Sakura Shinmachi Archives
East & West
Oct 06, 2007
The complimentary nature of two objects not normally associated with one another - wooden chopsticks used to remove (a stuck tortillas) from a toaster.
Encouraging Behaviours
Sep 24, 2007
Dog toilet in Helsinki. Two small observations: the design elements that encourage dog owners to bring their pets to this space; that some have thrown plastic bags of dog waste into the pit.
Signs Communicating
Aug 19, 2007
Passion through signage.
Inter-face
Jul 23, 2007
Kumon
Jul 17, 2007
Something to Download
Jun 25, 2007
The slides from last week's Nokia Connection presentation titled Insight & Innovation: Design Research can now be downloaded from here [PowerPoint, 4MB]. The material overlaps with previously published presentations but draws on examples from around South and South East Asia.
Newcomers to Future Perfect may want to check out the following background reading material on Where's the Phone Studies [PowerPoint, PDF 2MB]; Shared Phone Use [PowerPoint, PDF, 7MB]; Mobile TV [PowerPoint, 4MB]; illiteracy and mobile phone design [PowerPoint, 6MB] and more on research methods here [PowerPoint, 3MB]
As usual related research here and sign up to receive notification of new presentations and downloads by emailing info (at) janchipchase dot com with the word subscribe in the subject line.
And the front cover photo of the gent making a call under a flag? From a pro-secular rally in Istanbul here and here. Yes, not quite South East Asia. Very observant.
What Banks Have Become, I
Jun 17, 2007
In a city where close-to-the-station real estate is at a premium and hundreds of bikes are carted to the 'pound every day for illegal parking, many people consider it OK to dump bikes outside the bank. The logic being that during the day you could be a customer and at night they're shut so their forecourt space is fair game. And anyway this facility doesn't even have permanent staff - simply being a space to house four ATMs - so whose going to argue?
Except that drunken revellers return to the 'burbs and forget to pick up the bike.
Banks have evolved into many things, including parking spaces, and as below, anti-parking spaces.
Menu Options: Literacy, Understanding, Enjoyment
Jun 09, 2007
Standing in front of the restaurant vending machine you know what you're going to order, right? Of course, right.
Now, try navigating a (mobile phone) interface with the same level of comprehension of what is written. How does your lack of textual and technological literacy change your ability to use and enjoy using a product or service? Your sense of achivement once the basic functions are learned.
And your level of motivation to learn how to use new features (or order something different from the menu) once you've managed the basics.
An argument in this restaurant indeed for picture menus. And an argument for feature - simple devices.
Oh yeah related: essay and slideshow [6MB PowerPoint].
The Colour and Feel of Authority
May 19, 2007
Bank branding, Taipei.
Extreme Personalisation
May 04, 2007
An unexpected surprise of last week's Istanbul visit was coming across these working Nokia phones hacked/customised by Mehmet Erkök, industrial design lecturer at İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi's Department of Industrial Product Design.
Click to enlarge photos - worth seeing the detail.
The extent to which different forms of personalisation demand compromise e.g. removing the keypad, adding new buttons. Or are complimentary e.g. moving an icon for a commonly used application higher in the menu hierarchy.
Photos of mobile phones taken by and used with kind permission of Mehmet Erkök.
Strait & Bound (& Scrubbed)
Apr 23, 2007
Heading to Istanbul tomorrow to learn about what the students of ITU (İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi) Department of Industrial Product Design are up to, and if all goes to plan present material on using ethnography to inform & inspire the design process. Özlem Er is the host if you're near the Bosporus and wish to attend.
Incidentally in Japanese a turkish bath (in Japanese torukoburo) was a euphemism for a bath-house-sex-massage-parlour, until that is the Turkish government protested and pushed through an official name change. The back story to how Japanese 'Turkish Baths' became Soaplands is written up here.
Surburban Sound Clash
Apr 22, 2007
There's an element of battle-of-the-bands on the streets of my neighbourhood this Sunday - the recycling truck that offers to take any old electronics crawls through the streets blaring its sweet, repetitive song coming up against the would-be politicians whizzing around in mini Mitsubishi trucks with a stack of speakers and (usually) young uniformed girls leaning out of the window extolling you to vote for them.
However, the smart money is on the yakiimo (baked potato) truck that sets up in the evening.
Culturally Acceptable Exceptions to the Rules
Apr 22, 2007 | 3 Comments
As many British readers will doubtless appreciate marmite is.
But as much as I might like to think that its unique, every culture has its 'marmite' equivalent - Germany has schmaltz, Japan natto, Thailand is known for its fried insects and China, well take your pick. It's that food that typically provokes either strong for or against reactions amongst locals and something that, for people unable to draw on a childhood's worth of context and conditioning is usually too much to stomach.
So it was with some trepidation that I picked up a jar of Marmite Guinness before leaving London last week - given that it was a hand-luggage only trip, that marmite is a gloop-like dark liquid substance, and liquids and creams of this kind of volume are not allowed through security. Would it make it through British airport security checks?
It turns out that despite the jar being checked at Heathrow it did, but that it was irrelevant but would later get confiscated by Finnish airport security for whom my cultural pleadings fell on deaf ears.
A decent bottle of sake for the first person who offers to ship a decent sized jar of Marmite Guinness to Tokyo. Form an orderly queue at info at jan chipchase dot com please.
Contextual Advertising. Undecided Context
Apr 19, 2007
Advertisement / information for long distance calls with AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Bell, 800/collect stuck to the handset of this hotel phone. Given that many of their hotel guests will have mobile phones, in practical terms is the advertisment for use with the hotel phone, the guest's mobile phone or both? To what extent does the speed of adoption for objects e.g. fixed line phones vs. mobile phones, differ from where expect to find information related to services built around those objects? What are the ways in which the differences in speed between adoption and lag be exploited?
And the name of this stylish residence where handsets have ads? Motel 8, a fully functioning crashpad from a hard day in the mountains around Salt Lake City.
Returns Suggesting Popularity
Apr 18, 2007
"Please Place Your Books Here After Browsing"
To what extent are personal preferences and choices influenced by apparent popularity? In what contexts are you more likely to take a book from the 'book returns' shelf (in the Thai Creative Design Center, above) than spend time browsing the shelves? Ditto from the 'movie returns' shelf of your local video store. (Yeah, you're right, physically walking into a store to rent videos is so 20th century/over 35).
How will book+ borrowing behaviours differ in the context of a college - where a mass of students might be given the same assignment at the same time, increasing the demand for particular books? How is it affected by the type of product? Or volume of choice? Or for products where many consumers don't know quite know where to start and might feel intimidated like say, wine - to what extent will they rely on the shopping judgements of other people?
And of course which people?
The ever increasing opportunties to trace is slowly being matched with our ability to generate views of those traces in real-time. A simple example - using a mobile device to browse digital 'most popular' lists and overlay (augment) this information over what your camera phone sees. Further out? Books that extenuate the way they've been handled, the pages or passages that were dwelt on, the extent to which content in those books has been cross-referenced out there, on the 'net.
And given that you know all this already, what will the always-one-step-ahead experience designer do to imply the relative popularity of their products and services?
Keeping Participants in Control
Apr 15, 2007
As was pointed out during the recent presentation at Ideo (thanks Tim), one of the slides was/is open to misenterpretation. We don't spend our time trying to keep the participants in control but rather, a lot time and effort does into keeping participants in control of the research process. I'd love to argue the truncated sentence was an intentional bait to, well, provoke debate but it was simply lazy oversight, now corrected.
So how do you keep participants in control of the process? Well, if for example we've spent time with participants in their home towards the end of the study we encourage them to view and delete any or all photos from researcher cameras, the logic being that we shouldn't have anything they don't feel happy knowing we have. And within a month of the study being completed we aim to send participants a copy of the all the photo data we have on them. The feedback loop serves multiple purposes: it reconfirms the boundaries of the study; it helps communicate the respect the research team apply to personal data - that unflattering photos or intrusions into overly private moments are deleted, that senstive information such as phone numbers are filtered out; it can serve as a momento of the study; and knowing the participants will see the photos affects what the researcher's decide to capture in the first place - there is a temptation to document everything, it helps define the boundary of what not to document.
How feasible is it to process field study photos before the team heads back to the office? With Adobe Lightroom the process appears to have become that much easier, though since its just been launched its probably worth reserving judgement until after its been used it on a full scale, photo field study. Having just worked out the field research schedule for the next six months it won't be long before it's properly tested.
The photo above from (the corrected) slide 36 of the Always On presentation were taken by Roger Ibars during the Indonesia leg of the field study into shared phone use.
Powered Up, Always On
Apr 15, 2007
Power lines stretching over the Tamagawa River into Tokyo.
The title Always On comes from an interview question posed by Fabio Sergio about whether user experience researchers are ‘always on’ detecting patterns or creating new ones on the go. I reckon yes. but don't think its particularly unique. Regardless of how special you or I might consider our perspective on the world its just one more way of looking at things - its not as if passion in all its shapes and forms has an off switch. You can read the whole interview here.
A tenuous link to Always On the previously published presentation about the challenges of conducting design research for everyware? Probably. Download as PowerPoint, PDF, 2MB.
The Art of Never Unpacking
Feb 17, 2007
To arrive back in Tokyo is to confront the rituals of physically and mentally unpacking.
Today there isn't a field research kit but in its place the tangible result of too much time spent in swiss and french delicatessens. Hotel laundry beats washing at home, unopened mail on the desk, grocery shopping. The absolute pleasure that comes from properly-properly cleaning the dust from another country from the camera lense.
Bodily time-zone adjustments that either just work, or that take days to figure out. And the the solitude that comes when, like today, the day starts at midnight and 'lunch' is preceeded by a 5am ride through the city. It takes a hard hour's riding to follow the expressway though central Tokyo before curving around the Imperial Palace and heading for home. After 8 hours in 54H the sounds and smells of the city are inviting. The mental clarity that comes from the wee-hours is only tempered by the effect that jetlag has on loved ones later on. Everything has a cost, you just need to figure out what it is.
In many respects home-life stands still for the traveller for the duration of these travels - that list of things that really should be done can take months to be crossed out simply because you're not here; food stuffs that would normally be eaten in a fortnight last half a year; projects that require a physical presense take an age to get off the ground and everyday relationships are put on hold.
When you travel a lot theres a part of you that never unpacks. Its not good or bad, but it is.
Space Saver
Sep 01, 2006
Relatively common in and around Tokyo.
Waving Not Drowning
Aug 05, 2006 | 2 Comments
I'll be hosting (possibly co-hosting) a workshop at the EPIC 2006 Conference in Portland entitled Waving Not Drowning: Practical Tips for Staying on Top of Photo Field Data.
The 3 hour session will be a forum for discussing topics such as: processes for handling large volumes of photo field data; techniques for before during and after the study; moral & legal issues; ensuring relevant data is easy to retrieve and use. It will draw on the experiences of both attendees, myself plus those of my colleagues at Nokia's Mobile HCI Group. There are 8 places, 4 are already booked. Attendees will spend more time on their next study waving and less time drowning.
Workshop details here or download flyer here [0.5MB].
Is the EPIC Conference for you? I've not attended before but you might like to read Steve Portigal's review of last year's conference (the review kicks in about half way down the page). A summary of the workshop including a creative commons version of the workshop material will appear here if for some reason you can't make it.
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.
Friday Pop Quiz: Cultural Differences
Jul 06, 2006 | 19 Comments
You might recall we've carried out various studies into where people carry their phones and other mobile essentials. The studies are usually run with at least 100 participants, but based purely on the anecdotal evidence of a single Sowetan mobile phone repair shop owner there are two simple questions for you to answer:
1: What the most common mobile phone fault of his female mobile phone customers?
2: Why is this fault far less likely to be found with female phone users in Japan or Korea?
A selection of Japanese design goodies from D & Dept shipped to the person with the most accurate answer to both of these questions.
Update: Answer and winner in the comments. And yes the detail of the photo (below) was loosely related figuring it out.
Trains, Planes, Automobiles
Jun 19, 2006
Applying for entry visas hasn't recently been a problem (not since an, ahem, unscheduled exit from Vietnam a few years back), but during a busy work week a trip to an embassy can eat into the hours. It doesn't help that a certain residential home that used to function as an embassy has now been converted back into a home. (The Ugandan Embassy in Tokyo has now moved to Daikanyama).
On an unrelated topic - wrote to an embassy of a certain Middle Eastern country inquiring whether permits were required to conduct what would essentially amount to guerilla street research. They asked my partner to make the application on my behalf. Mental note to self - add gender to email signature.
Off to another field study tomorrow - new experiences and new challenges lie ahead.
Mind Games
Jun 18, 2006
The extent to which milk poured from a bottle is preferred to milk poured from a carton, the extent to which it affects taste.
Food Delivery, Definition of Food
Jun 15, 2006
Xiamen above. Photo of a McDonalds Tokyo below (but ultimately it could be anywhere, including Xiamen).
Knowing Which Is Which
Jun 11, 2006
Unwelcome Mat
Jun 04, 2006
"Be Quiet." Really.
Related research here.
The Origins of Tangible Digital Species
Jun 04, 2006
For goods and services that start out in the digital domain, if and when they are made tangible what shape or form should they take? The origins of tangible digital species indeed.
And what tenuous link to the certificate and luggage tag, above? Make a donation to Carbon Neutral, and the company promises to balance out your carbon emissions by investing in forestry and climate friendly energy projects. Donations are made electronically and a tangible receipt and/or certificate is optional. Given the goals of the organisation, the tangible representation of the digital certificate is somewhat crass. A digital certificate could take many forms, but why one so unimaginative?
Resolution, Error Rates
Feb 27, 2006
Sewn 2D bar code into beanie. Sufficient resolution to be read, but what level of read-error rates?
The Traces of Traces
Feb 23, 2006 | 0 Comments
These guides to paint the road markings were first laid down in November 2005 and are still visible 3 months later. Understanding the process of how something is designed and built can raise or lower its perceived value in the minds-eye of its users.
In what contexts is it desireable to include traces of processes? Or fake traces? Is there a point at which traces should disappear?
The Value of Traces
Jan 22, 2006 | 3 Comments
How long do you want the digital traces of where you've been to last? Who should be able to see them?
To what extent does seeing traces of prior movement and interaction influence your own movement and interaction?
Considered Consumption
Jan 21, 2006
Recycled ash tray + plant = plant pot.
Components from D & Department Tokyo Project's warehouse store, a purveyor of everyday household, surgical objects and contemporary Japanese furniture (though used furniture doesn't appear on their web site). They specialise in re-cycling, re-furbishment and re-use. They also make a rather fine English/Japanese bi-lingual hotel-lounge 'please turn off your cellphone' sign.
Perception of Weight
Jan 16, 2006 | 2 Comments
This Skype phone is on sale in Japan. The space which in a wireless phone would house a battery is filled by a removable metal weight - seen standing upright on the desk. In our smaller/faster/cheaper future we have the option of making today's objects lighter.
What is the ideal weight of a mobile phone? How will the perception of the ideal weight change over time? And what factors will affect that change? Should a gold coloured phone weigh more than silver coloured phone?
(And which will fall faster in a vacuum?)h
Emotional Charging
Jan 11, 2006 | 4 Comments
When is the last time you smiled inserting a plug into a power socket? What would it take to make that happen?
Tickets, Stubs Of Tickets
Dec 23, 2005 | 1 Comment
In most cultures airlines take the body of the ticket and leave you to board with the ticket stub. I was trying to figure out why Sichuan Airlines does the opposite - keeping the stub and leaving the passenger with the body? Is it because as a newish airline they have more landing slots further away from the gates requiring bus transfer to the plane, (from experience) increasing the potential for passenger mix-ups and the larger ticket body is more suited as an additional check. It is possible to rip off part of the ticket body (the UI equivalent of a one way switch) and still retain the necessary information for boarding and seat allocation.
E-tickets particularly from low cost airlines such as Ryan Air have changed mainstream perception of what makes an (airline) ticket. What is essence of a ticket? How will this change as the tools to read and scan information digitally are in more and more hands?
Space & Learning
Nov 27, 2005
36 hours to go before the next trip - almost a full month on the road, in the skies and if things work out according to current loose plans - spending time at altitude in cold climes.
It all starts this week with a day of street research in Beijing. To be followed up by a couple of workshops - opportunities to catch up with colleagues, discuss past collaborations, learn, share, debate and then plan activites for next year. Maybe write the framework to a paper or two, or maybe something more.
After that it's anyone's guess. A ton of stuff to read, ideas to filter, write, spending time in places with people with strange faces, and along the way pushing to see what gives.
The interesting part will be to see what gives.
Discarding Content
Oct 23, 2005 | 5 Comments
Is there a digital equivalent to this?
How and why will people want to discard very personal media?
Everything-I-Touch, Everything-U-Touch
Oct 14, 2005 | 6 Comments
How to capture meaningful user data remotely?
As much as I'd love to spend a month on location (cough, in Hawaii) to run a user study the reality is compressing it into up to two weeks (and more likely to be Hackney or Hangzhou than Hawaii, damn). Well before the team touches down in a new location we will have screened the study participants so one option is to ask them to self-gather data prior to our arrival. A typical self-gathering tool is asking them to keep some form of written, photo and/or video diary.
At best diary methods provide insights into people's context that can be followed up in interviews, and primes the user and the research team for the next stages of the study. At worst they are a waste of time - with participants mis-interpreting or re-interpreting the diary brief, unable to use the tools provided, consider the whole thing one big hassle, and only note down indecipherable comments.
One diary method which has a higher success rate than most I've tried is the eponymous Everything-I-Touch Photo Diary. Using a digital camera the participant is asked to take a photo of everything they touch for at least half a day sometimes from the moment they get up. The method was originally tried in 2001 as an attempt to understand the range and properties of objects/things that a person comes in contact with during the course of a day and was followed up as part of user exploration to develop concepts around Magic Touch / Near Field Communications. What objects and things do we interact with? What range of user interfaces, user experiences do we encounter? What enables or forces us to interact with the same things in different ways? For example turning a light switch on with your hand, but with both hands engaged in carrying turning the same switch off using your nose. How often do you flick that light switch on or off? Open that door? What does your alarm clock, shower knob, front door, fridge, breakfast, key-ring look like? What brands do you use? What interaction experiences are unique to those brands? When is the last time you had a novel tactile experience? Is it possible to go through the day without touching any objects that you haven't touched before?
If you like user research data, the results are a rich orgy of the mundane.
The method was successful enough in achieving its original aims, but also yielded other interesting data such as highlighting the flow of the day, the order in which tasks were completed - people likely to pee before checking the weather in the mornings, and understanding the range of contexts where the user spends time. A sufficient number of photos included enough perspective to show what else was happening, what other things the user could be doing.
Making the photos ready for use in the study is relatively easy. If the camera's time & date is accurately set up then it is easy to import the photos into a software programme such as LifeBlog, view the photos as a time line and add comments. Most of the things we do involve touching something or another and by capturing the touch moment it is possible to gain insights into that context. The time line can be printed and presented to the user for additional comments or as an interview guide. Some of the pilot subjects (Juergen, Matt) kept a diary and posted them to their blogs, though the final format of the photos from study participants tended to be more first person shooter than on these sites.
To encourage comprehensive data collection participants were given a comprehensive sample diary from the life of yours truly, that in turn acted as a form of social reward - a case of I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
There are a number of weaknesses with this diary method. The participant needs to be sufficiently motivated take continue to take photos - the novelty of snapping everything wears off after about an hour. Things that are touched multiple times in a short space of time will be only photographed once - though this is easy to follow-up in the interview. If you are trying to understand micro interaction issues you need to consider the user's dominant hand and are probably better off videoing the session. A user may record photos for the diary with their right, dominant hand for example forcing them to unnaturally use their left hand for carrying out tasks. The volume of photos can be overwhelming to process so shooting at a low resolution makes the volume easier to process.
Ultimately the user frames what you end up seeing. Whilst it is possible this will lead to carefully staged/boring this-is-my-life-isn't-it-wonderful photos, keeping the participant in control of the data collection process means being more likely to get photos of personal moments. The photos from one participant in Milan, Italy were so inspiring to be publishable as a stand-alone book.
If anyone wants to try this out get in ahem, touch and Ill send you more information - if you show me yours, I'll show you mine.
Sunday Pop-Quiz
Sep 18, 2005 | 13 CommentsSharpen pencils, today we have a short quiz....
This is a 'what would happen if I lost my phone' scenario:
1. Without looking at your phone address book how many phone numbers can you remember from memory?
2. Do you have a paper/digital backup of phone numbers somewhere?
3. Assuming your backup is out of sync... How many contacts would you lose if you lost your phone?
4. You are in a foriegn city with no money, who would you call in this emergency situation?
5. How sure are you that the 'emergency' phone number is accurate?
6. Any significant phone numbers you can't remember?
Post answers in the comments please.
Experience Dining
Apr 24, 2005
Whats the difference between a good (dining) experience and feeling like you're part of a manufacturing/manufactured process?
Good dining: Bachi Bachi (photos) is an busy, informal, friendly 1950s themed okonomiyaki restaurant in Sakura Shin Machi, Tokyo. Sufficiently lived in, and popular with the local community.
One to avoid: themed Ninja Restaurant in Akasaka. Good food, but all guests are taken on a guided tour of the 'ninja village' by an appropriately dressed ninja prior to finding your seat. Never mind that some guests were struggling with luggage, and the tour ended up back at the entrance dispelling any sense of mystique.
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