April 24, 2006

Physical Personalisation

What motivates people to customise their phones? Where are they customised? Why? And how can this influence the design of future devices?

The slides for a recent short presentation to NIFT Delhi is now online on research.nokia.com. Entitled Physical Personalisation of Phone Covers in Japan can be downloaded here [1 MB]. It's an example of quick-and-dirty research project (an afternoon collecting data by reviewing 6477 phone covers in a recycling plant) with a limited but interesting enough scope (document any physical customisation), that eventually led to researching a number of more meaty topics. It's also an example of something that would never make it to an academic conference, but has proved relevant in day to day work. There's a lesson there somewhere.

Captive audience here and related posts here.

Posted by Jan at 09:44 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2006

Corrected Error

A simple error to make.

[updated: photo below makes it easier to spot]

Posted by Jan at 08:58 PM | Comments (3)

Man (Wearing Adidas) Sprints to Save Child From Car

Will the reporting of unfortunate but everyday events such as car accidents be affected by having easier access to more detailed information on what the victim or rescuers were wearing and carrying?

Today, passive advertising such as Samsung Mobile above, is ubiquitous. In an world where say, clothing monitors the wearer's vital signs is combined with the availability of accurate location information, a tool for ambient wireless communication and the ability to prioritize the newsworthiness of micro events (either retroactively or in real time) provide sufficient information to automatically generate the outline for a press release? Would Adidas want to spin 'Man Wearing Adidas Sprints to Save Child From Car'?

Fickle stuff. More interesting - will insurance scams be more difficult to pull off?

Posted by Jan at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2006

Attention To Detail

Ash-tray in cafe somewhere around the back of Harajuku - text says 'Caution', small print says 'Smoking may cause your nasel hair to grow'. This level of attention to design details is fairly common in Japan.

Posted by Jan at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)

Micro Breaks, Macro Breaks

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.

Posted by Jan at 08:03 PM | Comments (1)

The Half-Life of Food on a Plate

Back home for a few days.

An observation from a recent meal with friends - as dishes arrive there is a polite free-for-all for food until that is, there is only one portion left on each plate. The final portion of each dish has a half-life - with no-one (obviously) willing to take the whole portion.

Posted by Jan at 06:14 PM | Comments (3)

March 26, 2006

Secrets (But Not Lies)

I know you have a secret.

But don't worry I won't tell, but I just wanted to let you know that I know. That's enough.

During in-depth interviews into what people carry a sub-theme that sometimes emerges is the issue of privacy and secrecy - the things people carry that they don't want to reveal to others. They can be physical objects but increasingly they come in the form of electronic data.

Why would anyone tell a researcher about the secret things they carry? In the street interview context participants consider themselves anonymous (and we preserve this anonymity); they may not think through the consequences of what they are saying - which might be fine for an investigative journalist but can put a corporate researcher on the spot; it may be that the reward for revealing this information now is greater that the perceived consequences of having revealed it to the wrong person later (we work hard not to put people in this situation but it has been done); sometimes people don't know what they've revealed or reveal by accident; but more often than not the risk of revealing information to me, that is someone who is 'neutral' and not an authority figure, is low.

There are different levels of privacy and secrecy - a medical condition may be considered secret from everyone including close family; but other things that are only secret within the work context. I expect to see more human behaviours shielding secrets from the sensors that surround us. A kind-of example of this arose in a study a couple of yeas ago. A participant knew that by default a particular communication channel was being recorded, and being about to do something that was not strictly adhering to the rules (but not necessarily breaking them either) pushed some of her communication through alternative channels. Which raises a number of questions on one side regarding legal obligations and on the other the obligation to say whether the alternatives themselves are being recorded.

How does all this affect how people carry what they carry? In subtle ways. Frequent use objects such as bicycle keys during a day shopping in town are more likely to be carried in a separate pocket to secret objects. Every time a person fishes into a pocket to take out the keys the [xx secret xx] object carried in the same pocket risks falling to the floor. Some of these issues map to the digital user interface realm: a device may contain personal information but supports tasks that involve shared use outside the immediate peer group. Watching a sports event on a Mobile Phone TV for example.

There are other ways to scope secret things that people carry. Our summer intern from last year carried out a series of interviews with organisations such as hotels, department stores and the police asking about: what people lose; with what frequency; how long it takes to discover they are lost; the triggers for losing; and the steps and barriers to recover the objects. Items turning up in lost and found included balistic weapons and large sums of money all of which require different levels of privacy and secrecy depending on the context in which they are carried. Mobile phones are relatively easy to recover because people tend to notice they are missing quite quickly, they can be called by the owner, and even if switched off they include a call log. However even if the ability to track down the owner is easy, recovery is not necessarily straight forward if people don't want to be identified with having been in a particular place and/or location at a particular time.

You look at a group of people and see a group of people. I look at the same thing and wonder what their secrets are and what I can do to keep their secrets well, secret.

And the photo above? Nothing to do with secrecy research - just a random shot taken in an elevator.

Posted by Jan at 11:47 PM | Comments (2)

Turns Towards

About 7 minutes spent watching the body language of a telephone conversation on a Tokyo side-street. The conversationalist spent most of his time turned to the wall, or more accurately turned to the 'corner' afforded by the pipe and the wall (the lady looking up the street was not with him and quicky moved on). But why?

It's an extreme example of not wanting to disturb other people with details of the call. It is more usual to see Japanese people to move to take a call out of earshot and/or to cup the hand around the mouthpiece and speak quietly.

What devices are associated with carrying out what anti-social activities? Anti-social to whom and in what contexts? Mobile phone's and talking loudly, electric batons and torture. Does taking out an object imply intent to carry out a particular task? And how does the perception of devices/services and their associated tasks evolve as the majority of users switch from early adopters (with their inherent behaviours) to more mainstream users? How does this perception change as the range of features offered by that device changes? How would people react to a stun gun that is mostly used to kills bugs?

Can and should we create a feedback loop to help user's better understand the social reaction to utilizing technologies? Can we demystify technologies to lessen the social reaction in the first place?

Posted by Jan at 10:50 PM | Comments (1)

Well Hung

Properties of the lock condusive for carrying around neck. Too long and it increases the risk of getting snagged, too short and it just doesn't fit. This lock is notable for how flimsy it it compared to the value of the bike.

After a few consecutive days of good weather the bicycle messengers are coming out in force. Tokyo's got a relatively high percentage of tricked out rides. Just need a good excuse to study communication practices of bike couriers.

Posted by Jan at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2006

Wanting Some, Wanting To Avoid Some

Trend spotter out in Shibuya on a friday evening, above. Self caught in reflection of motorbike mirror documenting street life in Ho Chi Minh City, below. Tele Atlas van recording street data in Brighton, bottom photo. Satellite photography.

What right to record what data? The obviousness by which it is done? The practical ease at which people can opt out of data collection? Who has what right to view the data?

Posted by Jan at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2006

Notifications

Notification of bike parking violations. Tokyo above, Chengdu, below. Which is more practical? efficient? noticed by the violator? noticed by the other membes of society? noticed by the peson who enforces violations?

Posted by Jan at 10:06 PM | Comments (3)

Bling Customisation

Posted by Jan at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

What You Take, When You Go Where You Go

There is s a corner of the office that is forever collecting materials for the next field study. The process of piling things up starts anywhere from 3 weeks before departure and usually reaches its conclusion the eve before heading out. Making sure everyone brings the equipment they are supposed to is not especially difficult, but neither is it straight forward given that team members arrive from different home cities.

So what to bring and what to leave?

The minimal kit is a decent camera, three fully charged batteries (doing away with the need for a bulky charger), spare memory, a paper notebook and a wad of cash.

The maximal kit includes: printers + inks; diary kits (cameras, chargers, spare batteries); a wide variety of camera, video and audio bits and pieces; spare laptops for secure data entry (e.g. hiring students in China) or for running specialist software; print-outs of all forms needed for the first few days; and a med kit. Some things like white boards & bicycles are bought on arrival but when time is tight, and it often is, it is easier to bring most things oneself. (Yes the running of the whole study can and frequently is subcontracted, but the pros and cons of subcontracting are another issue).

Shipping everything in advance? It's sometimes feasible when there are no international customs for packages to get stopped at: too many times electronics-heavy research kit is held up in customs or heavily taxed or both. It's funny how importing 6 identical cameras (for user diaries) can be considered suspect. Even with customs out of the equation and regardless of what the courier companies want you to believe, if it absolutely, definitely has to get there on time you need to take it yourself.

Off on another study next week with a research team arriving from different corners of the globe. Will they bring everything? Let's see.

Posted by Jan at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2006

Street Fill

iMac dumped on Tokyo back street. Land-fill. Street-fill.

Posted by Jan at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)

Mobile Essentials

Presentation by Per Persson, Mikko Aarras, Petri Piippo & Tetsuya Yamamoto & myself to last year's Designing the User Experience conference can now be downloaded from here [2MB].

Slides include photo examples of how to think about carrying behaviours including Center of Gravity, Point of Reflection and the Range of Distribution. A conclusion? The easiest way to have nothing to forget is to have nothing to remember. Whilst you might be tempted to enterpret this as a form of Zen philosophy, it is actually more about the art of delegation.

Related research here and here.

Posted by Jan at 01:31 PM | Comments (1)

March 19, 2006

Don't Do As I Do

2 sets of apartment blocks in Ho Chi Minh City. One literally overflowing, the other externally more ordered and possibly sterile.

Which would you prefer to look at?
And which would you prefer to live in?

Posted by Jan at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)

When Understanding Doesn't Matter

"Please refrain from the following acts in the store"

Many of the Japanese customers to this store will be unable to read with understanding this text, so what's its purpose?

Posted by Jan at 07:18 AM | Comments (5)

March 15, 2006

Double Wrap

The smallest example range of distribution of objects that I've come across during behavioural research was interviewing a vice-squad policeman in Berlin. He discussed drug dealers double-wrapping their product in clingfilm which was then carried in the mouth. At the point of sale one item is taken from the mouth and handed over. If the police tried to bust them they swallow the produce and since the drugs take time to clear the digestive tract it meant putting dealers behind bars at least overnight for what often amounted to a small bust.

The range of distribution more affected the consequence of discover by the wrong person (in this instance the police), rather than risk of theft per se.

Do I know the origin of the Double Wrap shop name (half way between Harajuku and Shibuya photo above)? I do not.

Posted by Jan at 08:20 PM | Comments (1)

March 13, 2006

Slip, Grip

Deck mats as stair grips - leading up to skate shop.

Posted by Jan at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)

Knowing When Something is Worn

What are the circumstances that trigger knowing when something is overly worn and no longer useful for its intended purpose? Things wear unevenly. And since the context of use varies so do definitions of 'overly worn'.

Posted by Jan at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)

Pointer, Sent

Following a request for pointers to papers and articles, I particularly enjoyed Paul Dourish writing about the evaluation of ethnographic research papers in HCI - paper online here and his related research here. He ends with:

"Frankly, I doubt that this is the last CHI paper on ethnographic work that will find itself forced to end with "implications for design" ... but it is certainly nice to think that this is a possibility"

Which in a round-about way leads me to the question - what motivates you to do what you do? And how far are you willing to go to communicate this to others? Coming from a corporate research lab - my starting assumption is that none of the research or design we do is by default relevant for anything or anyone. The relevance comes from all the communication that occurs around the edges of the actual research from observing, listening and debating, anticipating other people's next steps whether it is 15 months or 15 years from now, and trying to figure out the smart questions in that space before they get there (whether we are successful at doing this is another matter entirely).

And, bringing it back to the closing statement of Paul's paper - where do conferences fit in with all of this? Like researchers, conferences need to fight to first gain relevance, and then continue to fight to maintain relevance.

Thanks VT for the link - the book is on its way.

Posted by Jan at 08:12 AM | Comments (4)

March 11, 2006

Anti-Social Sensors

Sensor and display showing noise levels on building site (shown in center-right of photo).

How do the behaviour and activities of the builders change according to the feedback displayed on the noise meter? At what point, and to whom is the information on the noise meter no longer relevant - because stakeholders are adept at judging noise levels? What exceptions are there to this? What are the consequences of going over limits? Does a greater degree of accuracy encourage behaviours that push things to the the social, anti-social and/or legal limits?

Same questions, but this time for a speedometer in a car...

Posted by Jan at 06:47 AM | Comments (5)

March 10, 2006

Monitored , Monitoring

This afternoon's office of sorts is a waiting room in a health clinic. I've just spent half an hour lying on my side whilst getting an ultrasound scan of my heart. I was in here yesterday too and in the intervening 24 hours had the pleasure of walking around with a number of heart monitors strapped to my chest and an event monitor designed to log heart-related activities. So now the monitors are removed, the scans are done and I've got 45 minutes to kill before the doctor can talk me through the results.

The waiting room is empty other than a lady who has just arrived and is seated to my right. She keeps looking just above my head, but never making eye contact suggesting that either she is in here for a condition akin to having (vertically) lazy eyes, or more likely, something is occurring just above my head. She gets called by a consultant and leaves. Somewhere to my left, behind a frosted glass screen I can hear a receptionist ever-so ever-so-politely field calls and direct the odd incoming patient to the appropriate room in the clinic. Mus(ic/ak), is being piped through speakers in the ceiling - a mixture of piano sprinkled with acoustic guitar. The blandest of bland magazines sit in rack at my feet and tone of room is comfortable and muted. I suspect these are all deliberate design choices - little things that keep patients calm and collected as they wait to be tested or wait for test results. It's a comfortable environment and now is as good an opportunity as any to catch up on emails and write.

I'm usually in the position of collecting data and asking questions of study participants, but today the view is from the other side of the fence. The doctor is young but appears to have a bedside manner and level of experience that somehow belies his age. New experiences are fun and this is no exception: warmed gel on the tip of the ultrasound; a lying posture which i guess is optimised for reading the patients heart and minimising spoken interaction; listening to the sound of blood being pushed around the body; and, over my shoulder watching as the doctor makes constant one-handed re-adjustments on an intricate control panel to bring up different views of the same data. To the untrained eye it all looks pretty complex. What exactly is he looking for, and once he's found it how will he communicate it?

During the recent presentation in Seattle Ian Smith raised the issue of biases in self documentation techniques such as photo-diaries or everything-I-touch-diaries - for example choosing what to frame or not frame in a photo. A related issue is how monitoring changes behaviours.

If say, we could monitor everything you do for 24 hours - from what you consume to what you say what would you do differently? And perhaps more interestingly what are you motivations for doing things differently?

Posted by Jan at 09:02 AM | Comments (4)

March 08, 2006

Identity, Memory

A simple and expressive example of how a restaurant overcomes the problem of guests forgetting their coats - an issue probably caused by the coats being located out of the line of sight when people leave. This restaurant is well warmed by the sun, and a number of guests arrive by car (relatively unusual for Tokyo) so remembering a coat may not be a high priority.

Our paper submitted to DUX last year proposed the concept of the range of distribution to describe how far people allows allow objects to stray from their person. Range of distribution is not just about distance, but also location in relation the body such as out of the line of sight and/or out of the range of reach.

Understanding the range of distribution for objects is interesting primarily because objects that are placed out of sight are more likely to be forgotten - and objects that are forgotten are less likely to be used, and people tend to value and eventually pay for things that they use. Another non-trivial issue is that the performance of wireless devices may be affected by how far objects stray from one another - some RFID readers have a range of millimeter's, Bluetooth has a range of meters. Its not just about data transmission but can also affect battery life as devices scan to relocate one another.

Back to the restaurant cloakroom... guests are given a toy (shown in the box below) that matches the one on the hanger (photo above). When leaving the restaurant the toy acts as a reminder that the coat needs to be taken, and perhaps more obviously acts as a ticket to identify the right coat. Simple, fun and elegant very much keeping with style the restaurant itself.

Posted by Jan at 06:22 AM | Comments (1)

February 27, 2006

Technologies Around Spaces

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.

Posted by Jan at 11:46 PM | Comments (1)

Resolution, Error Rates

Sewn 2D bar code into beanie. Sufficient resolution to be read, but what level of read-error rates?

Posted by Jan at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

The Traces of Traces

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?

Posted by Jan at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2006

Getting Here From There

Sometimes it's good to be home and live and breathe with a regular rhythm. My home city is many things - not least of which is looking out from tall buildings and wondering about the stories behind each of the lives that pass ant-like below (Shibuya, above).

When travelling, the first emotional jolt that I may be nearing home comes from boarding a plane and seeing row after row of heads with jet black hair in front of me. That and the gentle ebb and flow of Japanese conversations.

When you've been away, what are the things that make you feel like you are nearing home?

Posted by Jan at 08:31 PM | Comments (5)

February 19, 2006

Recycle, Resale

The resale of used magazines mined from the waste bins in and around Shibuya station. Mostly thick and cheap weekly manga plus the a small selection of pornographic magazines (near left, back of the table). Stalls similar to this can be found near all the main commuter stations so its somewhat surprising that the infrastructure to recycle is not more sophisticated.

Posted by Jan at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

To Miss You, Is To Love You

Aibo is gone, but not forgotten
But also not missed
What does that say?

Posted by Jan at 02:58 PM | Comments (7)

January 30, 2006

Device Customisation

Customised iPod Nano encrusted in rhinestones - photo taken during a night out with friends in Shibuya.

Extreme customisation of devices such as mobile phones, iPods and tamagotchi is taking off amongst women (and occassionally men) in their 20's and early 30's here in Tokyo. Mobile phone and nail shops are offering extreme customisation as an extension of their existing services, nail shops being a particularly good fit given the skill set required to carry out the procedure. 7,000 yen (56 Euro) will buy you a glittery off-the-shelf design, whilst 60,000 yen (430 Euro) will buy you front, back, top and bottom fully customised design of your choice. Downside of the process? Losing use of the device whilst it is being customised, and the customisation process can invalidate the warrantee.

For the customer: what drivers for customising?
For the service provider: is it possible to scale up, to offer mass-customisation?

One of my recent side-projects was to document the extreme mobile phone and nail customisation process for two Japanese teenagers, from preparing their phones - removing existing print club stickers and other adornments, sketching desired designs, interactions with the crafts-woman, and then following the customisation process in the shop up until delivery. The research material is not suitable for an academic paper but may put some material together here at a later date.

Working from the UK for the next couple of weeks. What new things to learn?

Posted by Jan at 09:38 PM | Comments (2)

January 29, 2006

The Value of You, Is That You Are Here

This photo was taken on the escalator transporting passengers from the Keio Line exit of Shibuya Station and disgorging them into Tokyo's busy Friday night streets. In close proximity to the foot of the escalator there are 11 people representing 5 organisations hawking free magazines. They are not there because they love to dress up in lime green and red uniforms they are there because someone pays them to be here, someone sees a business opportunity. You can see something similar in urban centers all over the world - but why? What are the properties that make these spaces so popular for targeting pedestrians?

Quantum physics aside, being physically located in one space implies that someone is not physically present somewhere else at the same time. The value to the hawkers is partly based on the rarity value of a physical presence being in that exact location at that time, and from the possibility that that persons consumption behaviour might be influenced by first taking a magazine, then browsing, sufficiently absorbing and using information within it. (I'll resist the urge to write about the level of sensory engagement though its probably relevant here).

At some point in the future automated or semi-automated devices will be moving around these urban environments carrying out everyday chores on our behalf. The first of these are likely to be extensions of today's personal vehicles - who needs valet parking when your car includes a self parking feature? But before long the range of tasks they can complete, and that we feel comfortable allowing them to carry out on our behalf will extend. The view from the escalator will include non-human hawkers and non-human ped-estrians.

If devices are moving around and negotiating spaces on our behalf, what is their value to the hawkers? What happens to a person's value when its based on rarity, when something is maintains a physical presence on their behalf?

And what will the future hawkers be hawking?

Posted by Jan at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2006

Steadying

The properties of the roll of gaffer tape (on the dashboard, click to enlarge photo) making it an ideal cup holder for this Tokyo delivery truck driver.

Posted by Jan at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2006

Exploratory User Research Presentation

Slides from last nights short Pecha Kucha presentation on Exploratory User Research at Super Deluxe can be downloaded from here [3MB].

Related research about what people carry where, why and how can be downloaded from here and here.

[Thanks BH for getting the material uploaded so swiftly]

Posted by Jan at 04:58 PM | Comments (5)

January 24, 2006

Postcards From The Future

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]

Posted by Jan at 05:44 PM | Comments (2)

January 22, 2006

The Value of Traces

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?

Posted by Jan at 12:52 AM | Comments (3)

Touch & Go Reservation, Payment

Advertisement in Harajuku station showing passenger of a Japan Railways Green Car (first class carriage) using mobile phone touch and go interaction to pay for a seat. Passengers normally have to queue to get a seat so one of the perceived benefits is in by-passing queueing. Mobile phone is equipped with Mobile Suica.

Posted by Jan at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2006

Appropriate Behaviours

A neon sign at the bottom of this stairwell commands people walking up to only use the far left lane. The recent addition of bright red and green lines acknowledges that commuters ignored the sign and provides additional guidelines for what appropriate behaviour. A less formal version of traffic lights perhaps, but with a degree of authority never-the-less. Attitudes to authority changes according to contexts and cultures (cultural differences are well covered in this book).

Today street signs show up-to-date status information for many things including the number of empty parking bays in car parks (Brighton+), the length of time left before the traffic lights change (Bangalore+), to which is the least congested route into the city (Tokyo+). How will the way we navigate spaces change as manufacturers find cost effective ways to embed status indicators into everything from fabrics to wall papers, hand-rails to stairwells, pavements and roads?

Posted by Jan at 11:51 PM | Comments (1)

Considered Consumption

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.

Posted by Jan at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2006

Homes & Offices

Today's office is an office.

Situated on the 17th floor of a modern building located in a fairly non-descript part of the city. The view of Mt Fuji lies straight ahead but is usually shrouded in clouds even if you can see it through the smog, to the left in the far distance Yokohama, far left the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo bay, and on the other side of the building a view towards the shopping meccas of Roppongi Hills, Shibuya and, in the near distance Shinjuku.

When I'm in town the places and spaces with emotional meaning start about 10 minutes bike ride from the research lab. So many strangers that are sufficiently familiar to not be strangers, but sufficiently unfamilar to be not friends or aquaintances. The anonymity of large cities.

Our research lab used to be located in Akasaka, an area known for its office complexes, being close to the Japanese parliament and packing a staggering amount of small bar and restaurants into an area about 500 m square and 6 stories high. If you happened to roll into work around 6 or 7am you would see very drunk salary men staggering out of the many drinking, singing and schmoozing bars looking for somewhere to freshen up, grab a bowl of stand-up ramen before heading to another day at the office. On a few occasions at that time of the day yakusa, or at least wanna-be-yakusa trying to walk four abreast on a narrow street, tattoos showing through open shirts under white vests, dodgy suit jackets slung over shoulders and on the arm of the wanna-be-boss, what most of you would probably describe as a moll. Yes I know - stereotypes, stereotypes based on experiences. Its hard to have serious attitude when you're very seriously wasted. I recall once being warned off trying to interview a yakusa gentleman for one of our user studies. (Sometimes during ad-hoc research studies team members like to interview the hardest looking person we can find - thus far its works out fine - you just need to pick the right starting conversation topic).

One early summer's morning a salary man in a suit was lying fast asleep in a semi-fetal position on the pavement, his head snuggled up to his briefcase, shoes off his feet and placed perpendicular to the curb. I like living in a city where he perceives that sleeping on a curb is a safe enough thing to do. I like that the reality is close to the perception.

One more week at home before the next study begins.

Posted by Jan at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Custom Electricity Socket Layout

It's easy to get used to the default format of everyday objects such as electricity sockets. From where you are sitting take a moment to look around you... what objects are less than perfect? What level of skill, and what degree of motivation is required to customise these everyday objects to your individual requirements?

Photo of work shop bench taken in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City.

Posted by Jan at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2006

Drawing on User's Prior Experience?

Above, wireless ordering device from a restaurant in Beijing loosely based on mobile phone user interface. Below, push button fixed line phone spotted in Seoul adopts rotary dialler for key pad layout.

Lazy design or smart design?

Update: Reader Jeff Howards points to an article on the original AT&T TouchTone Keypad Layouts [PDF 632k]

Posted by Jan at 08:01 AM | Comments (3)

January 16, 2006

Perception of Weight

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?)

Posted by Jan at 08:20 PM | Comments (2)

January 15, 2006

Textures

Posted by Jan at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2006

Tour Bus Ethnography

Looking at my travel schedule for the next few months I'm left wondering what can I expect to learn from the relatively short amounts of time spent the field in different countries? At what point does spending a few days in a culture become nothing more than tour bus ethnography? Hop off the bus, stick a microphone in someone's face, take a few photos and tell everyone back home what a wonderful time that had by all and boy didn't we learn a lot.

One conclusion from a 10 road trip user study in US last year was that almost everything we learned, or ended up using in a meaningful way was gathered in the first 4 or 5 days of the trip. Admittedly this study was a little unusual - 100+ interviews, driving Cleveland to New Orleans, flying to Salt Lake City then continuing the drive down to Los Angeles. Without sufficient time for reflection what could be meaningful data is just noise. So what are the techniques to support documentation and reflection? A proper answer to this question will eventually appear in a research paper. One minor technique is to take photos of local newspapers. These can become a mental time and location stamp and can later be used to communicate a local flavour and issues. As you might imagine the Sunday breakfast chatter in and around Cleveland was no doubt grappling wth the weighty issue of how casual is too casual (photo above).

Given the constraints - what is an optimal and what is a sufficient amount of time to spend in the field? And if your project involves cultural comparisons - how much time is enough to rest, reflect and analyse between field trips?

There are two techniques that enable me to stay on top of things. The first is to consistently process data as it comes in - not always an easy task given the large volumes that are collected from different sources in such a short space of time. In practical terms this means assigning a field data manager to be responsible for all incoming data, scrubbing data to remove overtly private information such as birth dates or phone numbers before the files are circulated within the team and before they start to appear in internal reports. (Field data processing would make a good short paper or workshop if anyone wants to recommend a suitable conference). Another technique is simply to have a naming strategy for all files to that documents, images videos can be identified without having to open an application. Well catalogued data will be usable and can maintain its relevance weeks, months or years after its collection.

My second technique? Don't worry about the social niceties of staying awake and make sure I get sufficient rest when the body dictates I need it. The alternative is living in a permanent state of jetlag - otherwise known as permalag, or if particularly nasty permaphuck. And that just leads to burn out.

Thanks Ken for reminding me of the names we give to what we do, and to Raphael for reminding me how anti-social I am when sleep depri/aved.

Posted by Jan at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2006

The Power of Not Charging

Next to my desk at work I have a fine collection of photos of power sockets from homes and offices around the world - the result of rummaging around under desks, peering behind cabinets and following cables to their source. In user studies I'm always intrigued to see how people tackle the problem of keeping their mobile phone charged - after all a phone without power is largely useless as a tool for solving life's little emergencies, and above everything else this is the reason that people consider the phone a mobile essential.

It is possible that technologies such as bistable displays will means that devices will have functionality without power, but for now our daily/weekly rituals include remembering to charge, and once charged - remembering to take the object when next leaving home. But does it need to be this way?

In the near term usage patterns will change when the two or so hours it currently takes to charge your laptop/phone/iPod is shortened to 10 or 20 seconds. That's a sufficiently short time to be able to pause a conversation and top up power if it were applied to a communication device, for example using fuel cell or capacitive charging.

The challenge of keeping electrical devices powered up can be tackled from a number of different directions. It's possible to make a mobile phone which has sufficient power to last as long as the device itself. The obvious (but wrong) starting point is a massive battery/fuel cell pack - it would make the product impractical to carry and the consumer market impossibly small. The opposite approach has potential - shortening the lifetime of a mobile phone to last as long as today's battery life. This is not as far fetched as it may first seem considering use cases around mobile phones bought from vending machines, a method for storing personal data off the device, combined with a system for recycling and re-circulating 'used' products to new users. As with most tasks (except entertainment and bodily functions) delegation is another solution - simply delegate the act of remembering to charge a device to someone or something else. Asimo needs something to do whilst you're sleeping right?

Usage patterns are currently constrained (or in some ways anchored) by the need to leave a device in a fixed location for a length of time. As that length of time is drastically shortened, or indeed eliminated our current notions of how we charge objects will all seem rather quaint.

Posted by Jan at 02:50 AM | Comments (3)

January 11, 2006

Emotional Charging

When is the last time you smiled inserting a plug into a power socket? What would it take to make that happen?

Posted by Jan at 11:42 PM | Comments (5)

January 03, 2006

Information At The Tips Of Your Fingers

Today her finger nail is a means of expression, decoration, drawing attention.

Finger nail decoration machines already exist to allow a customer to choose a design, then automatically decorate and dry those nails. Embedding digital information on those nails would be a relatively trivial step (though generating a critical mass of device to read what is on the nails is non-trivial). If you could store and communicate information through your finger nails what would you want to store and what would you want communicate? Is one kind of infomration more suited to thumbs or particular fingers than others? The number of digits is one natural parameter, combined with issues such as biting nails, locations where finger tips can and will end up, and how long users would expect a finger nail design to last before being refurbished offer interesting user interface possibilities and forms of interaction.

The broader issue is - what is possible without going down the routes of embedding technology under the skin, personal area networks or alternatives like bone induction?

Posted by Jan at 09:18 PM | Comments (1)

December 31, 2005

Signing Off

Sitting on the flight back home, the lights are off in the cabin and like most of the passengers K is dozing in the seat next to me somewhat exhausted. We will touch down in Narita about 9pm new year's eve - so perhaps the rest of the passengers are saving their energies for parties that happen later on?

The laptop still has a bit of juice left and I have the relative luxury of a couple of hours with nothing to do but look at pictures from the last year and think. Life is fast, so its moments like these that serve as quality time for reflection. The sheer volume of photos from this last year is somewhat overwhelming - somewhere in the region of 30,000+ of my own, plus thousands more from my research team colleagues, user study participants (when keeping diaries) and subcontractors and scouts from different parts of the world. All of the photos trigger memories, and associations and in the user studies I'm continually struck by the extent to which every-day people lead extra-ordinary lives and the priviledge that I have in being allowed to witness and document.

To the people who made this research possible, and kept life so interesting, warm and ultimately human, thank-you.

Posted by Jan at 11:59 AM | Comments (5)

December 23, 2005

Tickets, Stubs Of Tickets

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?

Posted by Jan at 12:20 PM | Comments (1)

December 13, 2005

Sole

Street cleaners bicycle. Plus minus link.

Posted by Jan at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2005

Custom No. Super Custom Yes

The photo above from a customer of Bowery Kitchen, Komazawa.

The super-customisation of mobile phones is gaining some traction here in Tokyo. Various shops in Shibuya will adorn your mobile phone (or iPod or digital camera) with rhinestones charging anything from 7,000 yen (50 Euro) for a pre-designed P900i cover to around 50,000 yen (350 Euro) for the full front and back design-to-order bling. Mostly but not exclusively for female clientel - men are starting to order quite gothic designs.

Jewel encrusting services can be found as an annex of some phone shops in popular shopping areas of Tokyo. Now nail shops are extending their offering to include mobile phone customisation - it's possible to order matching nail and phone designs.

(In my mind this is somehow all a logical progression from an analysis of 6447 used mobile phone covers and quick and dirty customisation)

I started out a sceptic but I have to admit some of the funkier pixel-art designs have started to grow on me.

Posted by Jan at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2005

Space & Learning

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.

Posted by Jan at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2005

Learning to Push, Learning to Talk

Drumming up interest in the new push to talk services outside the teen girls shopping mecca - the 109 Building Shibuya. Step into a booth and have a pushing and talking walkthrough.

I'm intrigued to see how push to talk takes off in Japan and for that matter other new markets where it is rolled out. How use and perception of the service differs from the established service in the US? The push to talk use case is relatively easy to understand, but mainstream consumers will have relatively little cultural reference points other than movies, cop shows or occasionally from mountain rescue teams (Japan is covered in mountains so if you've ever been up one coming across walky-talky outfitted mountain-guides is not wholly uncommon). But this is a culture where people spend more time on crowded trains than in cars and where talking on the train is (still) largely socially unacceptable.

From a point of view of a foreigner the DoCoMo 902 series handsets are remarkable in their un-push-to-talk-esque - pretty much looking like every other handset out there. No chunky hand grips to support pushing and well, talking.

These forms are not following this function. What does that tell us?

When you're selling products into a global marketplace - how best to demonstrate new products, services and features to markets with relatively few cultural reference points?

Posted by Jan at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2005

Wayfinding

Mobile with GPS and map application. So you want to make a map reference in a hurry?

"It's easier to just ask someone"

In many instances so it is.

Posted by Jan at 08:32 PM | Comments (3)

November 22, 2005

Enriching the Purchasing Experience

Beyond practicality - the role of the calculator plays in enriching the purchasing experience - visualising the variations of cost, allowing the discount (or perceived discount) to be presented with a flourish. Is there room for this in the relatively sterile digital realm?

Posted by Jan at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

Registered Personalisation

Personalisation of cash register, snowboard shop, Kanda.

Posted by Jan at 08:27 PM | Comments (1)

November 19, 2005

Balanced

Scissors and material used to wrap purchases used together, stored together. The properties of the funnel condusive to being a scissor holder.

From behind the check-out of one of Tokyo's more interesting furniture stores.

Posted by Jan at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)

Summary Spaces

In cultures where people remove shoes at the entrance to the building the shoe removing space provides an easy to digest visual snapshot of the people that are already there. In environments where the people who inhabit the space are largely known - at home for example, not seeing a particular pair of shoes implies the person is not present. It also implies how the space can or cannot be used - 'mother is not yet home so I can get away with using the PlayStation a while'.

Incidentally my old kick-boxing dojo had a wonderful collection of shoes and boots at its entrance. There were usually one or two pairs of dainty high-heels whose owner's somehow transformed from petite Daikanyama shopperholics to grunting gladiators.

The shoes above were from a restaurant off the back of Shinjuku - construction workers on their lunch break.

Posted by Jan at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2005

Where People Carry Mobile Phones

Where do you carry your mobile phone? And how will this change if the phone were to adopt some of the functionality associated with other objects that you carry such as money and personal identity? (Both payment and ticketing are already available on handsets in Japan).

We've been conducting a series of studies to understand where people carry mobile phones and other mobile essentials. The original research was driven by a need to know to what extent people notice incoming communication and to what extent this was affected by where the device was carried. After all - the usefulness of a mobile phone is diminished if the user fails to notice that someone is calling. (For the record, we assume that the user wants control over whether or not to be notified in the first place - 24/7 connectivity is a discussion topic for later perhaps?) If you observe customers in a cafe for an hour one of the most frequent behaviours related to mobile phones, especially for women, is checking whether they have missed any incoming communication. User data on device location can support product designers for example helping them decide defaults speaker volume or lanyard placement.

My colleague Fumiko Ichikawa is today presenting the first fruit of this research in a paper entitled Where's the Phone - a Study of Mobile Phone Location in Public Spaces (download pdf) at the Mobility 2005 conference in Guangzhou, China. This paper draws on data from the first 3 studies - Helsinki, New York and Milan. Whilst I was not present in the original study in Helsinki I managed to take part in the follow-ups studies including cultures as diverse as the US, Italy, South Korea, Japan, China and India. In the future we'll be publishing data for these other cultures and explore the issues related to the full range of mobile essentials (the paper above focusses on the mobile phone).

Where people carry things today is interesting enough. The ultimate goal of this design research is to predict how the primary carrying location might change according to issues like new features and form factors. (New form factors will be enabled by technologlical advances such as minaturisation, flexible components or new charging methods). The fun part is figuring how this will collide with and influence future social and cultural trends.

And finally, if you're wondering whether I travel the world just to run these studies the answer is no - the team tends to run the street surveys in conjunction with more in-depth user studies that are already going on - its a good way to utilize assistant down time, meet hundreds of local mobile phone users and get a feel for a culture.

Posted by Jan at 09:19 AM | Comments (2)

November 15, 2005

Counter Intiuitive Experiences

The frame of these Swans goggles forms a perfect seal with the face, doing away with the need for rubber padding. Very comfortable, counter-intuitively so since the padding should make it more comfortable, right?

Any other examples of counter-intuitive experiences you can think of?

An hour to kill before my next meeting starts in the vicinity of Daikanyama pool. What to do?

Posted by Jan at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2005

Exploratory Exposed

KDDI, the number two carrier here in Japan has obviously invested a large sum of money on their KDDI Designing Studio in Harajuku to show off all things KDDI. The 5 story cylindrical building devotes space to their product line-up, a creation space, a stage for live events, a collaboration studio and on the 5th floor a 'relaxation studio' which is, um, another branch of Wired Cafe. It's unfair to judge from one visit but it was notable how empty the space was, and how little interaction it had and invited from the otherwise teeming Harajuku.

The building devotes some space to future technologies from KDDI R&D Laboratories most memorable of which is the break-dance robot. No that's not it's official name, but the demo from the studio staffer could have come straight out of my highschool playground - only needing a cardboard mat and cheering onlookers to complete the authentic break-dance experience. (Though how much time did the staffer need to have on her hands to hone her bust-a-move-robot-breakdance-skills?)

The serious-fun question in all of this is why and how to engage the public with what's coming out of the research lab?

Wireless watch has a video tour.

Posted by Jan at 10:34 AM | Comments (2)

November 11, 2005

Why do People Carry Mobile Phones?

Why do people carry phones?
Why do people carry what they carry?
And if we can understand why, how can we use this knowledge in the design of future products, applications and services?

Why people carry phones might seem like a rather basic question for someone who works for a mobile phone manufacturer, but the journey to try and understand the answer has been an interesting one.

A couple of years back I carried out a multi-cultural research project with Per Persson and a number of other colleagues to figure out what objects people consider to be essential when they leave home. We spent time studying 17 urban dwellers in San Francisco, Berlin and Shanghai and Tokyo with shadowing, home-interviews, plus 129 street interviews and numerous observation sessions. One of our screening criteria for in-depth subjects was that people had to own a mobile phone although during the screening process we made no assumptions about whether they considered the phone a necessity or not.

In the cultures we studied 3 objects were considered essential across all participants, cultures and genders were keys, money and mobile phone. Whilst this may seem obvious the interesting part of the study was in understanding the reasons why people considered these objects essential (largely survival, safety & security), why they were not always present (forgetting, awareness, making a conscious decision to be out of touch) and strategies people adopted to help them remember to take these objects. A lot of times money will be carried in a wallet or purse, but when it comes down to it, the money (cash and notes) are considered the essential objects before the other objects that are also contained there.

Some of the material from this study was presented in the DUX 2005 paper - 'Mobile Essentials - Field Study and Concepting' (download paper, 0.4mb). The paper introduces three interrelated ways to understand human behaviour to explain what we learned, and at some point I'll use Future Perfect to expand on some of these issues.

Firstly the Center of Gravity describes the most likely place where you are likely to cluster and consequently find these objects. In the home the Center of Gravity is likely to be the edge of a desk, a chair and often in the case of women, a bag. Objects don't stay in the center of gravity but over time they gravitate there.

The second idea is the Point of Reflection - the moment when leaving a space when you pause current activities turn back into an environment and check you have the mobile essentials. Typically this involves looking at the Center of Gravity, sometimes tapping pockets, sometimes speaking aloud. Not seeing the objects where they are supposed to be (the Center of Gravity) can be a sign that they are already carried.

The last behavioural concept is something we call the Range of Distribution - essentially the degree to which essential objects are likely to stray from the person, or from the person's line of sight/range of touch. Range of distribution is largely based on perceived risk of theft - the higher the perceived risk the further away objects are likely to be placed be allowed to 'stray'. This way of thinking about objects is important because the more likely an object is to be out of sight the more likely it is to be forgotten, and a mobile essential that is forgotten has little use in solving emergencies. In addition as mobile phones that take on functions associated with other mobile essentials for example access/identity (key, smart-card) or payment (money) can affect where and how they are carried.

As a private, relatively safe environment the home has a large range of distribution, whilst spaces like cafes or public transport have a relatively low range of distribution. The lowest range of distribution we observed was bus commuting in Shanghai rush-hour. The most extreme example of range of distribution was given to us by a vice cop in Berlin who explained about a drug dealer that double wrapped his produce which was then stored it his mouth - if the cops tried to bust them swallowed. Waiting for the produce to clear the digestive system was often too much hassle for low level busts, and was presumably rather unpleasant and messy.

Taxis are interesting environments in that they are often treated as a temporary private space - in which people can relax and objects are likely to spread out within the natural boundaries of the environment. When combined with other parameters such as: people using taxi's whilst tired or impaired e.g. drunk/high; the likelihood of using the mobile phone in the taxi; placing objects on the seat/out of sight after use; and a pressured sequence of tasks at the end of the journey such as thinking what to do next on arrival at the destination and paying the driver, help explain why mobile phones are often left in taxis.

There are naturally many other reasons why people carry a mobile phones - for entertainment, projecting status, a sense of belonging, or capturing and communicating an experiences using a camera phone to name a few, but the commonality was essentially their ability to help us survive.

Most people consider other objects essential - driver's license (particularly in the US), medication, travel pass and lip-stick are just some that have been mentioned but these can change over the course of the day and according to context. I would argue that nearly all objects that people carry are essential, because the carrier has already gone through a conscious and subconscious selection process to select those objects from all the objects they own or have access to. Nobody carries stuff just for the hell of it. Well actually that's not strictly true - many people carry things that they are not aware they are carrying - phones increasingly have features that the owner considers useful, is not aware are on the device. In these instances the smart question is what situations trigger initial awareness of a feature, and many researchers are working on contextual understanding in part to present the user with the right feature/knowledge at exactly the right time that it is useful.

The exceptions to why people don't carry these objects are in some ways more interesting than the fact they do in the first place. Designing solutions that meet a user needs are relatively easy, but for a product to be adopted into the flow of someone's life takes a good understanding of exceptions. Mobile essentials are often forgotten, despite the strategies for remembering. Keys are not necessarily needed if you live in an extended family or in areas of high unemployment. Some people like to 'switch off' and talk about quality time without the interruption of the mobile phone (I expect there to be different attitudes towards constant connectivity with younger generations). There is also the issue of at what point in a person's life they are entrusted to carry these essentials and in the case of children, if they are lost, who is responsible to replace them?

In one sense the easiest way never to ever forget anything ever again is to have nothing to remember. This is not as glib as it first sounds - it is possible to delegate responsibility to remembering to other people or indeed to technology. (The concept of delegating can be considered as a solution to many problems except entertainment and bodily functions).

A number of interesting avenues have come out of this research:

Why people make a conscious effort to leave mobile essentials behind and in the case of their mobile phone - switched off. This loosely comes under the heading connecting people, dis-connecting people, and re-connecting people.

My colleagues have initated a study of where people in Helsinki carry their phones and whether they notice incoming communication. A paper, drawing on data from follow up studies in Milan and New York will be presented at the Mobility Conference 2005 in Guangzhou China. (I'll post it when its available)

Another theme is the role of the phone in supporting and on occasion triggering personal crisis. Not life threatening events but things like being locked out of home, being lost late at night, breaking up with boyfriend/girlfriend and yes, mobile phone theft and loss. Notice the overlap between mobile essentials and personal crisis?.

Posted by Jan at 11:11 AM | Comments (1)

(Lack of) Curves

Straight lines condusive to transcibing characters onto tarmac.

Posted by Jan at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2005

Tokyo Graffiti

Decent pop-ethnography magazine covering ordinary Japanese, what they carry, what they think and sometimes running features like documenting everything a person has in their bedroom, or bag. Very accessible and good if you want tips on how to present research material.

Posted by Jan at 07:52 PM | Comments (4)

Unintended Uses

Spent today at the Fieldwork Untethered workshop here in Tokyo. The aim is to brain-dump knowledge of the different methodologies used to collect user data outside the laboratory environment. Today's presentations were informed - and as much as anything I like listening to the language people use to describe stuff you've been working on, but haven't yet figured out how to best capture in those few words. With a background in UI design the language of sociologists and psychologists takes some getting used to. One of the aims of the workshop is to publish more about the methods we use to gather data - maybe that's the right forum to go into detail about the things I've started to cover here?

The workshop included some field research in and around Shibuya. Spent 10 minutes watching the Shibuya crossing street hustlers - tanned, preening men chasing after women trying to entice them to host-bars that are surprisingly popular here (apparently - I've never been and I guess I'm too old, unsophisticated and ugly to be hired as a host). There's a pecking order on the street and the competition is fierce to be the first to confront the single women as they go past. Its pretty unsophisticated stuff, but what can I learn from them?

The laptop photos are of one of the workshop delegates - a simple example of how objects used in the real world have unintended uses.

Hmm, collecting this kind of data at a ethno methods workshop is the equivalent of distilling then swigging vodka at a alcoholics anonymous meeting. Smart.

Posted by Jan at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)

Proximity Interaction

Tags constrained by tagger's reach, and perhaps imagination.

What happens when future technology help people project physical manifestations of identity beyond what is physically possible?

Posted by Jan at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

Headsets and Earpieces

Knowing whether someone is speaking on the phone is easier if they're speaking into a Hulgar P-Phone headset - it looks like it does on the box. For 8,000 yen you get a novelty that works with a mobile and a nice box but not much else.

Posted by Jan at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

Knowing Which Way the Wind Blows

Posted by Jan at 12:49 PM | Comments (2)

Pre-determining Use

Anticipation of use, contexts of use.

Posted by Jan at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2005

False Hope

Posted by Jan at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2005

Listening Station

Very busy saturday afternoon in Shibuya's HMV. User creates a comfortable and private bubble for listening to music. By squatting her bag just touches the ground taking most of the weight off her shoulder.

Posted by Jan at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

Discarding Content

Is there a digital equivilent to this?

How and why will people want to discard very personal media?

Posted by Jan at 07:44 AM | Comments (6)

October 22, 2005

Mobile Phone as Personal Shrine

What can you learn from products about to be recycled?

When I first moved to Japan one of the first exploratory studies I carried out was to try and figure out how and why people customise their phone cover. It's fairly common in Japan, Korea and to a lesser extent China to see phones adorned with stickers as well as the more usual phone straps. I was looking for inspiration for new applications and services and this seemed a good a place to start as any.

On a hot summer's day I traveled down to a mobile phone recycling plant on the edge of Tokyo and with the help of a number of friendly factory workers spent a few hours sorted through over 6,000 used phone covers, documenting all and any physical customisation that was evident. The result was several hundred photos of stickers of designs, logos, decorations and puri kura - the print club stickers that are still relatively popular in Japan and some Asian cultures.

Only 11% of the 6447 covers had some form of physical customisation. I was expecting this to be more based on ad-hoc observations from the street, though this reflects the places and people I hang out with. The range of physical customisation can be categorized into: stickers of logos; print club photos; telephone numbers; and illustrations/decorations. There were also a few examples of 'super customisation' where people had obviously put in a lot of time and effort detailling paint jobs, tagging, graffiti covering the whole device.

Why do people physically customize their phones with stickers?

Putting a sticker of a brand on a phone is an obvious and easy way to project lifestyle choices, peer group affiliations and aspirations - for example 'I'm into surfing' or 'my crew wear's Gravis'. It's socially acceptable, though in some environments a little dangerous, to have the phone out on display and at the very least answering a call and text messaging provide opportunties for others to see. Print club photos adorning the phone cover both confirm and project to others who the owner is connected with, in some regards a physical manifestation of the phone book. Customisation can also send the signal that 'this is mine, hands off'. Lastly, on a practical level it solves the problem of knowing widget is yours when all the widgets look alike. This was evident in a different study where we discovered the motivation behind walkie talkie customization by San Francisco bike messengers and of school calculators by Shanghai school kids was the same - to figure out which device belonged to them. If a company bought its workers the same mobile phone model, I would expect a large % of owners to add some small physical customisation for this same reason.

One of the surprise findings from the Tokyo recycling plant research was the use of the inside back cover as a form of 'mobile personal shrine' a place for storing photos/memories. Unless the back cover was removed from the phone no-one else would see or would know the photo was there so my assumption is that the photos were for personal consumption, or at the owner's discretion for sharing with someone else. A number of the photos appeared quite intimate - a couple hugging, a child, friends doing things in privacy of a photo booth.

There are of course limits to what you can learn through the documenting used products. Many of the best insights come from talking with people about why and how, whereas the recycling plant data just shows what. I had no way of knowing, for example whether the phones were for work or personal use or whether the owner was male or female.

More and more data can be embedded in and on objects - QR bar codes printed on the back of a sticker, RFID tags embedded in a device. A visit to a recycling plant in 2010 will probably yield much more about the product and its owners than we can ever know today. Interesting from the research point of view, by today's standards a major privacy issue for pretty much everyone else.

Posted by Jan at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2005

Touch Interaction

Poster extolling the virtues of proximity touch interaction.

Posted by Jan at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2005

22 And Counting

30 minutes to kill before the embassy opens... Omotesando window shopping.

Stripped down cordless phone from + - 0. Despite its functional minimalism there are still 22 visible buttons, including separate on / off. Design trade offs: desire for symmetry vs. visible UI complexity vs. desire to map 1 function to 1 button?

Are separate on / off buttons easier or more satifying than combined in one button?

Posted by Jan at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

October 18, 2005

To Trust or Not To Trust?

On Saturday Apple advertising smurfs were plastering selected posters around Tokyo with peel-off plastic iPod Nanos. They were as popular as the real thing* pretty much being removed by passing punters as soon as they went up. The back of the Plastic Nano included a QR Bar Code linking to blurb and downloads related to the product. Anyone can create a QR bar code using a tool such as the solid online Pukupi Codeatron.

Scams are and will be possible with every medium - for example premium rate phone numbers, text messages, falsified email headers, URLs that are not what they seem. A question to the more technologically minded of you - just how hackable is what happens once you read a QR bar code with a phone? Anyone know of real world examples of malicious, or mis-representative QR bar codes?

* and currently about as useful as the real thing

Posted by Jan at 10:39 AM | Comments (6)

October 17, 2005

Custom Covers

For 3,400 Yen (24 Euro or so) in downtown Tokyo you can get yourself a custom phone cover design completed in 30 minutes. Choose any number of truly tasteful designs from samples on the shelf or from a booklet most are simple patterns, a scary number of cigarette company logos, fake Gucci, YSL, whales a-jumping, cats a-lookin cute that kind of thing. He prints the design on sticky film, carefully folds it onto the phone. 20 seconds with a hair dryer then spends the next 15 minutes cutting holes for the display, buttons and removing access film.

The quality of the final result is not particular inspiring - though this is due the resolution and colour caperbilities of the printer rather than the process itself.

The bling-my-fone option looks like being more interesting.

... and if you're wondering about the lightly clothed punters, these photos were taken about a month ago. You'll be happy to hear that today it's raining hard in Tokyo and I forgot my bike rain gear. Whoopy do.

Posted by Jan at 10:57 PM | Comments (3)

October 14, 2005

Everything-I-Touch, Everything-U-Touch

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.

Posted by Jan at 09:24 AM | Comments (6)

September 20, 2005

Hearts, Minds, Wallets, Address Book Entries

Some industries are more cut-throat than others. To my mind the male and female escort service industries in Kabukichou, Tokyo must be somewhere at the top of the competition list. Slap down a couple of hundred Euro and their silky smooth conversation skills plus whatever else you can negotiate will presumably be yours for the night. Given the money floating around and the intense competition for that money it makes sense that they'll do what they can to have a presence in the minds, wallets and mobile phone address books of prospective clients.

So it is unsurprising to find a business card shop in the heart of Kabukichou offering to print QR (2D) bar codes onto otherwise standard business cards. (The photo above shows the mockup/advert from that shop). I'm not particularly enamoured with QR bar codes, but they seem to pop up with increasing regularity here in Japan - in magazines advertising mobile phone services, on receipts, on collectables. My gripe with the design is that the barcode graphic is by and large damn ugly, and tends to dominate whatever they are printed on. However, with camera phones from all the Japanese carriers equipped with software to capture and interpret the information from the bar codes they are one fairly ubiquitous way to provide short cuts to information. Don't want to type in that URL? Switch on the camera, point and click and its transferred to your phone. Don't want to enter the details of a contact? Names, URLs, email addresses, phone numbers, mail addresses can all be embedded and saved to the phone.

I'm given a lot of business cards and have only ever come across the use of QR bar codes printed on the business cards twice - both times from people working in the mobile phone industry. For most people the effort involved with generating a personal bar code and having it upset the balance of the card design are two barriers too many compared to the potential benefit to the person whom receives the card.

The task of exchanging contact information typically involves effort from both the giver and receiver of the information. With QR barcode reading software already installed on the receiver's camera phone a suitably motivated giver of the information can take over some of the task-burden from the receiver. On business cards its seems this currently equates to escorts, and mobile phone geeks.

Posted by Jan at 11:07 AM | Comments (1)

September 18, 2005

Sunday Pop-Quiz

Sharpen 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.

Posted by Jan at 11:16 PM | Comments (13)

September 17, 2005

Designing Outside Human Limitations

Spent yesterday with a colleague refining the goals of our next user study and discussing where we should focus our research energies next year. Talking through what to research is one of the more pleasurable aspects of this job - there's typically some scope to decide where to conduct user studies, you don't need to lug 26kg of equipment through rush-hour Tokyo to get there, assistants always turn up on time, the printer always works, you don't every run out of quarters for the launderette, and the deadlines have yet to be set.

At some point in the day we cycled over to Shimo Kitazawa to be surrounded by people and to reflect on whether what we had planned was feasible. There can be a jarring moment in user studies where you realise you were well off the mark 'of course people are going to react in that way when you do xyz!?' and being surrounded by people going about their business is a good reality check before even running a pilot study. At some point in our wander through the neighbourhood we ended up in a Vietnamese restaurant, and seated on the counter watching the chef prepare the food and continued our discussion. In front of us, on the counter was a bowl of small, brass spinning tops for sale. I picked one up and spun it on the flat wooden counter.

This spinning top had two properties that made it special. Being pure brass with no decoration and perfect symmetry it looked identical when it was spinning compared to when it was stationary. In addition it was so finely balanced and the table surface so condusive to spinning that it seemingly spun for minutes. The only time you could tell it was moving was at the beginning of the spin cycle - when it slowly orbited an imaginary planet before settling in one place, and at the very end when it lost its momentum and spun out. After being spun it quickly became a background activity, since it required no further interaction and other tasks like tucking into the food and continuing conversations took over.

There was a moment when our attention returned to the top which because it was so long since it was last spun appears totally stationary seemingly balanced upright on its tip and somehow defying gravity. There were no cues to it spinning, and the affect was simply indistinguishable from magic. Do magicians have a word or phrase to describe the affect of tricking human perception? (not closure, but something similar?)

A lot of the time we think about designing to and within human limitations - think usability, think ergonomics. There's a world out there that is beyond human perception (and to extrapolate this, there is a world out there that is beyond the perception of the tools we can perceivable design). Increasingly however the objects we carry are able to extend our human caperbilities: cameras can record more accurately or, shown in the example below - can record differently to (my) falable human memory; mobile phones enable you to shout further; text messaging is nothing less than shifting time and space.

What human caperbilities will be extended or dampened by what tools next? Why?

Posted by Jan at 10:57 AM | Comments (2)

September 13, 2005

Quiet Before the Storm

10 days before the next in-depth user study starts, 240 hours of relative calm before the storm.

Sometimes its possible to plan a year in advance. The minimum stress free lead time is 2 months to draw up a project plan, pull together a team - typically people working in other time zones so expect late nights and early mornings working from home, sync travel plans to the study location, recruit participants, engage subcontractors for the stuff you can't/don't want to do, assess and arrange local assistants and expect to deliver something decent. The actual work load before the study is much less with access to people with the right skills.

A lot of the prep work is simply project management and logistical planning. We have processes to deal with most eventualities and I'm a self-confessed form junkie. Data consent form? Sure, what language you want it in? Probably about 75% to 95% of the plan will go as scheduled and the rest is dealing with the situation you have and getting on with it. I'm not sure how we would have dealt with Katrina though - the team left New Orleans about a week before she arrived.

During the planning phase the creative part comes in figuring out which mix of methods to use to get the data you're after: shadowing, home stay, diary varients, in-depth interviews, observations, street interviews, expert interviews, ...? Who are the most appropriate participants? Where is the most productive place to spend time with them? What data you want to collect? What formats? Why? Really Why? Really really why?

The real creativity and IMHO the value added for clients, comes in figuring out what else the participants, team and location has to offer, and finding a way to bottle and communicate the experience(s). Maybe this part of the job is not user research - but experience bottling?

Posted by Jan at 09:38 PM | Comments (2)

September 11, 2005

Value From Appreciation of the Process

The walls around Parco Shibuya are updated every two weeks or so with a newly painted mural. You often see the mural crew working late on a friday night, presumably on a deadline to get the material up in time for the saturday shoppers. The last part of the painting process is the detail in the faces - so in adverts containing lots of people you become witness to ghostly versions of what appears in print. The images are quite compelling. Tokyo is full of big screen outdoor displays, garish neon and bright lights which makes hiring mural painters all the more perculiar. What additional value does commissioning advertising in this way bring? There are undoubtedly cheaper and more efficient alternatives in this area of prime real estate and premium advertising space.

My guess that part of the equation of choosing mural painters over JumboTrons is that the audience - in this case the passing shoppers of Shibuya will be at least somewhat interested by the process. Seeing a mural unfold over a period of time like a work of art taking shape, and seeing the end result - close replicas of the print advertsing and appreciating the effort that went into the process.

In a world where things seem to be forever becoming faster, smaller, cheaper, and mass produced one thing we can (mostly) all appreciate is the perceived time and effort it takes to do something. Skill is another factor, but it is more subjective. Effort is admittedly a little fuzzy. But time is absolute.

Have you ever received an E-Card? What was the value of that card to you? Now compare it to the value of a digital photo or a hand-written postcard. Receiving an e-card, digital photo or physical postcard you may or may not like the design but can appreciated the time, effort, and sometimes skill that goes into the process of sending it to you. In the case of an E-Card the value is mostly close to zero because that card is available for just about anyone to send.

In the distant future it may be possible to measure the level of sensory engagement that is involved in creating and consuming content and media*. I know you liked that birthday card because it told me how much time you spent handling it, gazing at it and displaying it in your home. Part of the reason you like it so much is that you know I put so much effort into obtaining its composite parts, how long ago I first thought of the idea - 'six months!', and the number of design iterations it went through before it reached you. You know because it told you so. Or at least it told you about the aspects that I let it tell you.

* Of course the way this plays out is that we create agents to simulate the level of sensory engagement on our behalf - to make it appear that we appreciated your gift to me, to make it appear that I spent sleepless months working on my gift to you. Whole side-industries beavering away to create the perception of underlying value. Which sounds like extrapolations of what happens already.

Posted by Jan at 09:45 AM | Comments (4)

September 07, 2005

Why You Do, What You Do

What draws you to get out of bed to go and do whatever it is that you do?

Money? Fear? Apathy? Passion?

Somewhere along the line you made choices to get to where you are. My choice has been to make Tokyo my home for the last 5 years. My original calling was user interface design, having attended the inspirational UI Master's course run by Robert Scane at City Polytechnic (London Guildhall University as it's now known). My logic for moving here was - where better to learn the UI trade than the home of electronics companies and a marketplace that is really an experimental product design playground that produces stuff that you simply won't see anywhere else in the world?* In Tokyo every time I step outside the door to my apartment I expect to learn something new, and am rarely disappointed.

The stuff that interests me - new experiences, learning about people and the cultures they inhabit, inventing stuff, sometimes re-arranging old stuff in new ways, and (second)guessing the future has morphed into my current job. These are my reasons for getting out of bed in the morning, and occasionally, if the big idea comes at 3 in the morning, they become my reason for getting up in the middle of the night.

But whatever you're calling at some point you simply need to get your head down and work, and work though what-ever it is you do. In user research there's a point in any in-depth user study when you're unable to absorb new data, so overwhelmed with new experiences that you struggle to maintain perspective. The constant, admittedly self-imposed pressure is to take every opportunity to gather more, delve deeper, go that bit further. On international studies you know when you arrive and you know when you leave, and that's your (usually ambitious) time frame. And if the study includes conducting contextual ad-hoc street interviews there is no next time and there is no tomorrow, only missed chances, so breakfast's, bus rides, flight delays and that night off that you promised yourself quickly become reasons conduct one more interview or go into observation mode. (I sometimes think that if I worked for a toothpaste company there would be easy boundaries to my work, but try researching something as ubiquitous as the mobile phone). Even with the best planning, it's easy to become overwhelmed. For example we have the processes for a research team in the field to affectively deal with incoming photo data as quickly as it can generated, but consider that a research team can end up with 3,000 relevant still photos from a single city 10 day user study. If you like to pick up a camera this job is almost like aversion therapy. To do something so intensely that it's bound to sometimes create an adverse reaction.

The last few days have been good - back home with everything that entails: family, a semblance of a familiar rhythm. Today I managed to pick up the camera through choice and cycled the city to see what grabs. Capturing the world around me just because there's so much still to learn, and for now at least Tokyo is my backyard.

In case you're wondering, I came across the gentleman above tonight on my cycle ride home from a pleasant night out in Ebisu. Non-Japanese often make a big deal of the uniformity of Japanese socieity - group behaviour/harmony and so on. The reality is IMHO somewhat different. Creativity here is hard to explain, but in many, often subtle ways eclipses cities such as London and NYC.

* There's good reason why you don't see many of these product's for sale outside Japan - but thats another story

Posted by Jan at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2005

Pleasantly Imperfect

Life is messy, pleasantly imperfect.

Milk goes sour. Shoe laces come undone. Objects are forgotten. Luggage is lost (thanks FinnAir). Packages don't turn up (thanks DHL, again). A leaking pen. No change for the vending machine. The kid on the bus just won't stop crying. The chewing gum stuck to your new coat. The man in the next urinal unable to aim straight (OK admittedly sometimes it edges to being impleasantly imperfect).

Imperfection is human. Predictibility is boring.

I recall a converstation with Adam Greenfield about plausible deniability when it comes to the design of new products and systems. It may be possible to know where someone is 100% of the time for example through presence and GPS but is it desireable? Throw in the possibility of a 1% chance of error and all of a sudden there are many more opportunities for fun for getting away with, well, what-ever you want to get away with.

Ubicomp is coming to Tokyo later this month - I wonder what the delegates will make of our pleasantly imperfect future?

Posted by Jan at 12:06 PM | Comments (2)

August 10, 2005

Thank-you for shopping with us, thief

My pet hate in Japan is the little stickers that are applied to your purchases if you decline to to put the goods in a plastic bag. Since I usually carry my own bag I always get the stickers, on everything.

That sticker encapsulates a negative aspect of the retailer/customer experience: "Thank-you for shopping at our store, but we don't trust you enough to walk out without stealing goods. So we apply this sticker to make you think it's easier for us to know what you've bought, and easier to identify you've just attempted to steal. Have a great day". Presumably the reason the sticker is applied is that it is an effective deterrent against theft, because it is highly visible and obvious what it applies to i.e. the object it is stuck on. (The sticker roll is ripe for a subversive makeover - drum roll designers...)

With increased purchases of digital goods content providers are looking to Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions to limit where and how content is played. For me a fair DRM solution assumes people know what they own, and know the rights for what they own. With competing DRM solutions this is not going to be an easy task. Ask yourself this question:

Are there limits to how and where songs downloaded from the iTunes store can be played?

In my mind if you answer 'yes' you are already in the niche that is technology orientated consumers. Next question:

How many of you can list any use-boundaries of songs downloaded from the iTunes store?

If you can answer 'yes' you're otaku. Most people have a life where technology or the design and application of technology are not a central driver. It's a wonderful world out there, and it's got nothing to do with computer screens, keyboards and mice (I'm sitting here tapping out this article, looking forward to my morning cycle ride through Tokyo to get to the office).

If you are a P2P network user - how many times have you downloaded the same song? Looking at my (paid for) physical and digital music collection I frequently find duplicates - songs that I've paid for more than once. We used not to get a choice - you bought the album even it contained two songs identical to that other album you bought. Even on digital stores it's easier to select all the songs from an album than figure out the one or two you may have already, and (for this consumer) the cost of checking multiple devices where my the music is stored is more that the cost of buying a few duplicates.

I'm looking forward to the day when N million iTunes users start hitting use-boundaries and start looking for ways and perhaps demanding ways to free what they consider to be 'their music'. Maybe the delay between the time of purchase and the hitting of boundaries will be sufficiently long - 3 years? 5 years?, that the impact will be met with a resounding silence. Each consumer older and wiser?

Returning to the sticker... physical objects have presence, and although I dislike the sticker on the Coke bottle at least it noticeable enough to have feelings about.

Posted by Jan at 03:25 PM | Comments (6)

July 25, 2005

Scars, Residues

Scars as evidence of past activities. Upper photo from legs of young female skater at EDIT skate park (Experimental Development Inner-City Tokyo) in Shinjuku, lower photo mountain scar from yours truly lava scree running down Mt Fuji.

Posted by Jan at 01:00 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2005

Shared Experiences

Came across this couple sharing headphones, walkman remote clipped to her shirt sleeve. The loss of audio experience - listening with only one ear made up for by shared experience.

Posted by Jan at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2005

Sign of the Times

One of the techniques we use to understand a culture is to document signage, looking for clues as to what is acceptable or not acceptable in society or context. Of course most people don't read most signs, and even if they do they dont necessarily obey them, but it all helps to shape our understanding.

My all time favourite signs (geeky, no?) are both from China: no explosives, in train station in Hangzhou; and no spitting from billboard next to bus stop in Shanghai - where the spit was shaped like a bomb. Will try to dig them up later.

Posted by Jan at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2005

Robot-napping

A colleague recently showed me an Aibo automatically posting images to the web. Its impressive in a 5-second-oh-gosh-sort-of-way. Its easy to imagine remotely directing your home based Aibo to check on something in the home whilst you are at work for example.

When will be the first reported instance of an Aibo being robot-napped?
What if the Aibo was replaced with a hacked clone and reported what it sensed in real time to its new masters?
Would the Aibos owner notice that it has been replaced?
Has it happened already?

Hmm, would the owners be happy to have a replacement Aibo using a backup of the originals software?

The Sony Aibo guys have probably spent years thinking through these issues. My assumption is that sooner or later pretty much everything is hackable, and Aibo has been a target for hacks since day one.

(aibo photo randomly picked from aibo pool on flickr)

Posted by Jan at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2005

Experience Dining

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 Shinmachi, 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 dresssed 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.

Posted by Jan at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2005

@ Mo

@Mo is another concept store in Harajuku. 'Custom' FOMA P901is are placed in the context of clothing, chill-out leather sofas, tees and the ubitquitous Be@rbricks.

Its difficult to bring a custom and exclusive purchasing experience to mobile phones, which are largely the most mass of mass produced products, with a few exceptions of course.

This store leaves me cold - its all too template to be original. In a year it will be gone, but by then it will have already served its purpose.

Posted by Jan at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2005

Hanami, Camera Phone Watching

In Japan Hanami - flower watching is a national event for the few days that the cherry blossom (sakura) trees bloom. It took me a while to get used to it, but to a foriegner it boils down to an excuse to sit somewhere nice with friends and colleagues and have a party. Hanami is also a good time to reflect on the role of camera phone vs digital cameras.

Having a quiet after work stroll along the cherry blossom lined Meguro River and stopped by one of the many bridges. The world and her tokyo-mini-fit-in-the-bag-on-the-subway-sized-dog are out in groups chatting and pretty much all taking photos of the sakura.

Two things stand out from sitting and observing for half an hour.

Firstly roughly 90% of people taking photos were using camera phones. The remaining 10% either consumer digital cameras or mounted-on-tripod prosumer models which could have been digital or analog. A couple of people took with camera phone and then digital camera. This is at night and for this kind of outside use camera phone flashes still dont do it.

Secondly, that the way the shots were being lined up, the camera phone was at least treated equally with the digital camera in terms of what was expected from the photos. There were the Im-here snapshots, but also people spending a long time getting the right angle and choosing the right cherry blossom to photograph.

Hanami isnt an unplanned quick-theres-david-beckham-wheres-i-wish-i-had-a-camera moment. People will discuss and plan where and when to go, who will go early to reserve the best spot to picnic and wholl bring what food and drink.

A % of those people using camera phones also own a digital camera. Where do you keep you digital camera in your home when it is not in use? And your phone? Taking something with you when you leave home requires recollection that you own it. Recollection is all the more difficult when the object is tucked in a cupboard somewhere. Out of sight out of mind.

Camera phones already have the mindshare being good enough for this kind of social event photography. The next time those people leave home the digital camera will stay in the cupboard. For digital camera manufacturers this is a one-way trend. In the longer term, for the digtal camera needs to deliver better value (quality, convenience, ease of use, ...) perceptually beyond that of a camera phone.

Posted by Jan at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)