Results tagged “commute”
Isolation or Solitude?
Sep 25, 2009
One of the pleasures of moving to a new city is in understanding the nuanced commuting behaviours of its inhabitants. For all our immersive, shadowing of participants we only ever dip into their travel-to-'work mind-space, the insightful researcher needs to live through, have something at stake and be affected by the worst a commuting experience has to offer to truly understand the mentality of a city.
London does an excellent expensive-slow-and-unreliable; Cairo loves it packed-noisy-and-hot; despite Tokyo's efficiency, riding the Yamanote Line during rush-hour in the rainy season is well, condensed; and despite the MRT Bangkok still does a mean gridlock. And Los Angeles? As a city that is close to uninhabitable without some form of personal motor transport LA changes lanes and grinds to a halt to the growl of black-particle-belching single-occupancy cars. It's interesting to see the extent that real time traffic updates have changed commuter behaviours - more through a combination of Google Map's traffic layer first through personal computer and then en-route with the iPhone than in-car navigation systems. Colleagues timing their dash-to-work based on avoiding telltale red-lines.
In Tokyo the predictability of the public transport system means that if a commuter train is delayed by more than a few minutes - notes are handed out to commuters as evidence of their lateness, presentable to the boss at work. At what point do vehicles allow the driver to report their stuck-in-traffic lateness to people who need to know? How will this 'evidence' compare to that from a personal device offering the same service? Or does society become less absolute, more relative? If you're reading Future Perfect you're more likely to have flexible working hours, globally you're the exception not the rule.
The Los Angeles car commute and the inevitable traffic jams have one thing going for them: extra motivation to rise early, grind up the hill and push through the Topanga State Park to our Calabasas design studio. As bike rides go it is a bit of a stretch, but is daily-doable. The isolation of sitting alone in an air-conditioned car? Or the solitude of the fire trails, broken only by scattering rabbits, migrating snakes and the occasional deer? Take ya pick. Enjoy the sunset.
Photos? Dawn on the trial here.
Totally unrelated: the relentless waves of workers pouring out of Shinagawa Station.
Location:United States » Los Angeles » Topanga State Park
Journey’s By Train
Jul 10, 2008
Whilst the team has traveled across time zones to be here, in many ways our journey starts here in the hot bustling haze of today’s on the fly office - Beijing’s West Station. The last time I passed through these hallowed halls was wrapped up to the 11’s to board a train for a mid-winter jolly in Mongolia and if the allure then was to pause and reflect purpose now is to feel our way around the challenge of designing [redacted].
The train from Beijing to Handan takes four hours, time spent in the company of a mixture of working-under-the-sun country folk, city slickers, an dormitory’s worth of university students returning home for their summer vacation. Pleasantly there’s also a couple of teens who appearance I can only describe as chemo - a rawer, punk induced Chinese variant of emo. Making sense of the fashion here is a art-form that requires an understanding of local tastes, international fashion, and knowing what international brands are currently being manufactured locally – sooner or later it shows up on the streets and back alleys. Tip for the future? That little known brand called Made in China.
A last-minute switch to an earlier morning train means we have standing-only tickets although it turns out this is no barrier to taking a seat on the over-crowded train - so friendly are the locals to the strangers in their midst that the seats designed to take two cheeks are pushed to accommodate threes and fours. It’s time to ad-hoc the local nuances of train travel: the first challenge of the day is to turn a slightly suspicious captive audience in to a captivated audience. Let the games begin.
Location:China » Handan
Contextual Understanding
Jun 05, 2008
Homeward bound and one of our local crew ad-hocs his way along the train. Me? Just along for the ride. And yeah, we're in the upper deck seating until something came available at ground level.
Mobile device and service designers are often asked to consider commuting as a prime use case - to what extent does commuting differ around the world? For example for Mobile TV in South Korea - check out slide 32 onwards in the presentation below for a breakdown of contextual factors affecting adoption for commuting in Seoul.
Location:India
India » Ahmedabad » somewhere near
Today's Commute
Jun 05, 2008
The journey to today's office is a little saltier than usual, as the extended team heads out and spreads out for rural interviews++. Our eight-strong team silhouetted on a commuter train trundling out of Ahmedabad
Temperatures nudging the high forties.
India
India » Ahmedabad » somewhere near
Monday Morning Commute / Emotions
May 12, 2008
Once more into the fray - braving Tokyo's Monday rush hour commuter traffic on the way to Narita. Finland for the week. One Monday morning is much like another right? So why the extra feeling of pessimism?
Japan is a country with a significant number of national holidays - in a culture where respect for your colleagues means you're unlikely to take your full vacation allowance, the government stipulated holiday's give everyone a chance to take a few days off, guilt free. Early May includes a string of national holidays - Showa Day, Constitutional Memorial Day, Greenery Day, Children's Day combine to make Golden Week after which there is nothing until late July. Hence the collective back to work sigh known locally as 'go gatsu byoo' - May disease.
Does your culture have an equivalent of 'May disease'? In Finland November is (apparently) the toughest month - it's cold, dark and wet and in Helsinki at least the snow doesn't settle enough to stay firm underfoot. And a long dark winter of the soul awaits.
Thought for today - the extent to which a personal feeling of malaise are generated from the emotions of those around you? Whether newish ways of working - such as telecommuting disrupt the critical mass, and in which contexts? And in a world of time travel the extent that 'skipping May' becomes an acceptable norm?
Location:Japan » Tokyo » Shibuya
Monday Morning Commute
Apr 21, 2008
This morning's office is cramped to say the least - my nose is pressed up against the collar of a salariman whose fresh pomade and comb induced rice rows (the local unintentional equivalent of cornrows) I am now intimately familiar. Just to my right a lady is reluctantly pressing her petit, squishy breast against my rib cage propelled by an influx of yet more pushing bodies. To my left a row of four heads are dipped, dozing and by co-incidence the angle of each head perfectly reveals a bald spot in the rough of each of the four suited gents. In a future perfect world of augmented reality slot machines (motto - 'pattern match, win prizes') four-in-a-row is a definite winner. But right now, having staked a claim on some the few seats in this rush hour train the dozed are snoozing through their jackpot.
As it leaves the station, the mass of bodies start to settle and the muscular tension that was countering its acceleration starts to dissipate.
Every space has its own etiquette but few as fascinating, and as fascinatingly dense as the Tokyo subway during rush hour. For trains traveling in from the 'burbs every additional stop before a mainline destinations like Shibuya ratchets up the pressure - no-one leaves, a brave few take a breath and enter.
It's rare to have the opportunity to enjoy this Monday morning commute - cycling being my regular vehicle of choice and Tokyo being eminently cycleable, so subway journey's like today are a novel experience to be savoured. The Denentoshi becomes the Ginza becomes the Marunouchi in this cross-town safari to my ultimate destination - a hospital in Ochanomizu.
Let the week begin.
Location:Japan
Japan » Tokyo
Variations, Days of the Week
Aug 27, 2007
What are the subtle characteristics that make Friday a Friday?
You can guess its a Friday in Tokyo because the already high level of office dressiness is elevated to factor in after-work socialising - an extra whiff of perfume, finer dresses, a little bit more heel. But why? In what cultures are people likely to already wear and carry the objects they need for the day when they leave home? In which cities are you more likely to head home and get changed before heading out? To what extent is it based on the immediacy of after-work socialising rituals? Or commuting times? Or the rhythm of the city? And what are the consequent opportunities for product and services designers?
Related research: what people carry and why. Just as interesting - what people don't carry and why.
It's Monday - which means a long-haul commute: Europe this week, US the next. See you on the other side.
Location:Japan
Japan » Tokyo
Little Things
Jul 18, 2007
The little things that combined with other little things create the realisation that you are home.
Intense rains require trains.
Location:Japan
Japan » Tokyo
Gender Segregation, Service Opportunity
Apr 12, 2007
Gender segregated train carriage in Tokyo.
The demand for women-only carriages driven by: a desire for comfort which relates to; physiological gender differences; the dis-proportionate affect of hyper-crowded Tokyo carriages on women during rush hour compared to men (men tend to have smaller, less senstive breasts, differently shaped butts); and the exploitation of the commuting conditions by (relatively) occassional male passenger to sexually harrass female passengers.
During peak hours the train carriage is female only. To what extent does segregation currently support targetted advertising and services? How will this evolve as the technologies to support more flexible content mature - electronic signage e.g. e-ink and devices like mobile phones? How might this affect the female commuters that decide not to use this carriage during these times?
Another example of commuting segration? Tehran.
Location:Japan
Japan » Tokyo
Predictability, Margins of Error, Quality of Life
Apr 05, 2007
Think about your daily commute - how accurately can you predict your time of arrival? To the minute? 5 minutes? Within an hour? And in what ways does being able to accurately predict where you will be when effect you and the people around you?
After graduating from college I lived for a number of years in Stoke Newington - a Williamsburgesque neighbourhood in north London made marginally more affordable by not being connected to the Underground network. Transport into central London meant getting on a bike or catching one of the iconic 73 Routemaster busses, with public transport putting the traveler at the mercy of road works and the then frequent IRA bomb scares*. A journey into town might take 35 minutes or then again an hour.
*For a number of years millions of UK citizens were affected IRA transport disruptions and in turn were forced to think about what their government was doing on their behalf outside the cosy confines of the ‘mainland’. In its own little way, changing the predictability of the daily commute bought the war in Northern Ireland home. Flyers in the US may well be experiences a similar pause for thought every time they take their shoes off going through TSA security.
Commuter travel in Tokyo is a very different story - public transport is both frequent and arrives on time (not that I'm unduly affected by it - its a city that is easy to get around on a bicycle). If a train is more than a couple of minutes late Japan Rail issues an apology and on arrival at the destination a queue may form at the station-master’s office to pick up an official late-note. Blaming public transport is not a viable excuse in Tokyo. Predictability encourages just-in-time behaviours and frees up time that can then be put to other uses. The flip side of this - not knowing the time of arrival puts the onus on travelers to maintain awareness of their current surroundings, keep abreast of the ongoing status of the transport as well as juggle destination related parameters - such as keeping colleagues or clients abreast of arrival times. If you have a job where being on time is a necessary component of functioning effectively then the ability to accurately predict where you will be when is also valued. Its a simple proposition - people tend to be willing to pay for stuff they value.
And yes the ability to successfully move millions of passengers, as in the photo of the Tokyo rush hour above, increases the flow of people to the point is literally and figuratively swept along by the crowd.
We are of course in the midst of significant shifts in the way we perceive time, location, and the world around us. Real time status updates are available from an ever wider variety of sources whether its knowing when a bus will arrive to parcel being delivered and yes, the mobile phone is playing an expanding role in supporting both micro-coordination and maintaining awareness of those things we, well, wish to maintain awareness of. Lateness is increasingly relative - when the people and things we coordinate with have sufficient awareness of your whereabouts they are more likely to mitigate the consequences of lateness by using the time for other valued pursuits. For some the concept of being late or early is a twentieth century notion.
But technology is far from neutral and affects us in different ways (the photo above is of a gender segregated queue for a bus in Tehran). What are the implications for being ‘late’ in business or social contexts? Or, bearing in mind societal stereotypes for way finding or map reading - what does it mean if as a woman you turn up late for a meeting compared to a man? Employers or employees? Brazilians or Germans? In the near near future your geo-location is just another parameter to decide to share with others.
Or at least that's the theory. Because many consumers won't fully appreciate what about their location is being shared and with whom - hidden behind deliberately opaque business models or poorly designed interfaces. Or quite simply they won't have a choice about whether to use the technology or not. Which is where the astute and empathic designer comes in - you have the power and with power comes responsibility.
Been playing around with Dopplr these past few days and whilst its too early to judge whether it will become a valued tool for the long distance traveler the signs are there: it requires minimal setup and ongoing maintenance to derive real value, and has a pleasantly neutral weather-forecast approach to informing members who is roughly where and when.
And why these photos from train stations around the world? The photo above is from Seoul Station taken during a study on Mobile TV early adopters [related essay]. Would-be passengers are relaxed and watching a sports event, trains and departure platforms have been announced well in advance of departure so they can switch their attention to other more leisurely activities. The photo below is of passengers in London's Waterloo Station, with only five minutes before the train is scheduled departure the platform has yet to be announced and fellow passengers spend their time intently staring at the screens.
Any (service) design students out there looking for a thesis project? Design a service utilizing mobile devices that helps passengers know where to be when. What would a station or an airport look like if everyone maintained an absolute awareness of their here-now, and there-next?
United Kingdom » Heathrow
Japan
United Kingdom » London
South Korea » Seoul
South Korea
United Kingdom
Harass, Segment
Nov 13, 2006
"On weekdays this car is 'only for women' in trains for Osaki and Shinkiba departing from this station from 7:38 to 9:33"
Of note: the necessity for gender segregation of train carriages; the precision of the rules; colour, design and placement of the sign.
Location:Japan
Japan » Tokyo
Demarkation of Segregation
Nov 09, 2006
Physical barrier on a Kobrasol bus deliniating who has paid and who has not, in the above photos. Male only queue for a Tehran bus in photos below - the female only queue was for the back half of the bus, and yes with equal number of seats in both halves.
At what part of the (service) process to sort/filter/segregate? Motivation for segregation? Implications of segregation on the objects/people being segregated?
Brazil
Iran
Brazil » Kobrasol
Iran » Tehran
Japan » Tokyo
Learning (Not) To Trust Mirrors
Jun 11, 2006
Mirrors are a common feature of Tokyo's narrow streets, a way of spotting not only oncoming vehicles but more often than not to avoid hitting cyclists coming the wrong way up a one-way street. Bicycles have it pretty easy here in Japan compared to, well, pretty much everywhere I've traveled and it's fairly common for example, that police ignore cyclists running a red light. As a newcomer here it took a while to learn what you could see in the mirror and what was missing, but now a back-street ride to the office is not complete without using street mirrors to see what lies ahead. And there in lies a potential conundrum.
There are a myriad of strategies and technologies that can help us avoid collisions in our daily travels, and with an increasing number of (GPS enabled) location aware mobile phones these options will only increase. What are the consequences of not looking at the road ahead, but instead relying on a filtered view of the road ahead?
Now think about what information could be overlaid on your journey. Would you drive differently if you were made aware that an oncoming car had a 'baby on board'? Or driving through a neighbourhood's narrow street your vehicle sensed youngsters playing nearby? Or that your feed of insurance company data highlights an accident trouble spot on the route ahead?
And given all this, who is motivated and by what reasons to manipulate your driving and navigating behaviours by re-filtering the data on which you base your decisions?
Pottering with K around Sangenjaya today, leaving the station we walked behind a PSP playing kid who negotiated the entire route from his seat on the train, through the crowded platform, up the stairs, through ticket barriers, up to ground level all without interrupting his two-handed game play. What is already achievable indeed.
Location:Japan
Japan » Tokyo » Omotesando » Omotesando, back of
Japan » Tokyo