Los Angeles Archives
Pecha Kucha Los Angeles
Feb 20, 2010
Readers in Los Angeles and beyond are invited to Pecha Kucha for Haiti with all donations going to Architecture for Humanity. The collaboration in making this event happen, with everyone involved donating their time, energy and expertise has been warming - your presence will the icing on the cake.
Where: SCI-Arc
When: Saturday 20th Feb, doors open 7:30pm.
Why: speaker line up and bar here.
Purity in Form
Feb 07, 2010
Its difficult to imagine a more perfectly balanced graffitied waste bin - nothing to add, nothing to take away.
Rust Never Sleeps
Feb 07, 2010
The notion that the forces of nature are constant.
When The Small Print Is Yours
Jan 22, 2010
Triple A's decision to monetise/sell/pimp the information provided by customers applying for an insurance quote - creates a short term monetary gain for long term erosion in trust in their brand.
For every service/process - what information do you share as part of the negotiation of whether to use the service? What happens when the organisation selling your data to the highest bidder is a government agency? How long before consumers are able to sign up to a personal data brokerage that manages and provides information to the services you are applying for? One where the BigCorps need to click on the I Agree To These Terms and Conditions checkbox before the data is handed over.
Think small-print reversed.
New Interactions for the American Urban Vocabulary
Dec 30, 2009
The little neighbourhood of Los Angeles that I currently call home includes a 7/11 store that ebbs and flows to the rhythm of the local community: early morning commuters picking up their drive-to-work breakfast; the late-afternoon latino highschool kids alternating between preening and munching Doritos; a late night beacon for some of the many, many homeless who live around these parts. The 7/11 also includes an increasingly familiar site in the US of A: a redbox video vending machine. It looks innocent enough and sure I've walked past it enough times with nary a glance, but its modest frame belies its impact on our future perfect.
If you shut your eyes and listen carefully you can hear the sound of a machete cleaving its way through the neck of a dying, bloated cash-cow by the name of Blockbuster. That roar? That's you and you and you and me standing by the sidelines cheering in relief at knowing we're never going to put up with that kind of experience again. redbox's parent company, Coinstar who modestly pitch themselves as 'the world's leading supplier of valuable services that make life easier for consumers' has reinvented the rental of tangible media through destination site big-box video stores and consumers are lovin' it. And that sharp intake of breath? That's the major studios compelled to watch the slaughter from the side lines but who are now wondering how they are going to pay for their dry cleaning bill from blood splatters.
American customers can browse titles in any given vending machine and make a reservation online - try it here (non-US readers might want to start with the zipcode 90210). Since one vending machine holds up to 500 DVD units you're not going to find Delicatessen or Vanishing Point but that misses the point - it's like complaining that the Flip is too simple to use. All of their movies including new releases are offered at flat cost of $1 + tax for one nights rental. Interaction is minimal - the vending machine has a touch screen, one slot for receiving/returning DVDs and a credit card swiper. Without the need to hire in-store staff, their HR needs are focussed on customer support; keeping vending machines stocked with the latest releases and updating the advertising poster. The niggly issue of cleaning the DVDs is passed onto the customer - and I suspect scratched media is one of their biggest headaches.
Whilst their vending machines have prime placement next to the entrance of many 7/11+ stores - the cost of renting this space is likely to be discounted because DVD rental encourages footfall - a video watched one day is likely to be returned the next. By being able to browse titles online the time-consuming guesswork is taken out of the rental process and with ~19,000 machines in the US and growing they are becoming ubiquitous. Whilst humans are creatures of habit and are likely to return the DVD to the same machine it was rented from the model also supports the convenience-psychology of 'DVDs can be returned to any redbox'. Props to redbox for making movie rental process as convenient as nipping down to the corner store to buy popcorn to snack on whilst you're watching the movie. By, golly the coders amongst you are enjoying the infinite loopness of it all. They've delivered up against nimble competitors such as NetFlix and the Brother's Torrent.
For those of you glancing nervously into the future perfect redbox's real impact goes far further than merely renting out DVDs: they have introduced new forms of interaction into the American urban landscape making it more acceptable to use touch screens to browse content in high-footfall, outdoor public spaces; it introduces non-beverage/non-snack vending machine use to a new demographic; and most importantly the value proposition provides sufficient pull for customers to take out a credit card and swipe to authenticate (for rental pick-ups) and complete transactions. Yes - this swiping behaviour is the mainstay of petrol/gas stations on this side of the pond, but the physical distance between customers and passers by is that much less with a redbox, the process is that much more observable. Lovely stuff. In years to come, the more reflective amongst you will recognised this as an important evolutionary leap for American consumers, so often global 'technology' laggards.
Some trends to consider before we leap into 2010: as our abilty to track objects, people and their preferences is continually refined - how small can the marketplace/vending machine for tangible media and other goods go? Why doesn't every apartment block have it's own redbox equivilent?; what value added services might be introduced to add convenience - the obvious being neighbourhood delivery and pick-up, and given that this hasn't yet evolved in the US of A in which cultures is it more likely occur? For people and communities with limited access to high-speed connectivity this could be the platform to extend the internet.
And at what point can a similar infrastructure support the just-in-time creation of other tangible objects? The obvious is to burn content onto a DVD/SD/... for pickup, but with 3D printers new, valued forms will emerge. Don't think of it as a vending machine but a platform through which to support the time-shifted exchange of tangible objects.
What does a company with prime, interactive, transactional real estate do next? A space to watch.
Wall Street Journal has a litle write up of RedBox versus Blockbuster Express here and more on micro-markets here.
Way, way too long to be writing on a day like today - mountains + pain beckon.
The Risk of Contamination
Dec 13, 2009
It might look like a mask but it's actually a cultural grenade.
This week I walked into the italian delicatessen next to our design studio wearing anti-bacterial face mask. The deli wasn't contaminated but given the reaction of one of the staff to the mask you might have assumed that it was.
Been under the weather these last couple of days - the result of a flu-like bug picked up somewhere between Pu Dong and LAX and amplified by layers of jet lag. Given all the travel this year it's surprisingly my first illness this year - only 3 weeks shy of an otherwise genki 2009. The default assumption for people from individualistic societies such as America when they see someone wearing a face mask is that the mask is there to protect the wearer from others, whereas in more collectivist societies such as Japan the opposite is true - the mask is there to protect others from you. Which is why the deli-staff reaction was so understandable - the mask sent a signal to their other customers that their staff were infected, their working environment was unclean.
Does a face mask actually work in cutting down the risk of infecting others? The mask works on a number of levels: the physical filter reduces the spread of germs - though this is never going to be 100%; more importantly it's obvious physical presence sends a signal to other people that you are sick and that, if the cost of them becoming infected is extreme (pregnant spouses, upcoming wedding, ...) they should steer clear; your physical presence says 'despite being sick, I'm here, you're that important'; and depending on the context can also suggest 'I'm sick, I actually don't care whether I infect other people, because obviously I'm here'. In cultures where masks are not common - most of this goes unsaid.
As a Danish colleague pointed out - if you're that sick don't come into work, but of course sickness is a matter of degrees. In many Japanese offices the pressure to be seen to be around is great - the collective desire for social cohesion, to maintain rank can out trump more practical concerns such as whether there is 'hands-on work' to be done - if you're sick you'll come into work and try to avoid infecting others. My mask motivation: was over the worst and wanted to minimise any risk of infecting colleagues that can ill-afford to be likewise infected.
How might this social positioning play out in our bacterially rich future perfect? As our ability to understand and manipulate bodily bacteria evolves it might be the newly terraformed blotches on the palm of your hand, the tint of eyes/contact lenses or the tips of your ears that indicate to others the state of your health.
Should you decide to share it.
Should you have the choice.
Go forth and spawn.
Dawn over California - an early morning flight to attend the Frog Design hosted Forbes Future of Computing workshop.
F-Cup Cookie Correlation
Nov 26, 2009
Ah, the joys of Japanese supermarket shopping: the obscure correlation between oversized biscuits and bra-cup size.
Grass Like Tousled Hair
Nov 25, 2009
Rare that one gets to enjoy being a pedestrian in this city. Embassy hopping this morning - luv ya, multi-entry.
Edge. Edgier. Edgiest
Oct 19, 2009
For readers in the Los Angeles area, I'll be giving a talk titled Edge, Edgier. Edgiest for the Design Matters course at the Arts Center College of Design about the risks and rewards of conducting corporate field work in less predictable environments, drawing on research from Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, India, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Uganda.
This isn't the stuff they normally teach in college.
There are a few seats open to the public:
Where: Art Center Hillside Campus, Ahmanson Auditorium, Pasadena.
When: 16 November, 2009 1pm.
How: Email your RSVP by November 12 to Designmatters Department to designmatters at artcenter.edu
Photo? Give or take a few 10's of km, here.
Motivations for Licking / DNA Profiling
Jul 18, 2009
Continuing on today's DNA riff - think of a future perfect of 'dna stamps' that when licked contain all the data needed to look up the sender and auto-complete an address. For every lickable surface, a motivation for licking, a motivation for measuring what was licked.
Mainstreamification of DNA here.
The Mainstreamification of DNA
Jul 17, 2009
$99 buys you, and a whole bunch of other inquisitive people better awareness of their genes with this DNA testing kit from the 23andme. Send a tube of saliva to a testing lab and check out your profile online. With an increasing number of medical and judicial proceedings pulling on DNA data and a continious trickle of whose-the-father paternity testing DNA is slowly but surely moving mainstream. Who'll be the first to take individual's DNA data and mash it up with dating profiles? Nature versus nurture? Bring on the hucksters.
The rise in adoption/use of DNA is particularly interesting because it affects people, families deeply and retrospectively. Your dad for the last 40 years? He's not y'know. (For source stats head over to Measuring paternal discrepancy and its public health consequences by Mark A Bellis et al. - they cite ~0.8% to 30% paternal discrepancy, median 3.7%)
Roll forward 20 years when you can obtain a DNA test for the cost of a packet of gum - hell, it might even come in the form of a stick of "DNA Brand' gum where the consumer is encouraged to spit out and stick after use.
It might even change our perception of lickable surfaces.
Background? The package arrived amidst last minute prepping for six weeks on the road: a trip across China; a week off to, uh, rest; and then over to the Malaysian peninsular. It's good to be back on the road.
Dog House: HSBC USA
Jul 12, 2009 | 94 Comments
Today many of HSBC customers in the US will receive a letter titled "Important Privacy Choices for Consumers" highlighting 'their rights' and 'their choices' when it comes to privacy. Ironic since the carefully designed letter highlights some of the worst commercial practices when it comes to exploiting their customers private information.
The first issue is that the customer is forced to opt-out of having their personal information shared - the customer needs to take action to protect what is rightfully theirs. Secondly is in the design of the form - the user needs to answer 'no' - as in 'no, please do not share..." - for the skim-reading, half awake customer browsing this form over coffee 'no' means 'not interested', no is something to be declined.
But the key sentence comes in a section marked "Time Sensitive Reply" as follows: "However if we don't hear from you we may share some of your information with affiliated companies and other companies with whom we have contracts to provide products and services." I'm not inherently against sharing personal information for something of value, but this is a choice I get to make. Tarting it up in the name of 'respecting my privacy' is the worst kind of hypocracy. HSBC - clean up your act.
What if every store clerk who asked for your telephone number had to give out their Facebook page? Every company CEO had to pass on their children's location information before selling on their customers? Reciprocity is a powerful principle (and one that we put to good effect when conducting field research). At some point the clerk won't have a choice and neither will the CEO's kids.
Right now we're still (just about) in the big brother stage of evolution - the technologies to meaningfully gather and systematically analyse [data] on a global scale in the hands of the few, but it's rapidly changing. People are carrying the tools to help them by-pass existing power structures whether it's established news-media, record and movie companies, governments. Will our ways of storing and sharing value go the way of the music and movie distribution? If financial intermediaries and institutions like HSBC continue along these lines, you can bank on it.
Transaction Transparency
Jul 04, 2009
A tip-jar in our most excellent local pho restaurant - the Vietnamese proprietor takes credit cards but suggests to customers to tip in cash.
As an artifact this tip jar is so stacked with intrigue, playing off numerous cultural and contextual assumptions: whether tipping is socially acceptable; whether it's acceptable to show or hold money; the likely denominations of money that is used to tip and whether those denominations are considered too dirty to display on a counter; whether the amount of money in the jar should be revealed - is a paying customer more or less likely to tip/tip well if the jar is perceived to be empty/full; and particularly transaction transparency - whether the size of the tip can be seen by proprietor as it travels towards the jar, and once it is placed the jar? Is the covered jar an attempt by the Vietnamese proprietor to be particularly sensitive to his (mostly Asian) cliental? - tipping being less prevalent in Asia than the US.
Simply beautiful.
Postural Connotations
Jun 29, 2009
Objects and Distant Voices
Jun 29, 2009
Urban infrastructure common to Los Angeles - an apartment buzzer that connects the caller to the resident's phone. Or not - in apartment blocks with a high turn over residents, and increasingly apartments without a fixed line phone the buzzer connects to a mystery phone.
The act of pressing a button, speaking to a remote person is part of our urban literacy.
Related buzzers from Ho Chi Minh City and London here.
Desirably Ugly
Jun 29, 2009
A farmers market tangerine sold as being 'particularly ugly and sweet'. Cultural notions of what makes something 'pretty' or 'ugly'? How these norms affect what is sold on super market shelves. And the point where a fruit is so ugly as to be quirkily desirable?
Pity the blemished fruit.
Practices Around Privacy
Jun 25, 2009 | 12 Comments
In the past few years our research into how people communicate, how they capture and share experiences has repeatedly touched on issues around privacy, security and trust. Anyone and everyone researching and designing for a networked world knows how important an issue this is and most system designers struggle to find the right balance between ensuring the user (or if user is passive - constituent) is sufficiently aware of what is going on without overloading them with to much information.
We've come across this issue in field studies to probe technology adoption in countries such as Brazil, India, USA and, yes Iran. When the research has been difficult to justify internally I've initiated and funded exploration into Tibet, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan to name a few destinations. The research has covered participants right across the social and income spectrum including communities that don't, or until recently didn't appear on any map - places at the edge of the grid, be they unpaved, un-sewered, un-electrified or un-networked. The level of ingenuity we've encountered in these places have often surprised us and the stories that we heard from 'everyday' people often left us humbled.
Finding the right balance between working for and being rewarded by a large corporation and respectfully engaging / disengaging with people and communities is a challenging one - whether it's because of the inherent power imbalance, practical time constraints of working at a corporate pace, privacy issues, informed data consent, acknowledging people's intellectual property or because we need to understand behaviours that are on the edges of legality - be they 'online piracy', street hacks, or fakes. Doing the right thing by our study participants is something we take seriously and requires an even more nuanced understanding as things become increasingly connected. (If you work in this space and this isn't a challenge then you're either short changing your clients or you're short changing the study participants).
Over the years I've documented and shared a lot of what we've learned on Future Perfect, through a steady stream of presentations and an ongoing dialog with various communities. This site is written on my own time and paid for by my own dime - but credit also goes to my employer for providing a relatively free reign in putting the research out there.
Earlier this week this article on network monitoring in Iran appeared in the Wall Street Journal, and given the current election related interest in that country it is no surprise the article has been widely disseminated. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) was mentioned in the article and their official response is posted here. It's worth noting that NSN providse a forum for comments from a range of perspectives (with the practical constraint of them needing to be written in English).
The passion with which English speaking world is engaging with the #iranelection is encouraging - and puts many of the critical comments on the NSN blog into perspective. It's obvious that tools like Twitter have enabled people to feel directly and personally connected to events on the ground in Iran, although it's worth noting they are largely connecting with people posting in English.
Having followed some of the recent debate around technology use you might be interested in these 10 relatively modest insights drawn from studies of mainstream users around the world:
- People who don't trust their government (whether they live in the UK, the US or Iran) tend to not to have much trust in the networks that carry their communication. But just because they don't trust it doesn't mean they don't use it - in particular the ease of connecting to the people that matter often trumps the risk of perceived breaches to their privacy, security.
- Even if people are able to rationalise why they shouldn't use the network e.g. the risk of being arrested, events can take over. They may feel that as part of a large crowd they won't stand out; they may be caught up in the heat of the moment and turn to the tools they know; or simply at that moment in time the network is the least worst option.
- People have very fuzzy mental models of how the network functions - for example not understanding where data is stored, or the implications of different types of storage. It doesn't take much imagination to understand the implications of using online backup services like MobileMe or Ovi Share in situations where, rightly or wrongly, people percieve the network to be compromised.
- Mobile phone's don't need the network to be useful: they often include cameras and video cameras, in many urban centers adult penetration is ~100%, they are carried everywhere putting them in a prime position to capture and later share experiences - the Neda video is a good example.
- In some countries side loading media is common - be it via cable, memory card, or Bluetooth. The practice of BluetoothMe - flirting and sharing files via Bluetooth is reasonably common amongst the youth in the Middle East and to some extent Iran with sensitive material being transferred from phone to phone in this way. It's not particularly practical except in contexts where people know each other and where people and devices are likely to remain in range with one another - the lecture theatre, the bus, the subway. Keep an eye on what's happening with micro-USB for data transfer going forward.
- For all the discussion around sophisticated network tracking - interception often boils down to the man with the uniform and the truncheon checking your camera, your phone's inbox, your call log. Those photos of your mate throwing a gas canister? It puts you in a time and place.
- The more there is at stake the more people will strive to understand the trade-offs in connecting to the system or network. And vice versa - if you've grown up around a good network access and, say location positioning then that's just how life is - there is less reason to question. Ditto censorship.
- Increasingly the choice of whether to adopt, or opt-in to a technology is one of whether to opt-out of society.
- People tend to adopt strategies to separate very private communication from the merely private, but in a world of cookies and call logs it's increasingly difficult to keep the two apart. If you have the time take a peek at the features that support very private communication (typically extra-marital affairs) on some Japanese mobile phones.
- In any country where tracking is considered widespread - be careful about gifts from strangers. You never know where that mobile phone or SIM card has been and whether it makes you a target.
Read this, go here. Then spend time with Ethan Zuckerman and Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices.
Photos? More peaceful times in Tehran.
Good? Cheap? Fast? Pick Two
Jun 24, 2009
How do you communicate with clients the trade-offs you need to make in the design process? The trade-offs they need to make? How about when they're from the exacting world of spreadsheets, returns on investment, absolutes?
Maybe they give you the time and space to explain the nuances, the details. Maybe you're tempted to pull some figures out of the air, and bluster your way through the ensuing presentation? Or, more likely, you both walk away from the table slightly frustrated, worlds apart.
If you've ever been in this situation then you'll appreciate The Quantitative and Qualitative Measuring Devices so-called lost project by colleague Rhys Newman that starts with the designer's adage "good, cheap, fast - pick two" and ends in a triangular ruler with added tension. You can measure the immeasurable, just how well will depends on the story that goes with it.
A historical novella by another design studio colleague Julian here. Do inanimate objects experience the Hawthorne Effect? How about networked inanimate objects?
Gosh.
The Cut & Paste of Urban Notation
Jun 13, 2009
It's rare to see post-its out in the wild - they just don't make 'em sticky enough. This particular example pulled from a neighbouring parking meter - suffering from the same 'FAIL' message as mine. A simple example of the desire to notate i.e. leaving a note for the parking attendant, and an overlap between what is notated - i.e. wanting to leave much the same message as other people in similar circumstances. Think of them as error messages for the real world - sooner or later someone is going to be confronted with the same message (and if you're wondering the car in the next parking space had already left).
In a world of digital urban notation (geo-tagging++) - to what extent do we want to cut and paste from other people's notes? And to what extent to we simply want to reference or link to someone else's notes? Does the argument that this parking meter doesn't accept coins become stronger when others have had the same experience? If not legally, than morally? In what circumstances is it better to distance yourself from the crowd, to highlight your unique circumstances?
What tools will we use to make these digital notations? The mobile phone digital camera is, globally, the most prevalent tool for cutting and pasting stuff - although currently there is very little auto-extraction of data/meta data from those photos.
Final thoughts before the studio drifts into work: what new practices will arise when user generated urban error messages are more persistent, more transparent, more discoverable? How does your shopping experience change when you know that you are not liable for that failed parking meter, that you don't need to worry about the stickiness of that post-it fluttering in the wind?
A Sense of Scale
Jun 12, 2009
Fabric shop guide - indicating how much fabric is required to cover what kind of furniture. Every context has it's own sense of scale, a default way of measuring. For a few contexts - the need to inform and guide that scale.
Credibility of Sources
May 26, 2009
Los Angeles Fire Department micro-messages here. When you're publishing the 'news' which part of what source needs to be how credible? An observers good enough geo-tagged photos plus a LAFD twitter stream = republishable news-credible?
Escrow Spaces
May 23, 2009
The key to these post boxes (or mail boxes for quaint am-er-i-can readers) in Los Angeles - held by the apartment residents and the postman for the purpose of exchanging letters and small parcels. A form of escrow space - where the key, and the authority that comes from owning the key enables access.
The rights of access to future escrow spaces? Whether better micro-coordination, and the remote locking/unlocking of container will lead to new forms of object exchange - a hawala of objects?
Today's Office
May 02, 2009
Touch points from a long, long day: the 5am cashier in Chicago O'Hare with a world weary 'how are you today?'; cruising across a rush hour Potomac and working my way down from H to C; overlapping research interests with the good folk at the World Bank; a glimpse behind the curtain at the State Department; drinks in the company of entrepreneurs who could rest on their laurels but are too busy inventing the next.
People with stars in their eyes, stars on their shoulders, looking down from the stars.
The kindly Ethiopian taxi driver who let me catch forty winks on his front seat and, knowing my departure time chilled at the airport to save waking me up. Canceled flights, re-booked flights, last-minute standbys. And as I write - being gently serenaded by a passenger sawing his way through a rather sizable log - his chest rising and falling as the blade goes to and fro.
It shouldn't be this way but somehow energised by back to back red-eyes.
Sometimes you just need to follow a hunch, take a punt on the future.
(Im)Purity and Form
Apr 28, 2009
The pleasure of pouring milk from a glass container tempered by the jarring and overly plasticky feel of the bottle cap - from Los Angeles above. Compared to the milk-neutral tones of a bottle+lid from Tokyo below.
The use of a coloured bottle cap in the US necessitated in part by offering different types of (bottled) milk - whereas the limited size of a typical Tokyo store will restrict the choice to 1 type of bottle. In both instance milk bought from the bottle more than twice the price compared to Tetrapak'ed alternatives. The global appeal of milk.
Related: milk delivery norms from Japan and China; the psychology of real fresh milk in an English hotel mini-bar; milk by the bag in a Mumbai chai house; the contrast of fresh juices and tinned (condensed) milk in Thailand; the separation of milk as a status indicator in Vietnam; and lastly yak-milk tea in Mongolia.
The End of Form / The Beginning of Form
Apr 19, 2009
People like to know what they're buying.
It should be no surprise that online advertising revolves around standard unit sizes: full banner; half banner; leaderboard; or half skyscrapers to name but a few. The off-line world already contains a mass of advertising standards: billboards; 30 sheet posters; bus and taxi displays; the list goes on.
But what happens when today's advertising hoardings, can be overlaid by all and sundry with advertising, or indeed other content of their own choosing? One popular assumption is some form of head mounted display, and whilst today's design's are clunky enough to raise a yo-a-geek smirk, miniaturization will rapidly push form factors to are-they-or-aren't-they sized glasses.
Why anyone would want wear 'data-glasses' only to have their view of the world overlaid with advertising? For the same reason that we listen to advertising supported radio, watch TV with 'limited commercial interruptions' - it enables us to obtain something of value for 'free'. That Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/Nokia layer of data that you use to augment your world? All for the price of the occasional commercial interruption.
The world around us contains many computationally easy-to-recognize, known-location, pre-defined shapes waiting to be augmented - street signs, street furniture, and yes, advertising hoardings - which is where the fun begins. That ad-space put up there and lovingly maintained by JCDecaux? There for the taking - for the company with the right augmentable-ad-platform, the right amount of consumer pull.
Just as the battle for 'control of the internet' centered (for a while) on the consumer's means of access - the web browser, so the battle for our ear-drums and eye-balls will hone in on the source. The company that provides the primary filter through which you view and experience the world will have incredible amount of power (and if you're wondering about the stickiness of one brand of filter over another the conversation eventually leads to sensory implants).
But is there sufficient pull for mainstream consumer's to turn to some form of nearly-always-worn data glasses? Imagine knowing the tax-bracket of everyone around you - drawing on publicly available tax records and the means to identify an individual in near to real time. Imagine this from the point of view of a would-be lover, a salesman, a charity worker. Extrapolate with mash-ups with Facebook profile, knowledge about your last vacation; previous convictions. Now imagine the advantages you get from access or subscriptions to 'premium channels' - data only available to the select few: from the realtime cop feed; to the wolfpack view of the city; to real-time, real-space casual encounters.
A generation hooked on real-time data so compelling that heading out on a friday night just ain't the same without the buzz of a good feed. It'll never happen? How many times a day do you check your email? Facebook? Your phone? Your twitter stream? People addicted to data? Of course not - it'll never happen.
How will this change our urban landscape? Advertising hoardings, entire buildings, indeed entire cities that are computationally more or less desirable to augment. It might be the end of form as we know it.
It might very well be the beginning.
Yeah, yeah - I know - the unimagination that goes into the term 'Data glasses': Head Mounted Displays; Near to Eye Displays; filters; layers; lenses; et cetera.
Photos: Urumqi, obviously.
What Do You Do? Who Cares?
Apr 15, 2009 | 19 Comments
I care.
At the beginning of last week's CHI talk I asked the audience to tell me 'what do I do?', with the promise that I'd put the best description on my business card for a year. There were a smattering of responses and if you are so inclined you too can have your say by leaving a comment in the comments below, or through Twitter by replying to @janchip with the tag #CHI09.
To the casual, yet feisty observer the question might provoke the pungent scent of a freshly stroked ego, except that the motivation for asking was altogether more prosaic: to figure whether it's possible to focus at least some of the back-channel discussion that goes on in Twitter; because your perception of what I do is significantly more interesting to me than my own perception of what I do; and because I assumed that the responses would reveal something about the respondees themselves. It failed on at least two out of the three goals.
One of the design research techniques we sometimes use to speed up the participants-feel-comfortable-with-your-presence process comes during the introductions - providing just enough job information that they are able to get a handle on us, to enable them to be sufficiently in control of the situation. The more obvious the job title, and the closer it mirrors the participant's own perceived social standing - the quicker the process is, and the easier it is to move the conversation to the focus of the study. This 'mirroring' can be at odds with their original motivation to join the study, and is certainly at odds with the signatory of the follow-up thank-you letter - where the most senior sounding title re-enforces the notion that they contributed to something of importance. The worst case scenario is that an inappropriate job title can increase the likelihood that participants obsess on second-guessing the research goals, increasing the biases in their answers.
There is a similar dynamic at play during the opening meeting of a new project - when asking everyone present to say who they are and what they do (even if you know everyone present) - enables them to re/define themselves; and to quickly project that re/definition to everyone else.
There are of course strong cultural, contextual and personal differences in the importance of defining and presenting oneself through a job title. The more formal aspects of Japanese and South Korea society have incredibly complex rituals related to one's status - and in the business context the job title that is printed on one's business card is a key vehicle through which to project one's place in the world; generally speaking Finns are quite modest about pushing their position; whereas Americans tend to go the other way - a reflection perhaps of the frequency with which jobs are changed, career paths diverted. Start-ups and consulting industries often have more vice-presidents and C-level staff than is probably healthy - treading the fine line between raw ambition and raw sewage.
Of course the role of the business card is also changing - in an interconnected world it becomes more of a tangible reminder, a conduit to the online you - where ever that may be, and with it - the age of the anonymous researcher is rapidly drawing to a close.
My rule of thumb? The more an individual relies on their particularly senior business title to project what they are capable of the less self confident they are at actually fulfilling that role.
So, what is it that I do? Does it matter? Kinda. Sorta. But when it comes to you, I care, I really do.
The most impressively self confident title I've come across in the past year? That be Stuart Butterfield at the TED Conference with a name badge "Industry, Worker".
Bums on Seats (If You Can Pay)
Apr 01, 2009
Today - buses, planes, trains, massage parlours already have fully functioning markets for seats (sure, if you want to be pedantic they come with other services attached). What infrastructure would enable every seat to be a micro-market? And the contexts in which we want to go there?
Related: breaking purchases/experiences down into ever smaller chunks in São Paulo.
Sound Advice
Mar 26, 2009 | 8 Comments
One for Los Angeles based readers: our design studio is looking for a talented sound designer for short/medium term concept development work. If you, or someone you know are based in Los Angeles, really know how to kick it with audio, and enjoy working alongside a busy studio - contact info at janchipchase dot com.
Photos: buying audio in Kabul.
Today's Office
Mar 22, 2009
Today's office is a bench perched on pavement outside our new Los Angeles apartment. It's surprisingly cool for a So Cal winter's day on that fine line between warm-enough-to-wear-a-t-shirt and cold-enough-for-goose-bumps, with a haze in the air not as you might expect the result of a particularly strong city wide smog - but from the winter's mist rolling in from the Pacific. If, perchance you needed a dose of bright sunshine (hei Helsinki) then the winding commute up Topanga Canyon soon takes you out of the mist and, eventually to Nokia's Xanadu - the home of our advanced design team, my work-base for the next two years.
The reason I'm out here braving goosebumps and not in there scorching my lips on a fine cup of earl grey and trying to solve the biscuit-dunker's conundrum is that the delivery truck has left the ~50 boxes that represent our physical possessions spilled on the pavement and road - moonlighting as a security guard frees up an extra pair of hands to get the job done. That and needing to get my thoughts down fro an upcoming presentation in Boston.
In a stoopless part of the city my bench provides an ample and possibly only opportunity to kick back and enjoy the street view: from the petit Asian lady who has jogged by four times and counting and whose rhythm is as regular as clockwork; to the white lo-rider that keeps cruising the block - it's occupants slowing eyeballing me and my cardboard cargo.
In some cities you learn how to drive; in LA you learn how to drive by.
Task Efficiency
Mar 15, 2009
A sponge used for dabbing fingers prior to pulling open a fresh polyurethane bag. Unsure whether the sponge helps clean the fingers to make them more grippy - removing build up of plastic residue from repeatedly touching the bag, or whether slightly damp finger tips are more capable of opening the bag? Or both.
The positioning of the sponge in relation to the bag - for oft repeated tasks there is no such thing as too efficient.
A Failure of Imagination
Feb 26, 2009
Sitting in the ANA lounge with half an hour to boarding, everything of value is either packed into hand luggage or perched on the seat beside me - K's logged onto the Google intranet typing furiously, no doubt on some launch deadline or other.
An hour's solid ride from here is the Port of Tokyo - and a 20ft container with all our worldly physical possessions that, tsunami's and custom's officials permitting, will make a slow crawl across the Pacific to our new home in Los Angeles. After the mad, mad rush to pack up here and relocate there this here is an enjoyable pocket of calm.
Whilst it's a world away from the wonderfully pedestrian Tokyo, moving to LA is a home coming of sorts. My first ever car was a '68 Chrysler Newport bought for a humbling $290 from a Santa Fe car lot and sold for half that sum 30 days and a few states later. Beat up from a lifetime of service, its engine overheated under the merest glimmer of sunshine - unfortunate really given that we were exploring southern states during the summer months. Driving mostly at night, steered clear of the freeways and put a heap of faith in aging, they-shouldn't-smell-like-that-should-they brakes descending out of the Rockies. A trunk full of water and a love seat worn out from someone else's exertions. Never had much money, never needed any - you'd be surprised how far a long summer's worth of a teen's tanned torso and a quaint British accent goes for goodwill in the flyover states. Never got around to buying car insurance, had a few offers to stay.
It used to be that 'goodbye' was a failure of imagination. Today in a world of intended, imagined and unrecognized digital threads spanning the globe, it's simply not an option.
See you on the other side.
Above / Below
Sep 30, 2008
Skies over Los Angeles (above) and Tokyo (below).
Google Obituary
Feb 19, 2008
The practice of showing side-by-side photos of the deceased - one recent the other taken from the past - photo from the Salt Lake Tribune. Compare the format to death notices from Singapore Straits Times, and the streets of Ghana and Iran.
When your ashes are being scattered in the future perfect what form will your obituary take? Drawing on a life time of digitally captured, archived, searchable experiences your life stream there for the taking, everything interlinked. Given the tone, form and purpose of the obituary format - to what extent will the digital you be rewritten after your death? And by whom? In part its a question of who controls legal and moral rights to the digital you - after your death, those remaining aspects of your digital life not yet archived by Big Corp Inc. auctioned to the highest bidder, the proceeds used to off-set the funeral costs. The dead, archived and indexed you is after all, an advertising opportunity. Go in peace and remember to click on the banner ads on your way out.
How important is it and for whom that the collective memory of you is shared, agreed? In a world personal profiles and mapped relationships an obituary that is tailored to reflect your relationship with the deceased is only a click away.
Google Obituary beta is rolled out in 2010 hits the global mainstream by 2021. Slow take up? The competition is well established, it takes time for life to truly go digital, and it takes a while for the life-stream generation to die off...
Form, Context, Advertising
Feb 19, 2008
LAX luggage/baggage claim.
Sustainability Summit Download
Feb 14, 2008
The presentation from last week's Systems, Cities and Sustainability Mobility Summit are now available. I'll expand on material new to regular Future Perfect reader's over the coming weeks. Download Coordination in the Future Urban [PowerPoint 4MB].
The slide below shows a dual SIM card that can be found in countries with a high proportion of pre-paid phones, a significant number of highly price sensitive consumers and an evolved mobile phone repair culture. It's a relatively simple street hack that combines two SIM cards into one SIM card form factor - enabling a regular phone to support multiple phone numbers on one phone. Imagine having AT&T + T-Mobile on one device. Click to enlarge photo.
The hack is a response to an existing behaviour - the practice of carrying separate SIM cards in order to reduce communication costs. It typically costs more to call someone on a different operator than the same and before this hack these consumers were willing to put up with the hassle of turning off the phone, switching in a new SIM card, and waiting for the phone to reboot.
Whilst in the short term it's something that will help consumers shave a few cents off their communication costs, it's the long term implications that should interest you service and system designers. In many parts of the world the mobile phone number functions as an increasing important form of identity, a single device may be shared amongst a family, friends or even village and the device is the enabler for activities ranging from banking and money transfers to capturing and sharing experiences. If, for the sake of argument a phone number is equivalent to a bank account what does it mean to have two or four or forty supported on one device? And returning to the issues discussed at the summit - what are the implications if the mobile device becomes the primary interface through which we view the city and access its infrastructure?
Yeah you're right - the hack is far from perfect - since most phone user interface's are not designed to support multiple SIM cards features such as the call log are compromised. And yeah there are already a few phones out there that support multiple SIM card slots. Clever you. But it is another example of a lo-fi hi-tech something that you can find today on the streets of Accra and Kampala but are unlikely to yet find in Tokyo, London or San Francisco.
SIM card photo photo taken by colleague Younghee Jungr during our Accra field study. Top photo of Ho Chi Minh City during morning rush hour.
The Business, Consequences of Locating Stuff
Feb 14, 2008
"Garbage is useful stuff in the wrong place" from Alex Steffen at the sustainability summit. Big implications in a world where people who want stuff will increasingly be able to co-ordinate with people who have stuff or indeed - directly with the stuff itself. Garbage that negotiates its own collection.
Photos? A night spent under the stars in the Los Olivos hills and from earlier in the same evening - a fire breathing colleague.
Investigative Design / Materials
Feb 10, 2008
The slides from yesterday's Arts Center presentation on Investigative Design can now be downloaded (PowerPoint, 4MB) - most of the material is taken from a previous presentation so regular readers will want to skip it. Thanks to Katherine Bennett for hosting and students for raising issues worth debating.
And the slide on credibility?
People are busy and your research is just one of many competing for your colleagues/client’s attention - they have their own opinions, have commissioned other studies and can draw on a range of experts. So why should anyone give your research the time of day? How to build credibility? For starters recognise and communicate the limits of (mostly qualitative) design research. We start out with opinions, and all things by the end of study we move onto having informed opinions or on rare occasions very informed opinions. Overstating the value of the research makes you a bullshitter.
Given the highly competitive working environments that exist, particularly in go-go corporate America there's a pressure to generate a bit of hype. Your colleagues are smart so give it to them straight, warts and all - to enable them to use the information with their eyes open. Don't consider your colleagues smart? You're in the wrong job.
Of course, in some instances the research doesn’t need to be credible - 'merely' interesting - a topic for another day.
And if you're wondering about the photo on the cover slide - snow flurries in a wintery Helsinki.
Understanding Consequences, Affecting Actions II
Sep 24, 2006
Related to this.
Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases
Sep 22, 2006 | 1 Comment
The slides for yesterday's presentation on An Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases at the Annenberg Center for Communication can now be downloaded from here [7MB].
The presentation draws on a 2005 qualitative study into commercial S-DMB Mobile TV in Seoul, South Korea by Younghee Jung, Cui Yanqing and myself. These slides concentrate on only one aspect of the study - the three main use cases that were documented and explored - evening commuting, macro breaks and home use. Actually we uncovered a compelling fourth use case, but we'll wait until a full research paper is published before revealing what it is.
A summary? Researchers and designers often talk about use cases but to what extent do the details of the experience need to be communicated to the project team (and in what formats) in order for these scenarios to be useful? What are the elements of the experience that can make or break whether new services move beyond early adopters? The devil is in the details.
Thanks to Mizuto Ito for hosting and to HyeRyoung Ok for carrying the discussion.
Delivery Mechanisms
Sep 21, 2006
Water containers for stall holders in a market in Old Delhi - continuing this week's theme of photos from India.
Writing this from a hotel bed - outside Los Angeles is beginning to wake up. Body clock is a little skewed - waking up and raring to go at 10pm. In practical terms timezone ping pong means chirpily attend a teleconference that started at 4am (an abnormal hour by any stretch of the imagination) and then dealing with the body's fallout during presentations later in the day.
Literacy, Communication, Design II
Sep 21, 2006
The Motofone is being marketed as a device that amongst other things aspires to "help bridge literacy gaps" including voice prompts to "guide the user quickly and easily through menu navigation, messaging and other functions". It's good to see illiteracy raised to the point where it becomes a marketing feature but I'm also highly aware of the non-trivial challenges that need to be overcome if they are to genuinely meet their stated aims. I've only seen the marketing blurb so I'll make an educated guess to how the feature will be implemented.
If someone can't read or write they'll understand audio prompts right? Well, not quite. Using audio prompts to read out what appears on the screen is unlikely to be the solution because it assumes a general level of technical competency - that what is read out can be comprehended by the listener. To someone without prior experience of using a mobile phone or computer what is a 'folder'? Or 'inbox'? Or 'operator settings'?
Audio prompts also assume that the phone supports the user's native language. India, for example has over 14 different official languages, and over 100's of local dialects. (It's also home to 270 million of the world's 799 million illiterate peoples so its a good case study). How many languages are supported and how do these reflect the illiterate population?
As I argued at last week's UIAH presentation, probably the biggest factor counting against the widespread adoption of this feature is one of proximate literacy - quite simply that its often easier ask someone for assistance than learn oneself. In our research we concluded that most (illiterate) mobile phone users can turn on a phone, answer an incoming call and make local calls (pre-fixes for non-local calls start to present a problem and the complexity of tasks extrapolates from there). For many people the primary motivation for owning a phone is personal and convenient communication - their motivation to spend time to work their way through and learn the meaning behind the voice prompts is likely to be fairly low if these motivations are already met. If you're a frequent visitor to Future Perfect you probably get a kick from exploring what phones are capable of, but the rest of the planet is more interested in trivial stuff like relationships and survival. The ability to answer an incoming phone call is pretty powerful in itself and we've interviewed (generally older) users whose primary goals were met by mastering this feature.
Ever tried to make your way through voice prompts when you were in a hurry? It's fun right? Now apply the same level of enthusiasm to a hurried illiterate phone user from Kolkatta, Kohima or Kharagpur. But what if you're not in a hurry? When your options are to attempt to navigate and learn the meaning of audio prompts or wait until a literate, device competent and/or friendly person is nearby then rote learn a solution which will you choose?
Closer to launch time it will be interesting to see to what extent and how these aspirant-literacy-gap-bridging features are publicized and to whom. Will the Motofone succeed as a product? Probably. Will it meet its aim to bridge literacy gaps? What do you think?
Swimming Not Drowning
Sep 20, 2006
Playing timezone yo-yo and heading stateside today.
For those of you that prefer a tangible presence - I'll be presenting some research we did last year on Mobile TV Usage in South Korea. Design teams often uitlize use cases as a way to focus the direction of a design - this presentation will focus on the details of three use cases from the Mobile TV field study considering the elements that can make or break technology adoption in the real world.
Where? A double bill with HyeRyoung Ok on the 21st September 2006 at the Annenberg Center for Communication hosted by Mizuto Ito and on the 26th September Hillsboro, Oregon hosted by Wendy March of Intel's People & Practices Group.
And on the 25th September the Waving Not Drowning workshop at the EPIC conference will cover processes to make effective use of lots of photo data in field work. Sounds exciting doesn't it? It's basically about following a few simple rules so that you can concentrate on more interesting things - such as the content of the photos. The workshop will not be buzzword complient so feel free not to drop by if thats your thing.
Motivations
Oct 10, 2005 | 2 Comments
Two very different motivations for tagging, marking?
Attention to Detail
Oct 10, 2005
The little details that enhance the purchasing experience.
Assumptions About Connectivity
Oct 10, 2005 | 1 Comment
An assumption people often make when thinking about the future is that the wireless technology, whatever it is will have 100% coverage and will have 100% uptime - the seamless 24/7* connected user experience. The current experience is a good lesson in how things will play out. Today in the US one of the major purchasing decisions is the quality of the local cellular coverage - and whether carrier X has good coverage in your home, your route to work, the places you hang out. Signal strength meter watching and negotiating a space to find the best signal is for many part of the cell phone user experience. it's not just the US - the photo below is taken from an involuntary half day spent in the departure lounge of Kathmandu airport . Flights were grounded because the cloud cover at the destinations were too dense to land - a lot of time for people watching. Every time a further flight delay was announced a number of Nepali business men would take out their mobile phones and attempt to make calls. It would surprise me if they calling to inform someone of a new arrival time - given the relatively flexible approach to time keeping, but at the very least they were using the time waiting to get in touch. GSM coverage in Nepal is limited a minimalist version of the Cingular GSM coverage in the US for example.
The cellular coverage in the airport was good but the base-stations were overloaded with people trying to make calls - a common situation in Nepal. Your experience of making a call is probably something like:
1. Select contact
2. Press send call
3. Hold phone to ear and
4. When the person at the other end picks up, talk.
The experience for a Nepali mobile phone user is more like:
1. Check coverage
2. Select contact
3. Press send call
4. Keep looking at screen to check call status message to see if call is connected
5. When disconnected repeat steps 2 to 4. Eventually see that the call has been put through and
6. Put phone to ear, talk.
It's far from seamless but it works.
Sooner or later someone will provide cheaper, faster, richer, more convenient ways to connect so even if this issue is largely solved for cellular it will apply to whatever next the user decides to use. How to accurately inform users what services currently available on their device without them having to take out their phone and look at the signal strength icon(s)? What functionality is available when the device doesn't have connectivity? How to design the user experience to account for involuntary dis-connectivity and downtime?
* In the spirit of utopian connectivity perhaps 24/7 should be extended to 60/60/24/7/356 etc
Branded, Unbranded Experience
Oct 09, 2005
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