Shinagawa Archives
Urban Palettes
Jun 19, 2009
Infrablending
Jun 15, 2009
A SUICA card reader adapted to also read the (previously) competing Passmo cards - in this Shinagawa cafe. The primary drivers for adopting contactless payment systems are more convenience (no loose change) and efficiency (only take a few seconds to complete a transaction/don't hold other people up). A downside is that in a world of competing systems the payer is forced to choose between cards - adding a small degree of complexity to the process and is pushed to maintain credit on both cards. With competing systems using the same physical infrastructure the consumer wins.
A morning spent at the Tokyo immigration office arriving early enough to chance to catch up on human flows in Shinagawa Station.
Confusion at the Point of Sale
Jan 12, 2009 | 0 Comments
Buying breakfast at Shinagawa Station en route to Hokkaido involved two subtly intertwined rituals: deciding what payment mechanism to use; and communicating the choice to the cashier.
With so many forms of payment available to the consumer it's no surprise that there's an element of confusion creeping into the payment process. As a consumer I have at least 8 ways of paying: I could swipe my Felica equipped mobile phone or Edy card; a credit card that includes Edy (that also tops up my mileage); Passmo; SUICA; or even a good ole' fashioned credit or debit card. I've heard some places still, whisper, take cash.
You might think that consumers will simply plum for using one card above all others. Except that with so much at stake you're underestimating what providers can/will/do to incentivise consumers to try out a new way of paying - the try-something-new process is helped by the incentive being so closely tied to the payment mechanism itself. Consider for a moment how many credit, debit and 'loyalty' cards you have littering your wallet before imagining how easy it will be to slot another one in there.
Micro-thought for today - for all the efficiency enabled by new forms of payment, the inefficiency caused by fumbling to pull out the right card at the right time. The niggling doubt that card/phone X does indeed have sufficient credit to make that payment.
Micro-solution for today? Automatically extending a micro-credit line to consumers who have run of pre-paid credit to avoid the sumimasen moment at the point of sale. Now that would be (social) convenience.
Tokyo Driving School
Jan 05, 2009
Foreign residents in Tokyo wanting to switch their non-Japanese earned driver's license to a local variant inevitably make a pilgrimage to counter 27 on the 2nd floor of Samezu Driving School, tucked away in deepest Shinagawa. As one of the only places in Tokyo that offers this service the waiting room is a bukkake don of Tokyo's foreign residents - lending this corner of the building an air of infomality - when its time to pick up a form and head to the next counter visitors are addressed as ~san as opposed to the more honorific and generally elongated ~samaaaa more commonly heard resonating around the concrete walls of most local government offices and doctor's waiting rooms.
It just so happens that the building is a worthy destination for the amateur cultural anthropologist: from the non-ambient strip lighting reflecting off linoleum floors to the lengthy process that switching a license requires involving form filling, eye-tests, payments, photographs spanning half a day. But why am I here? In a world where our ability to location-shift ourselves from the tasks at hand what is the purpose of traveling to this physical building? How might the future perfect authority-to-drive be bestowed upon tomorrow's would-be driver?
Why does anyone need to take a driving test? Or any test for that matter? Imagine never having to take a test in your life ever again - not at school, university, in the work place.
Instead assessment is ongoing, everywhere - continuous learning pushed to its il/logical extreme. The authority required to start task X or access service Y assessed in real time drawing on a life's worth of data pushed through a filter of you in the here and now.
Instead of that one off driving test, the vehicle makes an assessment of whether you're fit to drive at that point when you decide to drive: it knows the time you've spent behind the wheel (and for novices time spent in the driving simulator); can factor in you ability to successfully complete hand-eye co-ordination tasks; that yesterday you partied late, drunk a bottle of wine and only slept three hours; the effects of the music that you've just listened to on your way here; that you have a tendency to become sexually aroused by the passenger you intend to pick up later in the journey (to comprehend how arousal and other emotions have on decision making processes Predictably / Irrational is a good read). The vehicle also has a fair idea of the journey that you are likely to take, the state of the road and of course other drivers.
Bearing in mind if we can truly make all this stuff work then we've probably solved self-driving cars, and putting aside the techno-Utopian dream for a moment. In this scenario just because someone is not 'fit to drive' don't imagine for a moment that they will barred from driving. As anyone in the insurance industry knows you can put a figure on the loss of life or limb,and whilst your society hasn't evolved to the point where there's an accepted culture of paying blood money, maybe it will come around sooner than you think. When you have the resources to pay, and the process is even marginally socially acceptable i.e. it's hard coded into the system - the ability to gamble, to take risks, to 'drive impaired' becomes a consumer choice, a luxury, a sign of wealth. From the roulette wheel to the spinning wheels of a dented, bloody, overturned car.
Yes, of course, the 'driving test' will continue to live on. As a rite of passage eventually going the way of the 'glove box' and the 'rear view mirror', a purpose forgotten within a couple of generations of net time.
If you've spent time in a large organisation these past few years you've probably brushed up against that early 21th century notion of 'life long learning' - that it's never too late to re skill, retool, learn something new. We are undergoing a fundamental change in the way we relate to objects and the way (connected) objects relate to us. 'Life long learning' is no longer about you in relation to what you can offer to achieve you potential - but rather the systems' ability to learn about you over the course of it, and your lifetime.
If we can create a working system that assesses your ability to do x, y and z - through a continuous assessment of you, a system that practically removes the need for 'the driving test' then that same system is going be smart enough to figure out how to maximise your human potential.
Which means that it will be smart enough to maximise it's own potential.
Specialised Devices
Dec 20, 2008
Tool for cutting photographs to a standardised size - the white blob on the right is to apply glue.
Power, Accountability I
Dec 20, 2008
An unwitting leading edge case - every vending machine in this building includes it's own electricity meter to track individual power usage.
Whilst the use of electricity meters is common place - what if every device that consumed power was required to display its power consumption? Or power consumption in relation to levels of use? In an increasingly networked world where consumers/legislation demands that the machine's owner disclose energy use what level of information would be made available through an API? How competitors would take advantage of the information disclosure? And how this affects the accuracy of what is actually disclosed?
Delivery Infrastructure
Aug 24, 2008
Clip outside this Shinagawa hotel room supporting the delivery of up to two newspapers.
There's always a slight frisson from spending a night in a hotel in your home city. Arrive at reception with no luggage aside from a photo-shootingly-large camera, ne. A receptionist sighs, I head to the room.
Uniform(ity) & Digital Dress Codes
Aug 22, 2008
The dress code variance for office workers - heading out of Shinagawa station's East exit.
The extent to which its acceptable that other carried objects (bags, mobile phone) can be used to project identity, status, peer group affiliation. In a world where, in real time, its increasingly easy to match people with their various digital identities - the contexts where digital dress codes will become increasingly important. And to whom.
Visitors to Japan wanting to witness something a little more dense-urban should be in Shinagawa station by eight o'clock - the volume, direction and uniformity of the commuters is well beyond the norm.
Human Flows, Redirections
May 20, 2008
Newspaper Stacked, Displayed & Prioritised
May 03, 2008
The extreme battle for space on this Shinagawa station convenience store dictates that newspapers are either folded and stacked vertically or, in the case of the more popular titles stacked like ice-cream cones. And whilst it’s possible to find more expansive newspaper displays that include clearly visible headlines - it is very much the local Japanese norm.
Compare to the display of full newspaper pages in newspaper kiosks in Milan or Rio de Janeiro (kiosk photo below) or the relatively common practice of posting entire newspapers in China?
To what extent does the Japanese newspaper form effect people's ambient awareness of (headline) news? Are the display norms a reflection of the particularly habitual purchasing behaviour of Japanese newspaper consumers? What attributes of how the newspaper is displayed e.g. densely folded, carry over into how the newspaper is browsed and read? And as with this discarded newspaper from the London underground (above), how does the disposal method affect ambient awareness?
Donning the service designr cap for a moment and given the answers to the above, how does ambient awareness affect the likely adoption of mobile news related services?
D [Arrow] A [Arrow] - Counter Wayfinding
Apr 26, 2008
Spend more than a few years in Japan, most likely you'll have enjoyed numerous visits to the immigration building - a short drab bus ride from Shinagawa Station. Monotonous but, from experience far more pleasant than its Berlin or London equivalents.
The [A] counter handles re-entry permits.
Technologies Around Spaces
Feb 27, 2006 | 1 Comment
Advertisement for using Suica equipped mobile phone to pass through ticket barrier, above. Vending machine using the same technology to purchase drinks, below. Both photos taken in Shinagawa Station. Japan Rail (JR) has invested heavily in Suica so it makes sense to find use of this technology clustered in and around its properties. A relatively easy way to provide consumers with exposure to a new technology, but will its use spread?
On a side note - the C-Mode DoCoMo/Coca Cola vending machine in Shibuya that supported payments via mobile phone is gone. It had quite possibly the most confusing user interface for any vending machine.
Postcards From The Future
Jan 24, 2006 | 2 Comments
Had the pleasure of cycling down to Shinagawa this morning and getting Japan entry-permits transferred to my new passport. The new permit design includes an unsettlingly unfriendly 2D-bar code a poor substitute to the rich and more human-readable tapestry that was previously used by the immigration services. Will this enable Japanese customs to process me more efficiently? Perhaps. But the travels of the last few months have made me appreciate the finer subtleties of the various visas. Mongolia is a personal favourite, partly because it has a hologram of what I think is a flying pegasus, but could equally be an emasculated yak, and partly because its, well, Mongolia. Applying for entry visas is a bit like sending one-line postcards to oneself.
Our team spends a lot of time working on concepts 3 to 5 years ahead of what appears on the market. I spent one year working on ideas up to 15 years ahead of where we are now - it's quite a tricky mental space to visit though fun when you get there. You know those wonderful visions of the future where everything is white an uncluttered? Trust me, the future will be messy, and wonderfully so. I'm reminded of these things because in everyday life it's rare to come across bridges between where we are now and 10 years in the future - and my new passport says it is valid until 2015 (I expect to fill it by 2009). But where will I be in 2015? Where will you be for that matter? What will the world be like? Will there be re-entry permits in 3D? 4D even? Maybe the whole idea of an entry permit will have changed, based on a lack of privacy (by today's standards) bought on by continuous and seemingly ambient data exchanges. It will be taken as a given that you know that you don't have the right to travel somewhere without having to apply because you have the information at your fingertips. And they know you're heading there before you arrive, before you even left home. In fact they calculated the probability of you traveling there soon after your friend bought you a travel guide for your birthday, cross referenced this data with your credit report (enough saved for a trip) the analysis of phone call logs (excited tone of voice when discussing destination keywords), and half a dozen related purchases (though the system missed an opportuntiy to remind you to take stronger sun block because its been a particularly hot summer). All these information exchanges and status updates happening in real time, naturally. Lets be thankful for those in-store loyalty cards shall we?
Tonight I'm finalising some thoughts for a short presentation on Exploratory User Research for a design orientated audience of Japanese and English speakers. The format is pretty simple - show 20 slides with 20 seconds for each slide, and up to 20 presenters in one night. No chance to waffle, or to hear other people waffle. I'll post a link to the slides when I'm done.
Outside the sun dips behind Mt Fuji. In 3 months or so it will be climbable again.
[And the sun is rising over Algiers - safe travels SC]
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