Germ Defence

I just watched Steven Soderbergh’s film Contagion (2011) about a plague that spreads rapidly across the world with the help of global transportation networks. The film’s message made me pause for thought, especially as someone who contracted the Swine Flu from a township dweller in Pretoria during the height of the epidemic … and then proceeded to take the illness on a tour of some of the world’s biggest airports.

As cities become denser and more crowded, and as human mobility increases, how do we prevent the germs and viruses from spreading? Cultural practices play a big role but those spread slowly and unevenly. In China, both germophobic paranoia and hygenic nonchalance are on display. It doesn’t help that germs cover our touchable surfaces (paper money, door handles, key pads, touch screens, et cetera). So does that mean we should turn to technology? Will gestures and motion-detection overtake touch as a mode of digital interaction in those situations where there are hygiene concerns? And what happens when hygiene concerns spread to a wider array of situations?

I notice a few new low-tech options gaining popularity in Asia. Surgical masks are giving way to facial sneeze-guards, which makes sense considering the importance of smell in cooking. Food preparers are now expected to wear plastic gloves, a practice which is spreading to diners eating hand-held foods. How effective are these technologies? Are they just gimmicks and half-measures? Or are highly visible gimmicks the point? That is to say, do these technologies exist to plaquate fears more than guard against germs? Or raise awareness of hygiene problems?

Smiley Face

A printer. A delivery man. A neighbour. Common feature: a genuine smile; a smile that’s expressed with the eyes, not just the upturned edges of the mouth. This distinction, I’ve just learned, is called the “Duchenne Smile”.

In its basic form, the smile is recognised universally across cultures. The universality of the smile helps when trying to communicate in a place where you don’t speak the language. It often instills a sense of trust and ease in others—it serves as a “social lubricant”, so to speak. However, as Ron Gutman points out in his book Smile (2011), smiling isn’t exactly the same across cultures. In many cultures a smile isn’t considered genuine unless it’s of the Duchenne variety. As an example, the focus on the smiling eyes can be seen in the different emoticon tradition that developed in Japan.

These emoticon characters are important for preventing misunderstanding when communicating with text, given how often we look to facial cues to interpret meaning (for detecting sarcasm, as one example). That said, as Gutman explains, smiling can create all sorts of cross-cultural misunderstanding. For example, smiling is considered the appropriate response for blundering embarrassment in some cultures, yet the appropriate response is something more obviously remorseful in other cultures. Everyday public smiling differs from place to place, ranging from poe-faced reserve to eery perma-grin. And subtle differences in smile can betray where you’re from, with experiments demonstrating that Americans show more upper teeth while Brits show more lower teeth.

Those interested in the psychology of impression management take note: smiling creates rapport. It improves customer satisfaction, which is why the “emotional labour” of smiling has a market value. People who smile are considered more charismatic, attractive, approachable, and trustworthy, provided the smile isn’t perceived as contrived. Most importantly from Gutman’s perspective, smiling energises and puts you in a good mood … something which is socially contagious. All of this makes me wonder, as communication and commercial transactions move online, how do we build rapport and convey friendliness when real smiles aren’t available? What’s lost by substituting smiles with emoticons, cutesy illustrations, and stock-photos of smiling people?

Finally, I obviously couldn’t write something about smiling without posting some art by Yue Minjun, the Chinese artist who’s famous for his wacky smiling men. Understanding the subtle subversiveness of these figures can tell you a lot about Chinese politics.

(Related: Expressions of Genre)

Organic Simulacrum

This installation by THUPDI is called The Tree of Life. It was part of a light show in the centre of Guangzhou. The name suggests that the stemmed pods represent a forest canopy, with jungle tendrils hanging down. To my eye, however, they seem more like lily pads, as seen from below. Perhaps I’m too strongly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous lily pad pillars in the Johnson Wax Building. The texture also reminds me of podular plants with a leafy skin, albeit with an alien luminescence. The magnified photographs of plant life seen in science magazines, as well as the aesthetics of science fiction, are undoubtedly my cultural references in that interpretation. That said, it’s entirely possible that these were the actual design inspirations, with the installation called The Tree of Life because a committee of bureaucrats just wanted a vaguely uplifting cliché for a name.

I’m a big fan of design inspired by the organic world. I’m strongly influenced by the thinking of Ross Lovegrove, especially his idea of “organic essentialism”:

Organic, meaning the way we think; meaning a full organic, three-dimensional, polysensorial view of life. So you have massive awareness of what’s around you. Organic, meaning form; organic meaning material in the way we deal with cradle-to-cradle [comprehensive recycling] issues. So that organic has more of a meaning than you think. The second one is essentialism, which means nothing more and nothing less than you need. So you scrape away all of that stuff which is extraneous. The economics of anything benefit the world because it costs you less material, it costs you less money, and often costs you less effort to be economic. And I don’t mean minimalism because minimalism without meaning is just cheap.

As futuristic as The Tree of Life looks, the installation is rather antagonistic towards this vision of design. It’s a brash, power-hungry, centre-piece spectacle. There are minimalist influences, yet it can also appear ornate (when the tendrils light up). It’s a temporary structure constructed with conventional materials. Guangzhou planners have acquired a taste for avant-garde architectural styles, but not much of a taste for avant-garde design philosophies.

Rachel Armstrong’s excellent book Living Architecture (2012) was published today. She points out that cities, particularly “mega-cities” such as Guangzhou, are deserts of natural life. That need not be so. Instead of treating the natural world as an inspiration or a source of raw materials, designers could integrate biological systems into the actual buildings.

Synthetic-biology approaches change our expectations of architecture. Rather than being inert, buildings could respond to the seasons as our parks and gardens do, with living coatings adapting to the availability of more or less wind, sunlight and water. Protocell-based coatings offer not only the capacity for a unique growth of materials but also potential applications in “healing” “broken” buildings, by which molecular interactions detect and deposit material into stress fractures to form “scar tissue” at the microscale. … Novel materials may change the “fertility” of an urban environment. Cities could be active sites of resource production rather than sumps of consumption. (pp. 56-57)

Thus, instead of relegating organic life to little patches, organic systems would become a more integral part of the city.

How would this vision of a “living city” change urbanite’s connection to the natural world? And their perceptions of organic life? What affect would it have on aesthetic tastes? For example, Armstrong discusses a scenario in which “living paints” on buildings would change colour or texture as they react to the surroundings, such as drawing pollution out of the air. How could biological building surfaces become interfaces that convey meaningful information about our surroundings?

Contemplative Photography

I’ve been reading The Practice of Contemplative Photography (2011) by Andy Karr and Michael Wood. The book is about noticing in a mindful way, with the camera as aid. As the authors put it:

Unfortunately, much of the time, we are cut off from clear seeing and the creative potential of our basic being. Instead, we get caught up in cascades of internal dialogue and emotionality. Immersed in thoughts, daydreams, and projections, we fabricate our personal versions of the world and dwell within them like silkworms in cocoons. … Generally we are unaware of these currents of mental activity, and it is hard to distinguish what we see from what we think about. … Photography can be used to help distinguish the seen from the imagined, since the camera registers only what is seen. … We are often surprised to find that our photographs do not show what we thought we were shooting. (p. 2)

Very true. The authors make a distinction between the conceptual and perceptual ways of seeing. We are invited to shed the intellectual concepts that cause us to selectively filter out the world. Instead, we are encouraged to view our surroundings in a primal, emotional, unassuming way. This awareness allows us to dwell on aesthetic details that would otherwise be ignored. That’s not to say this mode of awareness is undiscerning. Certain aesthetic values, such as simplicity, draw the eye as we explore inquisitively. As you might suspect, this approach is strongly informed by the Buddhist notion of mindfulness.

I find it useful to switch to this intuitive, contemplative noticing from time to time, especially to jog my brain out of routine. My take on mindfulness, however, is mostly about conceptual ways of seeing, with the concepts drawn from design and social science thinking. Knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and attention to minutia can help you see things others ignore and take for granted. And taking on the concepts of another culture can introduce you to new ways of seeing and interpreting. True: conceptual thinking is a filter. But who says you need to use the same concepts all the time? As Ellen Langer points out in Mindfulness (1990), mindful learning comes from paying attention to how concepts and categories guide our way of seeing, while regularly suspending and redefining those mental constructs as we reflect on our experiences.

As you can see from the progression of photographs above, I enjoy delving into the aesthetics of simplicity … but not for long. There’s always a high concept around the next corner.

Religious Status

I’ve been reflecting on the latest religious imbroglio in Jaipur. I won’t go into the details. The important point is that it’s a free speech controversy between nonreligious novelists and religious activists, with authorities seemingly siding with the latter. The controversy highlights India’s model of secularism, which strives for religious harmony by trying to put the many religions on equal footing while policing inter-religious conflict. This isn’t a separation of church and state, as you’d find in France, Turkey, and the United States. It’s the promotion of equal status of every religion within the public sphere. Often times, however, the model puts the vocal nonreligious in a precarious position.

You see India’s version of secularism on view in the streets. Religious imagery in public spaces celebrates multiple religions, not just one. Of course, different religions have their own artistic traditions. Should the imagery reflect these different styles? What are the risks of not doing so?

A new book by Charles Taylor et al., Secularism and Freedom of Conscience (2011), wrestles with the main challenge posed by this model of secularism.

Under an ethics of dialogue, citizens engage candidly in discussions about the foundations and orientations of their political community, using the explanatory and justificatory language of their choice, while at the same time displaying sensitivity or empathy toward core convictions that are an integral part of their fellow citizens’ moral identity. But how are we to reconcile that ethics of dialogue with the fact that liberal and democratic states also define themselves as “open societies,” that is, societies in which freedom of expression and the vigorous debate of ideas reign? (p. 108)

The authors waffle on that question, concluding that freedom of expression shouldn’t be limited, but that an “ethics of concern” should cause people to self-censor their potentially hurtful views for the sake of community cohesion. What about an “ethics of resilience”? That would entail a duty of citizens to develop a “thicker skin”—be less sensitive, take things less personally, act less threatened by opposing views—on matters of political and religious controversy? Which ethic will become dominant as societies become more diverse? Put another way, which ethic is better at reducing conflict? At promoting freedom of conscience? Or, as a matter of pragmatic coping, will people be required to adopt both ethics to some degree?

Mobile Computing

The revolution in touch-screen computing continues … sometimes much faster than the trade in accessories.

Motorcycle couriers in Seoul have made tablet computers—Samsung Galaxy Tabs, by the looks of it—an integral part of their job. How can a courier keep these displays front and centre while speeding through the city? By turning the tablet into a handle-bar-mounted dashboard, of course. These are crude-looking hacks. That’s not to say they aren’t well thought out. Notice the padding to counter road vibration … the easy-open containers for swift removal … the sun shade to prevent glare … the sturdy weldings to secure the holder … the chopstick holder for, uh, lunch. But notice, too, the obscuring of the motorcycle gauges and the creation of an enormous blind spot. There seems to be a market for a polished, adjustable, and better situated version.

When desktop computers revolutionised the office, professions were transformed relatively slowly. For example, accountants had their jobs changed in the late 1970s, whereas many executive jobs weren’t changed much until two decades later. Tablet computers seem to be spreading more rapidly. Today we see motorcycle couriers relying on tablets. What other commonplace jobs are ripe for a touch-screen make-over? Which ones aren’t very computer-intensive at the moment? What are the lucrative accessory markets just waiting for an enterprising entrepreneur to move in?

Tarmac Motif

Lines painted on roads are there to regulate traffic. Unfortunately for traffic authorities, unlawfully crossing a line seems like a minor transgression to most motorists. That’s why bustling cities are increasingly placing hard barriers on roads to guide traffic. Instead of hard barriers, however, what if cities just changed the symbolism associated with the lines?

As you can see here, some roads in Seoul are subdivided with lines into motor-vehicle lanes, bike lanes, and walkways. This is the repurposing of narrow roads to encourage multimodal usage instead of car dominance. To reinforce the subdivision, the surface of the road has been painted a brick motif with dark outlines (bike lane) and light outlines (walkway). The motif makes it cognitively easier to perceive the different lanes. The illusion of brick lanes also increase the anxiety caused by crossing the lines illegally. For example, not only is a car parked on the walkway easier to spot, making it more likely that the driver is subjected to social sanctions (such as tut-tutting), but the significance of the transgression is amplified by the different surface; it appears as if the driver has gone “off road” physically. Even if everyone knows that the surface is just a paint job, the anxiety-inducing impression can persist.

The main drawbacks of this approach: the intricate patterns have to be repainted periodically, wear unevenly, and are less obvious than a raised surface when it snows. The motif can also look tacky, especially amid gentrified surroundings. As a design problem, how can some of these drawbacks be overcome? For example, would a different pattern work better? Different materials? Subtle textures? How can the effect be maintained while also ensuring cost effectiveness?

(Related: Colouring Outside The Lines)

Kitty Shelter

For every consumer product you can name, there’s probably a Hello-Kitty-branded version being sold somewhere. The Japanese commercial character is the standard-bearer of the cuteness economy. That said, I’m pretty sure that the Sanrio corporation, owners of the brand, didn’t license this Hello Kitty homeless shelter. It was clad together by a member of Seoul’s cantankerous, underground-dwelling homeless population, the one depicted in Jin-Mo Jo’s brilliant film Suicide Forecast (2011). In a world where branding is ubiquitous, is it possible for a company to avoid negative associations with its proprietary imagery?

Fashion companies are recoiling from such cases. News agencies broadcast images of a Norwegian serial killer wearing the Lacoste alligator logo, as well as an arrested Mexican drug-kingpin showing off Ralph Lauren’s polo-player logo. Not all publicity is good publicity. A consumer base’s sense of brand affiliation can sour quickly when the brand suddenly connotes the wrong kind of associations. Yet undesirable associations can also open up new markets, as some companies discovered when gangsta rappers made a point of ostentatiously trumpeting luxury brands in songs and music videos. Brand owners can’t always influence the “buzz” surrounding their products … and that can have unanticipated benefits.

That doesn’t mean brand owners won’t try to exert control. I fearlessly predict that, in the coming years, news agencies will be pressured into blurring out logos in imagery of crime suspects and disaster victims. You already see this censorship tactic in some markets when advertising is inadvertently caught in news imagery. Some logos are blurred out in trashy reality-TV shows. Will such practices become widespread? What’s fair game for this form of tangential censorship? Will a disconnect emerge between our ad-saturated surroundings and ad-sanitised published imagery?

(Related: Gun-running Muppet and Cuteness Economy)

Around the Block

Wayfinding in South Korea is dominated by high-tech gadgetry. It’s refreshing to see a clever, hand-crafted alternative that adds charm to an otherwise sterile space. Wood slabs represent each shop in a craft market, as annotated in hangul script. Colour coding differentiates each neighbourhood block. The map takes up an entire wall, making it easy to see from a distance and from many different angles.

As makeshift as the map looks, there are several sophisticated design features in use. As merchants come and go from the market, slabs can be replaced easily. The lack of strict uniformity prevents the switch from looking out of place. The colour pallets of each neighbourhood block cohere, showing an understanding of how colour works. The colours don’t obscure the wood grain, creating a rustic look that highlights the use of natural materials instead of synthetic ones. The overall impression is of a place that is approachable and down-to-earth. And there’s an implicit, subtle reminder that the products in the market are the result of human hands, not robots and assembly lines, and should be valued as such.

What are the other ways in which conspicuous hand-crafting and raw-looking materials can add contrast to our plasticky, enamel-coated world? There’s a fine line between shabbiness and sophistication with such an approach, it seems to me. The design has to age gracefully. It has to demonstrate artistry, care, and taste. What will become more rare and valuable in the future: the natural materials or the ability to apply them skillfully?

Egghead

Packaging an individual food item is controversial when it already has a protective covering, such as a shell or skin. The company Del Monte learned that lesson the hard way when confronted with a political backlash over its plastic-wrapping of individual bananas. Preserving the freshness of the food often has less to do with the decision to package than the needs of the information economy (inventory-management bar-codes, branding logos and slogans, legal disclaimers, expiration dates, and so forth). I’ve talked before about one way around the problem: imprinting directly on the natural covering. These egg hats from a Seoul convenience store are certainly wasteful, but at least have the virtues of being minimal in size and informationally space-efficient. Zero-packaging grocery stores (such as Austin’s in.gredients) may be on the right side of history, but the current global trend is more informational-packaging, not less.

What makes the egg hats particularly interesting is the design inspiration. Would it have occurred to a non-Asian designer to add conical hats to the eggs? In other words, to what extent do actual conical hats used throughout Asia inform the design as a cultural reference (as opposed to a purely functional form)? Are the hats a subtle message to consumers? Does the egghead analogy make the eggs seem cute, and therefore more desirable, in a place where the cuteness economy is popular? Would most customers outside of Asia perceive the analogy? If not, to what extend would that undermine the spread of the design?

(Related: Custom Skin)

Rent-a-mob

Street protesting isn’t permitted in China. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen. Tens of thousands of spontaneous mobs cause authorities headaches every year. These usually involve a local dispute or injustice that escalates as others join in. Many of the mobs get violent. There are also the illegal strikes (which sometimes involve kidnapping bosses) and sit-ins (some quiet and some not so quiet). The widespread impression of China as completely pacified by authoritarian overlords could not be further from the truth, which explains why the state is so touchy about protest movements in general.

And then there’s this roaming mob. It isn’t protesting high prices. It’s protesting high prices. That is to say, it isn’t a political protest against inflation, stagnant wages, and the high cost of living. It’s an advertising ploy to draw attention to a grocery store’s special deals. Motives and affiliations matter. So do political optics: this isn’t an aggressive group of rabble-rousers shouting radical slogans near a government monument; it’s a laid-back group of commercial-jingle chanters who amble casually down the sidewalk in a shopping district. Most bystanders treat the mob as just another onslaught of marketing messages to be filtered out. Quite a few bystanders, I suspect, are a bit unnerved by the spectacle due to the symbolism that street protests have in Chinese political culture. The mob is probably not the grocery store’s best marketing idea.

This case has me thinking about the role of rent-a-mobs in other places. Social media technology has helped coordinate spur-of-the-moment, mischief-making “flash mobs”, as explained by Bill Wasik in the book And Then There’s This (2009). In recent years, information technology has been used successfully to recruit and rally protestors in old-fashioned sit-ins and street protests. How long will it take before advertisers make productive use of these methods? Or is the risk of adverse consequences keeping advertisers away?

Kuribayashi’s Drift

The snow is starting to accumulate where I am. Not much snow. But enough to signal the change in season. And that has me thinking about Takashi Kuribayashi’s installation at the Museum, Beyond Museum in Seoul. The installation is called In Between. What you’re seeing in the photographs is the centre piece, which the German-educated Kuribayashi calls Wald aus Wald [Forest from Forest].

An amorphous snowdrift overwhelms the sharp-edged, geometrically defined space. The branch and crinkled-paper textures contrast nicely with the clean walls. The layers and levels of the exhibit remind us that, in the snowy forest, one creature’s ground is another creature’s roof. The vantage points in between the layers offer some of the most interesting perspectives.

As I write this, I’m watching the snow fall on a bustling city. Cities are full of levels and layers, with another one forming before my eyes. It has me wondering: what are all the in-between perspectives of the cityscape?

Ad Dress

Where do people look when they’re standing in a cramped subway train? Where can they look from their vantage point? Where can they look safely because of people’s instinctual inhibitions and the prevailing social norms? Those are the places you’ll increasingly find advertising, I predict. What kind of advertising? What kind of information? Given that most people in the vicinity have a phone, I suspect that ads will take advantage of that. The game is as much about breaking down the barriers to attention and elaboration as it is about enticing curiosity.

There is a difference between visability and social visibility. We ignore those things that we don’t distinguish conceptually as noteworthy objects (perceptual inattention). We ignore those things that make us feel uncomfortable for whatever reason (selective inattention). In a social encounter, we may glance at a stranger to acknowledge their presence but then avert our gaze to prevent feelings of awkwardness (civil inattention). When people stand in close quarters they tend to be more self-conscious and anxious about where their gaze is pointed. Thus, when in dense urban spaces (subway standing-space, elevators, queues, and so forth), people look for “safe” places to stare: at the walls, at a phone screen, and at the yoke of another’s shirt. And in the “attention economy”, as advertisers call their markets, these spaces are where the money is to be made.

Tiger Abstraction

Rare keepsake. Good-luck charm. Medicinal ingredient. Revered icon. Mythical character. Ceremonial prop. Religious symbol. Cute, eye-catching advertising mascot. We may be using up all of the real tigers. But we haven’t exhausted our imaginations in the ways we portray tigers and imbue those images with meaning.

I’ve been browsing through a compilation of tiger icons (威虎百相, 2010) from a design contest for the 2010 Asian Games held in Guangzhou. The tiger-claw image, shown above, comes from that book. Tigers are portrayed using a wide variety of styles and analogies. As often happens with design contests, however, it’s really the styles and analogies that are being featured, not the subject matter per se.

True wildness has becoming a very rare thing. Few places have gone untouched by human manipulation. How far have our images of the natural world strayed too far from the real and the literal? Are we wallowing in abstraction? As artists and designers, how important is it to return to the real subject to study its character and subtleties?

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the claw of an endangered tiger species costs about US$20 on the Chinese black market.)

Side Scroller

Touch screens are spreading rapidly. Designers are struggling to develop intuitive interfaces for this novel method of computer interaction. There’s lots of experimenting going on. And there have been quite a few interface disasters as a result.

This interface strikes me as one of the better experiments. The information kiosk helps people find what they’re looking for on a pedestrianised street in central Seoul. The top half of the screen shows storefronts. The bottom half is a map that shows the location that corresponds to each storefront. By swiping left or right with your finger, you cause the top of the screen to scroll along the street. Thus, you can walk virtually down several blocks of street with a few swipes of your finger. The images of each storefront aren’t detailed enough to do any actual window shopping. And you have to scroll through twice, once for each side of the street. More often than not, the storefront image should provide enough clues about what each store is about. If not, then supplementary information is offered. The big benefit is that there is a close correspondence between what’s shown on-screen and what you see if you actually walk down the street, making it easier to find your way. The big drawback, however, is that you have to remember the on-screen image because you can’t take the screen with you. Our memories are far from perfect.

How does the interface have to change in order to facilitate window shopping? How often must the images of storefronts be updated? How would such window shopping change the storefronts? Could window shopping of that kind come to your phone, in Google Maps street view for example? Is it sufficient to have an infrequently updated images yet frequently updated information overlays that tell of new deals and merchandise? What if the screen could allow you to walk virtually into each store? Or is that ceding too much control to a screen interface while deprecating the more vivid and personalised experience of in-store presence?

Suitable Moments

From Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2007):

The meso-American practice of cooking corn with lime and serving it with beans, like the Asian practice of fermenting soy and serving it with rice, turn out to render these plant species much more nutritious than they otherwise would be. When not fermented, soy contains an antitrypsin factor that blocks the absorption of protein, rendering the bean indigestible, unless corn is cooked with an alkali like lime its niacin is unavailable, leading to the nutritional deficiency called pellagra. Corn and beans each lack an essential amino acid (lysine and methionine, respectively); take them together and the proper balance is restored. Similarly, a dish that combines fermented soy with rice is nutritionally balanced. As [Paul] Rozin writes, “[C]uisines embody some of a culture’s accumulated wisdom about food.” Often when one culture imports another’s food species without importing the associated cuisine, and its embodied wisdom, they make themselves sick.

I mention the Pollen quotation because it contains an important lesson about the design of food products: mixing and matching ingredients without considering how others have done so before is myopic (and potentially harmful). Culture is a vessel of knowledge. I also want the quotation to set the context for this soy-milk vending machine.

Soy milk has been part of the Chinese diet for millennia. Soy is also a high-volume, low-cost ingredient that’s made its way into diets across the globe. It’s mixed into most processed foods. It’s fed to rich and poor. It’s fed to animals. What is missing as the beverage is removed from its original cuisine? Given that excessive soy consumption can create all sorts of health problems (such as hormonal imbalances caused by the phytoestrogens in unfermented soy), what are the risks of branding the ingredient as a “superfood” and mixing it into everything? In places where soy milk has a long history, have recent changes in diet and eating habits lead to problematic consumption? Are we asking the right questions and doing the right research on the mixing and matching of food ingredients?

I notice that health-food stores are generating new markets by advertising particular foods for the most suitable times and contexts. In this case, however, the same food (two flavours of soy milk) is touted as ideal for various everyday moment. The underlying idea is to get people to think of soy milk as a “comfort food”—a food with a sentimental meaning and emotional appeal—with cute graphics reinforcing that message. How important is it to make the consumption of particular foods more meaningful? Are these meanings valid or just marketing spin? How are these meanings changing the culture? What are the risks of creating new social contexts for food consumption while, at the same time, shedding the context of traditional meals and cuisines (and the knowledge embedded within)?

(Related: Ingredient Branding)

Image Capture

How willing are you to step into a taxi that appropriates your image for use in an advertisement? What if that advertising is designed to create an embarrassing spectacle, such as showing you sitting on a toilet? Does it matter that the toilet-sitting ad is a stylised illustration instead of something more realistic, such as a photo? What if that image appropriation can be construed as an endorsement of a product you’ve never used?

When capturing your image in this way, is consent implicit? That is to say, is it reasonable to assume consent has been given simply by entering the taxi? What about those who don’t notice the ad because, for example, they enter the taxi at a crowded airport? Will we eventually see video cameras capturing the images of passers-by in order to project them onto advertisements? What kind of consent should be required in that case?

Bus Tracker

Posting arrival schedules at a bus stop is very helpful. But printed schedules are burdensome to read (they requires some mental calculations) and can’t be updated easily. So some cities have combined bus-stop signage with electronic schedules, such as Berlin:

This LED screen has its advantages. It can be viewed at a distance and from awkward angles. However, it also has a very low information resolution; that is, the amount and density of the information displayed is lower than what is available with newer screen technologies.

South Korea is the land of screen-tech. Seoul’s bus-stop schedules take advantage of that. The higher information resolution of this screen allows for a more informative interface. More routes and buses can be shown at one time. The intervals between buses, and between buses on the same route, are displayed too. (Notice the points-of-ellipsis on the roads to indicate larger gaps between buses.) That information can help people time a quick visit to a local store or café, for example. The bus and road graphics make it easier to make sense of the information, especially if you don’t know the local language. The graphics could potentially be used to show different types of vehicle and the current capacity of each one. Auxiliary information can also be shown, such as notifications about route changes, stoppages, and emergency alerts.

What new patterns of behaviour can be expected as screens show a larger and larger portion of the local transit system (as opposed to the most immediate and presumed “need-to-know” information)? How does this change service expectations? How can these information kiosks become nodes for transmitting useful city data to phones and other personal gadgets? In other words, how can the screen information and data transmission lead to personal on-the-fly optimisation of the daily commute?

Occupying Space

When you occupy a public space, how do you define your personal territory? How do you mark that territory? For example, what personal objects do you set down in the space and how do you arrange them to indicate the space is being used? As another example, what body postures do you adopt to indicate occupation of the space? What are the acceptable uses of that space? How do you reassure others that your use of the space is, indeed, considered legitimate? What is an acceptable size for your personal territory? How are the boundaries between your territory and the neighbouring territory negotiated? What happens when someone violates, without your consent, the territory you have claimed?

When you occupy that space with your friends, how is the group’s territory defined? How is the group territory divided into personal spaces? And into sub-groups? How are the larger group’s territorial boundaries maintained? Who’s invited in? How is a new occupant accepted into the space and how do the territorial boundaries change to accommodate? When the group sets down objects to define the space, how are they arranged? For example, are some objects placed in the centre to indicate that they’re for everyone’s use? Are some objects not allowed into the space, such as forbidding shoes from entering into a living space for cultural reasons?

What formal rules restrict the group’s occupation of a public space? How long are they allowed to occupy? What objects are allowed into the group’s territory? For example, are fold-up tables and chairs allowed? Are food and beverages allowed? What about tents and sleeping bags? How do the presence of these objects define the usage scenario? What role do the authorities who set the rules play in defining that usage scenario? How can that definition be changed?

In Hong Kong, female migrant-workers from Southeast Asia occupy spaces throughout the South Island: causeways, stairwells, public parks, sidewalks, and so forth. In a city where privately owned space is scarce and expensive, occupying public spaces makes the city more livable. Occupation builds community ties, ties which provide a vital support function while so far from home. Much can be learned from how these people occupy spaces. For example, much can be learned from the ways pious Indonesian women occupy spaces differently than emo Filipino women, as well as the norms that allow mixed-ethnicity and intergenerational groups to share spaces harmoniously. Also, we can learn a thing or two about how to make the most of public spaces which, in most cities, aren’t used enough … and certainly aren’t used effectively to build community.

Moreover, these occupiers can teach us a great deal about our own attitudes towards public space.

Security Theatre

At some banks in Seoul, you can choose how you dispose paper receipts. You can toss them in the trash. Or you can run them through a mini-shredder, a tall receptacle with an input slot just large enough to fit a bank-machine receipt. Presumably, the shredder also makes it easier to recycle receipts because the paper gets separated from other forms of trash at the moment of disposal.

There is something strangely satisfying about running receipts through this shredder. There’s the visceral delight of listening to the machine’s nom-nom-nom. There’s the peace-of-mind of knowing that no one can spy on you by picking through the garbage. Then there’s the childish spectacle of destroying low-tech (paper) waste with over-the-top high-tech means. If the shredder is supposed to encourage recycling behaviour, then it’s a brilliant motivational ploy.

That said, if the shredder is designed to promote security, the usage scenario isn’t very rational. Bank-machine receipts don’t contain sensitive information. Even if you consider bank balances and deposit amounts to be sensitive, the customer is anonymous. Perhaps security isn’t the point, however. The point is the appearance of high security and the ritual of extra security precautions. It’s what Bruce Schneier calls “security theatre”, or high-profile security procedures designed to give the impression of high security without necessarily making you more secure. In his forthcoming book, Liars & Outliers (2012), Schneier argues that a certain amount of security theatre is necessary to maintain public confidence given the many security threats that the public fears but hardly understands. However, as he also stresses, an over-reliance on appearance over substance is a strategy that results in nuisance, vulnerability, and fear-mongering.

Does security theatre like this shredder create paranoia? Is a certain amount of paranoia a good thing? Or does superficial technological gadgetry create a false sense of security that makes us careless when it comes to more serious threats?

Hair Trade

Continuing on the theme of Central African trade with China …

Never mind the appropriation of the image of American singer Beyoncé Knowles. (Commercial image rights don’t extend evenly across the globe, to understate the obvious.)

Instead, think about the travel and trade logistics that makes this cosmetic treatment possible. In all likelihood, a low-wage worker travelled from rural inland China to Guangzhou to attach human hair, gathered from an Indian ghetto, onto the heads of travellers from Central Africa, mostly Nigerian women. The hair stylist would have had to deal with China’s hukou system that restricts internal migration, although it’s also possible the restrictions were ignored. The African would have had to negotiate the more onerous parts of the Chinese visa system. Ignoring those restrictions while in China—by overstaying your welcome, for example—would result in an involuntary trip to Macao, something which has been happening a lot lately. And, of course, there’s no guarantee that the hair actually came from India. Hair from Sri Lanka would come with fewer bureaucratic tangles. It’s even more probable that the hair stylist doesn’t really know the source of the hair.

As C. K. Prahaled argues in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2005), there is lots of purchasing power and entrepreneurship among the world’s poor. How much international trade between the poor is fragmented and undermined by institutional controls? How important are the work-around artists to keeping that trade flowing?

Swag Safari

For over a decade, China has invested heavily in African natural resources, owing to the Chinese economy’s hunger for raw materials. A large wave of Chinese migration to Africa helps make the trade flow smoothly. The exact number of migrants is a matter of dispute. The figure is estimated to be somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000 people as of five years ago (according to Michel & Beuret’s excellent book China Safari, 2009). As you might expect, the flow of people goes both ways. Guangzhou is believed to have upwards of twenty thousand African residents and a steady flow of visitors. That has changed the commercial landscape in some parts of the city.

This shop is located in one of the neighbourhoods that caters to Central African travellers. The shop sells low-cost, personalised props and souvenirs to be given away to friends, allies, and guests—swag, as it’s called nowadays. Most of the world’s swag is made in China, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that such a shop exists. But how well can the shop cater to the tastes of Central African markets located 10,000 kilometres away? Do the travellers passing through provide enough of a market signal about the wants and preferences in Lagos, Kinshasa, and Porto-Novo? Or does the international standardisation of swag (t-shirts, coffee mugs, pens, et cetera) make big differences in taste a peripheral consideration, limited to colour and size?

Central Africa is a region that is rich in the visual arts. You can tell that just by looking at the elaborate and colourful patterns of the dresses worn by African women in the neigbourhood. How much of that visual richness is diluted by soulless generic swag? How personalised can the swag be if the artwork and templates have no connection with the person’s culture, such as the fuzzy heart motif shown above? What needs to happen in order for real African motifs to be applied? And how could products more useful to the context be used?

A bigger consideration: artistic styles don’t seem to travel across borders as readily as mass-market products do. Why not? How could that be changed?

Annoyance-Free Zones

Crowding creates a problem: it’s difficult to get away from the petty annoyances caused by gadgetry, such as headphone buzz, video-game bleeps, and phone-call chatter. One approach is to designate certain spaces as noise free zones, such as on this Hong Kong Metro line. Unfortunately, the “Quiet Car” doesn’t really live up to its name.

I’ve been thinking about this case while reading Palca & Lichtman’s book Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us (2011). Much of what annoys us is individual-specific; that is, it depends on our personal likes, dislikes, and accumulated experiences. However, there are a few universal annoyances. One of those is the “halfalogue”. It’s one thing to tune-out a dialogue or monologue, but quite another to tune-out one side of a conversation we overhear as someone nearby chats on a phone. Our brains habitually try to fill in the blanks by completing the sentences. The predictable rhythms of conversation can’t be discerned and we get irked by the unpredictability, including the inability to predict when the irritant is going to end. The increase in mental processing (“cognitive load”) makes it difficult to focus on other things. And so we persevere with mild scorn.

Can we train ourselves to be less sensitive? I’ve also been reading the old Roman Stoics, notably Seneca and Epictetus. Their modus operandi is to not get bothered by things. That includes everything from petty irritants to large emotional upheavals. Seneca talks about the time he was lodged in a noisy bath house and remained unbothered. Many of us can do that, however, because it’s relatively easy to tune out random noise in the background. How would Seneca have faired in our world full of less predictable irksome sounds? The Stoics wouldn’t have withdrawn from society as a matter of principle. But their modern Asian relatives, the Buddhist monks, do cope by withdrawing into monasteries and other quiet places. How is emotional tranquility achieved in dense urban environments full of noise pollution? How is it achieved by those of us who haven’t devoted our lives to fending off emotional disquiet?

Palca & Lichtman give a partial answer to that question in their discussion of ambulance and police sirens, noises designed to be annoying. They note that New Yorkers are particularly adept at tuning sirens out, which creates a challenge for siren designers. Will city dwellers simply develop the mental filters to tune out their surroundings? What do we lose when that happens? Will we fight technology with more technology, such as noise-cancelling headphones and more effective sound barriers? Who gets left out by that approach? Will norms of mutual consideration evolve to discourage the most annoying sounds? What social sanctions are necessary for that to be successful? Will we enact public policies aimed at setting limits and dividing up the city into more and less noisy zones? What design and enforcement practices are required to successfully implement that? Or is the answer “all of the above”?

Basket Hack

In Guangzhou, in between the masses of tall buildings, you can find labyrinthine alleyways that are like little villages. That’s where I came across this hack. All sorts of mass-market products are discarded from the tall buildings, such as busted office furniture. All sorts of hand-made craft products are brought into the alleyways, such as wicker baskets. Put the two together and you get some very interesting hybrids. A tall basket with wheels that can quickly change direction: what a great idea!

I have to move my office next week. I’m also giving a speech on office design a few weeks later. So I’m thinking a lot about the inertia and conservatism of modern officing. The evidence suggests that you get happier and more productive employees when you give them more control over the design of their office. Moreover, you get all sorts of improvements when the office designs are better tailored to the actual work tasks being performed (instead of relying on identikit, one-size-fits-all designs). Something as simple as putting wheels on a piece of stationary office furniture can add quite a bit of flexibility.

What other kinds of hacks would you want in your place of work? What appliance or piece of furniture would benefit from rolling … or folding … or hanging … or swinging … or stacking … or clipping together? How could designers make those adaptations easier so that change doesn’t require hacking?

(Related: Designed, Adapted and Metro Hacks)

Digital Tout

Here’s a street peddler plying his trade in Old Canton. As you can see, the fellow isn’t the usual sort of tout. He isn’t flogging wares that are splayed across a table or clustered on the ground. He isn’t pushing brochures at passers-by. He isn’t opening a trench-coat to reveal illicit merchandise. No, the man is wired up with a portable speaker and showing people the goods on a video screen (mounted on an collapsable tripod). The video screen expands the range of goods and services that can be sold on the sidewalk. As importantly, the set-up creates new possibilities for evading the authorities. The gear can be quickly tucked into the bag. Memory cards can be flung into the gutter or deleted on the fly. Everything is portable. No trace is left behind.

In a city where cheap (locally made) electronics are everywhere, should we be surprised that video screens are starting to appear in the lowest of low-brow markets? In a high-tech police state, shouldn’t we expect portable screens to become prevalent in urban grey- and black markets?

This example reminds me of the Warren Ellis graphic novel Transmetropolitan (1997-2003). The novel takes place in a dystopian megacity of the future. Even the most lumpen of the lumpen-proles make extensive use of (what we would consider) high-tech gadgetry, including ubiquitous video screens. Is that so far fetched? Will we eventually see beggars using recycled electronic displays to grab attention, for example? Or will they show digital imagery of their living conditions … or their family members … or their back-story? How could that open minds and wallets?