile web site or to go to a more topical application - tuning into signal for a mobile TV station?
And why the bus stop? Quite simply - knowing when the break will finish affects what tasks will be started.
Buying Fakes With Eyes Open
Apr 16, 2006 | 2 Comments
Observed during a short visit to a street market in Delhi - the seated gentlemen is boxing up covers for Nokia phones.
The quality of the covers varied but the boxes were pretty obvious fakes. On the assumption that most consumers in this market will be aware are of the origin of the goods, to what extent do (fake) boxes increase the value of (fake) covers? Are there markets where taking objects out of packaging increases their value?
Hmm, what makes a fake a fake?
Content Middle Men
Apr 16, 2006
In Delhi's Karol Bagh Market 100+ Rupees (2+ Euro) will buy you as much content as you can fit on a 512 MB memory card. Widely available digital contents includes the usual suspects: ring tones in various formats; wallpapers; themes; applications; games - including Series 60 ports of many popular Nintendo ES games; Hindi pop videos; and a couple of full length Hindi movies. Given that most of this content is available somewhere online, its interesting to note the presence of someone who takes the time to find and package the material for less networked (or less network-motivated) consumers.
Minimalism
Apr 14, 2006
Testing a car stereo's CD drives to hear it works - photo of a street stall in Delhi. Minimalism of both the CD drive and the plug. A relatively common alternative to sticking bare wire ends in the socket is to support the wire position with short pieces of wood.
Your Rights Are Irrelevant. If Anything, Demand Trust
Apr 12, 2006 | 2 Comments
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.
Larger Small Print
Apr 09, 2006 | 2 Comments
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
Apr 09, 2006
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?
Motivations for Ranking
Apr 09, 2006 | 3 Comments
[Corrected] Coaching institute in South Delhi publicises the students that have excelled on a billboard outside the school. The effort required to put up a printed billboard suggests that the ranking will be valid for a long period of time. In an increasingly real-time world what is a meaningful way of ranking people, events or other statistics?
This reminds me of two things: Awards are generally given out by people who like to be seen to be giving out awards to people who like to be seen receiving awards; and the easiest way to get an award is to first set up an award ceremony - what goes around will eventually comes around.
Decompression
Apr 09, 2006 | 1 Comment
Two days in a rural location to analyse and debate 8 days of field data before the team disperses. A big part of coping with urban Delhi is dealing with the heat, noise and dust. Time for reflection with the team is in one location is a necessity and we make the most of what we have - the quiet space should ease decompression.
The glow on the left of the photo shows the distant Delhi light leaking into the sky. And the ghostly figures? The field research team on a 30 second exposure whilst our hosts sleep. The nights offered some respite from the intense day time heat.
Cultural Conversions
Apr 08, 2006 | 1 Comment
Chai house worker wearing LIVESTRONG bracelets, somethings which were spotted on a number of young males around Delhi. The rubber bracelets are good triggers for charitable donations in part because they are so cheap to produce - more of the donation can go to the charity. This same property makes the statement-bracelet trend viable in highly price/cost cultures such as India.
Whether the intentions of the original statement for these bracelets is relevant to the wearer is another matter entirely. To what extent does the additional cultural distance travelled change the message?
Components Stripped and Re-used
Apr 08, 2006
The degree to which used and damaged individual components are stripped for repair and re-sale.
Car stereos above.
Car, below.
Protect To Serve
Apr 08, 2006
Events Which
Apr 07, 2006
Demonstration in Delhi recorded by the demonstrators.
What consequences of the widespread availability of media gathering and reporting tools.
Local Insights, Insights from Locals
Apr 07, 2006
Being local doesn't qualify someone to be a local guide. Being a foreigner doesn't dis-qualify someone from having insights into a local culture. Something that enables a decent specialist to be able to specialise (and, um, be, er, special) is their ability to apply their expertise and work effectively in foreign contexts. And some specialists are ultimately not that special.
With these provisos in mind it's fair to say that our ability to gather meaningful data in foreign climes is dependent on having good local guides. The most obvious reason to hire guides is to provide cultural insights enterpret the local language. Less obviously a good local guide will use her social network to find appropriate study participants (when not using a recruiting agency); will know where to find what you want and negociate decent prices on anything and everything; makes the team aware of local sensitivities such as how to behave during meetings and where not to point the soles of your feet; dealing with local nuances such as power cuts; and even such simple but moral boosting things as knowing a decent neighbourhood restaurant. Also, in situations where gender is a barrier to gathering data having someone of the opposite sex around provides more options which ultimately leads to more data gathering opportunities.
Much like the rest of us, guides need a clearly described brief to be able to perform well. Given that the brief often changes as the project progresses we make an effort to keep everyone in the loop regarding the range and quality of the data that is being collected. It's worth bearing in mind that asking questions can be seen as a strength or weakness depending on issues as cultural norms, age and the personality of the individuals and that positive and negative feedback can be enterpreted in a number of ways.
Thanks to our cultural guides this past week: Priyanka, Smriiti, Aashish, Samir and Surbee - your insights were much appreciated.
Faith In
Apr 06, 2006
Slabs of Joy
Apr 06, 2006
A shop selling game controllers to hook up to TV based consoles - designed for arcade use.
Example of use here.
A Sufficiently Focused Group
Apr 05, 2006 | 2 Comments
Lo-tech setup for home based focus group - a wire connecting the video camera with the TV in the observation room. The space used for the focus group is normally someone's home, and in this instance the observation room is a converted bedroom - there are no seats so the observation team is perched on the edges of a large double bed. The setup works surprisingly well, with the participants relaxed in the surroundings and the proceedings sufficiently focused.
A backup battery sits in one corner of the home a sign that they are used to having power cuts. The host informs us that if the power does go for any length of time then the TV in the observation room will cut off, and given that it is a windowless room presumably we will be plunged into darkness.
But for once I'm able to say I spent a half day lounging around on a bed (there were no chairs), sipping tea and watching (the participants on the) TV and all in the name of work.
Privacy Lost, Never Had, A Sham
Apr 04, 2006
Public call office receipts litter the street in front of a shop. These receipts typically include information relating to the call - the phone number, time, duration and cost of call.
Fixed Turn
Apr 04, 2006 | 1 Comment
Heading to an office close to New Delhi airport in a tasteful Ambassador taxi. Ash tray in the door is fixed in one location (no parts can be removed). To empty? Rotate the cover and rely on gravity to do the rest.
Same But Different
Apr 04, 2006
Clean Teeth
Apr 04, 2006 | 2 Comments
Sticks for cleaning teeth/chewing, sold to very low income workers close to Old Delhi station.
Photos from a watching-the-city-waking-up street walking session.
Media Delivery
Apr 04, 2006 | 2 Comments
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?
(Out of the) Out-of-Office
Apr 03, 2006 | 2 Comments
We've set up a mobile office here in Delhi, but this afternoon's office is, well, out of the out-of-office. I'm perched on the edge of a street stall in South Delhi sipping hot sweet chai. A black and white TV is balanced on a high shelf and is blaring out a Harry Potter movie in Hindi. On my left the owner takes a pot of the boil and pours chai into 6 glasses - one of which ends up in my hands. Two rows of customers, mostly children, line the walls and most are intently watching the movies. They don't appear to be drinking anything.
The chai is pleasant enough, but if I'm honest I don't actually want or need it. The same can be said of a number of purchases today - the chai before this and the chai before that. I also didn't need the haircut, the shave, the picture frames, stickers, manuals, pens and a multitude of other things that were bought at various stalls in this neighbourhood market. But what all these things have in common is that they enable me to slow down social interactions to the point where an ad-hoc interview can take place.
Out of Office Reply
Apr 03, 2006
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?
How India Wakes Up
Apr 03, 2006
What percentage of the world's population wakes up to a phone alarm clock?
The advertisement for a Nokia 1600 and 1110 phones above focuses on a single feature - a talking alarm and clock. Jaago India Jaago translates to 'wake up India'.
Aspect Ratio
Apr 03, 2006
Three urinals to one squat.
How (Parts of) Delhi Wake Up
Apr 03, 2006
An attempt to understand the flow of the city. Team has a 6am start. The streets are already buzzing.
Conversion
Apr 02, 2006
"Old currency changed here"
In cultures with grey and black markets for currency gullible tourists can be fooled into changing money for out-of-date local currency. Where? Well from personal experience, the Czech Republic.
How will this kind of scam play out as objects contain more meta data (such as sell by dates) and the life of those objects becomes more traceable?
Motivation to Protect
Apr 02, 2006
High quality cover for mobile phone to protect against damage and to a lesser extent dust.
From most angles the phone's appearance is similar with and without this transparent cover with the exception shown above. Beyond reducing the risk damage what are the motivations to use covers? To what extent does this choice boil down to appearance now vs. appearance later?
Do, And What You Do
Apr 01, 2006 | 0 Comments
The style of holding the money and tickets is both practical (change lined up for customers) and a visual symbol of his role (bus conductor).
Office Away From The Office
Mar 30, 2006
My office for the next two weeks is a townhouse /guesthouse close to Delhi's CP. The house is owned by an English couple who now spend most of their time on an estate just outside Delhi, and its current occupants are the 5 members of our research team plus the Nepali housekeeper and her family. It is welcoming, comfortable and coincidentally very, very English (including little touches like afternoon tea).
It's 5am as I write this and the first strains of sun light are peeking through the expansive mosquito screen and beyond that the canopy of a tree on the front lawn of the house. My body clock is halfway between Tokyo and New Delhi which according to the Windows time zone application puts me somewhere near Krasnoyarsk. The fresh morning air drifts through the house accompanied by bird-song and the distant but frequent sound of trains shunting along to Old Delhi station.
So what are we doing here? The fixed part of the plan is to run a series of focus groups to understand the pros and cons of various concepts. As with a lot of these studies the contextual work that happens around the edges is expected to also yield rich data - observing and documenting the contexts in which the concepts will be used, contextual interviews, and exploring themes such as rituals, customisation, repair cultures, coping with dust and dirt as well as generally trying to understand what both unique and the same about the Indian (communications) context.
The guesthouse is a conducive space to running this kind of study: the expansive and airy lounge can comfortably cope with the team and our 5 assistants (and at night a mattress is rolled out in one corner's it becomes my bedroom). A researcher from Hyderabad is asleep in the master bedroom which is now doubling up as mission control and the mobile office is unpacked and the walls are starting to be covered with data, schedules, photos and sketches of new design iterations. Further along the corridor are the sleeping bodies of a Canadian concept designer living in Helsinki and a Chinese colleague from, um, China whilst the final member of the team - an Indian studying in Helsinki is housed in a room on the roof of this one story building. In a choice between a regular corporate hotel with all mod-cons and this guesthouse with shared living quarters I'd take this any day. There are numerous benefits from having the entire team stay in one space - the net result of which is that we live, eat and sleep the research topic for the duration of our stay (and having access to a housekeeper makes life easier too).
6:30, the newspapers have just landed on the path and the house begins to wake.
Game Play
Mar 30, 2006 | 1 Comment
The range of motion of hands shown by the dirt-scraped clean areas.
Is it possible to conduct accurate, longitudinal hand-placement usability tests using dirt as a boundary marker?
The weight of the TV is a counter balance to the pressure exerted on the buttons and joystick.
Custom
Mar 30, 2006
Repeatedly self-customised phone by Fiza Khan a student at NIFT Delhi's Department of Fashion and Lifestyle Accessories.
To what extent does the customisation of a product or service facilitate or become a barrier to and ongoing customisation?
Wear and Tear
Mar 29, 2006 | 0 Comments
Supple skin on the hands of a South Delhi barber. The shaving process included a face massage and the liberal application of raw aloe.
Dead skin on the hand of a rickshaw driver - his other hand was similarly worn in the same place.
Not in Here, But Out There
Mar 29, 2006 | 2 Comments
Thursday's presentation about field research to the Department of Fashion & Lifestyle Accessories at the New Delhi Institiute for Fashion Technology. Hosted by Associate Professor Bhawna Vij Katyal. Slides can be downloaded from here [3MB]. Update: link to the presentation now works
A summary?
Get out the lab.
Keep your eyes peeled.
Question eveything, including why you need to be out of the lab.
Stay warm.
On Getting There
Mar 28, 2006
Can't think of a city that isn't beautiful to cruise around at night. Window down, non-spoken communication with the driver and the night-air blowing away hours of jet-fug.
From Delhi Airport to deep sleep in the guesthouse in less than an hour.
Cultural Reference Points
Dec 18, 2005
Global cultural centers of gravity shift.
Today's Mouse will be tomorrow's mouse.
How much does your job rely on creativity?
How much of your creativity is based on your deep insights into local cultural norms?
How long will it take before the global cultural center of gravity shifts to marginalize your culture?
How long before the (global) relevance that you take for granted is gone?
How long before your job is no longer relevant?
What do you need to do to stay relevant?
Photo taken earlier this year wandering around Old Delhi.
Context, Understanding, Risk & Consequences
Nov 25, 2005 | 3 Comments
This photo taken last year from a street market in Bangalore. For me it highlights the importance of context in understanding.
Lets imagine you are wandering around the street market and are looking for a toilet - you see this building and being non-literate you don't understand any of the words written in Hindi or English on its walls (the issue is not this straight forward but bear with me).
Relying on what you see before you, ask yourself:
How sure are you that this is indeed a toilet?
What is the cost of walking into this building if it is not a toilet?
Indeed, what is cost of not trying?
In this context the cost may range from nothing, to some social embarrassment, to perhaps walking into the offices of the mustachioed local political candidate - whose wonderful mural is on the building. There may also be a cost in not going to the toilet, and there may be viable alternatives like peeing on a nearby tree. It all boils down to risk and the consequences of making the wrong decision.
The real world contains wonderfully rich cues that can be drawn upon to make the decision whether to go in, or not. In this context these cues include: the fact that there is a stream of men going in and out of the building alone; that there is a similar building with a picture of a woman next door; your sense of smell (trust me on this); perhaps even that you've used this kind of building before. You could even ask someone in the proximity.
For mobile phone user's the challenge is that the phone user interface lacks many of these rich cues. For non-literate users in particular the consequence of not being 100% confident of what will happen next can be too high to just experiment and explore. Choosing that right soft key may start the game application. But equally it could delete the application. Or maybe it makes an expensive phone call. Or changes the carrier settings. How do you know? And are you willing to take the risk to find out?
As mobile phones are held in the hands of the next billion users, with their very different cultural backgrounds, language skills, education, mental models and (user) experiences designers need to work hard to understand the issues of context, risk & consequences of these new users.
Non-Literate Mobile Phone Communication
Nov 20, 2005 | 1 Comment
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.
Simple Food
Nov 10, 2005A simple, very sociable recipe.
Take one large Goffman and the stems of 6 Weegee and chop finely. Add to pan with a dash of Hiromix and cook on a low heat for 5 minutes stirring regularly. Add the leaf of 3 Kieslowski (preferably blue, but red or white Kieslowski will do just as fine).
Squeeze the juice of a Petroski in to a bowl and add the hand-crushed leaves of four Clark (the stem of Clark can be bitter, so make sure you only take the leaf). Pour/scoop the mixture into the pan, mix gently, and transfer the contents into oven proof dish. Finely grate one Norman and sprinkle on evenly. Cook in a pre-heated oven on gas mark 6 for 25 minutes or until it starts to turn a golden brown.
Remove from oven, serve and garnish with with a decorative sprig of Tufte.
To be enjoyed in the company of strangers, far away from home.
Any recommendations for desert?
(Photos from street research last year in Mumbai and Bangalore)
Public Phone Recharging Services
Aug 08, 2005 | 7 Comments
You are out and about and your phone runs out of power - what are your options?
Something you see a lot in Asia but not yet in Europe or the US is public alternatives for charging mobile phones. These photos are taken from a waiting room near Hodaka - a popular hiking/climbing in Japan's Northern Alps. I watched as a potential customer struggled to operate the machine to charge his phone - 100 Yen (0.70 Euro) for 10 minutes.
In many ways the context of this room made it a perfect place for locating a charging station: a train station waiting room with accurate information on when the train is going to leave; a reason to wait and kill time; seating in proximity of the charging station to make it easier to remember when it comes time to leave and to enable checking that no-one will steal the phone. The last point may seem moot because the phone goes into a drawer and the door is locked - however the casing is pretty flimsy and would not deter a dedicated thief if no-one was around. Do you have any data stored on your phone worth stealing? Even if you don't now, this question will become more relevant as phones are used to complete a wider range of tasks e.g. mobile payments, and due to the options provided by increased memory space. The context should also provide a steady stream of customers: there was no cellular coverage on the mountain so a mobile phone left switched on the battery rapidly drains as it constantly tries to find the nearest base station; most people were on overnight trips so to keep their weight down they're not going to carry chargers; there was no where to plug in a charger anyway.
There are a number of other options available in Japan. Most convenience stores stock 'top-up' batteries that plug into the phones power socket. This is a practical alternative in Japan where to a large extent the carrier specifies the power connector - all DoCoMo PDC phones are able to take the same charging/data cable. (Actually the connectors are all slightly different but they are specified to share enough similarities to be able to charge from the same cable. Some enterprising students I met used a knife to shave off the design differences so they could share a power & data cable).
A few solar chargers are for sale in Tokyo Hands, but these are still in the realm of gimmick than a practical alternative.
Other examples I've come across in my travels - convenience stores, restaurants and airports in China having charging stations where you clamp a positive and negative charge onto the battery. I've never seen anyone actually using these, but I presume that because someone has paid to roll the infrastructure out that its revenue generating.
Fast food restaurants in Delhi supply charging services behind the counter whilst you eat - from recollection they offered 3 x Nokia, 1 x Samsung, 1 x Motorola and one I can't remember. A colleagues told me about longer distance buses in India offering charging services to passengers. Any other places you've seen?
Motivations for Adopting New Technology
Jul 28, 2005 | 2 Comments
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.
Ad, Mob, Milk
Jul 11, 2005
Advertising in milk shop in Delhi - kid plays with mobile.
Nokia V-CD
Jul 10, 2005
Can't ever remember Nokia making video compact disc players. But if it says Nokia on the box its got to be Nokia in the box, right? I get the impression they were stickering the logos on the product using just-in-time production techniques.
"You want a Nokia V-CD? Lemme see whats out back..."
"..."
"You're in luck, I still got one left"
From street market in Delhi.
Repair Culture, India
Jul 03, 2005
On the last night of my most recent trip to India spent an evening trying to understand India's informal mobile phone repair culture by visiting Karol Bagh Market. Throw in the noise, heat and smells of Delhi and you already have a rich consumer experience.
As in China many of the mobile phone shops and street kiosks offer mobile phone repair service. Many of these guys can strip and rebuild a mobile phone in minutes. How do these kind of services affect the mobile phone user experience? What happens when everyone has affordable access to these kind of services?
Side-note: a lot of the hyperbole surrounding western hacker culture makes me smile compared to what these guys are doing day in day out.
Mobility Touch / Magic Touch
Jun 01, 2005
Not just the NFC guys pushing Magic Touch. Photo from Karol Bagh market in Delhi.
Purchase Password
Apr 09, 2005 | 1 Comment
Buy password? Why not?
Guerilla Ethnography
Apr 02, 2005
Been at Doors Conference giving a three day workshop on Guerrilla Ethnography. At other conferences this would be called a user research methods workshop, but hei, this is Doors.
To be frank, none of the talks set me on fire, a few were downright dull. Upsides: many of the conversations with delegates hit the mark, in particular the perspectives from local attendees, and the CKS guys did a stupenous job.
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