designswarm thoughts

“Caring from a distance”

The tagline for a telecare (read remote care for the elderly) conference last year. Somehow doesn’t quite get the point across.

Last week I attended a small seminar in Eindhoven organised by Gregor Klemencic on the role and reactions of China to the design field.

Elaine Ann was there to talk about her work in helping western companies understand and work in the Chinese market, especially doing user research. Having met Elaine last year in Antwerp, it was a pleasure to see her again. Here are some tidbits of insights from her presentation and other speakers at the event in what was in general a stimulating afternoon in Eindhoven’s business park.

- Economy:

China is seen by he rest of the world as enjoying tremendous growth at the moment. What we musn’t forget however is that 80% of the population (or 800 million Chinese!) is still only involved in farming. That’s an absurd amount of people who still don’t necessarily have access to the modern life habitants of cities like Beijing, Schenzhen and Hong Kong have. This perceived growth is impacting access to work for those people as well especially in the manufacturing industry. Companies are now moving away from the southern provinces as it’s getting “too expensive” and moving to the northern parts of China. What will happen when that region too is deemed not economic enough for western needs? Will we move on to someone else? Who?
- Working culture

The Chinese work in a very hierarchical way. A manager will take a decision that will never be questioned by others. Western countries tend to have flatter structures in design environments and this is not something the Chinese are used to yet. Even when a project is in jeopardy or the motivations from the manager or senior person are miss-directed, no one will question it even months down the line.

- Social and business dynamics

Doing user research the way westerners do (here’s 50 bucks, let me take pictures of your home) doesn’t work in China. There is a deep sense of privacy and most user research has to be done with people you build relationships with (Elaine and I discussed the similarities in this respect to Italian culture) as most people would never let you into their home or talk to you about their lives if they don’t know you. This poses of course a (perhaps perceived) problem of objectivity in design research, but also something the designer has to live with. Equally this applies to how people do business: it’s about building a relationship, not necessarily about money, something that can seem very frustrating to some western businessmen (again not unlike the 3h italian lunches). They are generally a very defensive culture, not an aggressive one.

- Defining the design activity

For most Chinese businesses, understanding what we mean by design is not obvious at all. As Elaine pointed out, in Maslow’s mierarchy of needs, as a society, the western world is at the top and has buit meta-activities like design into it’s social and cultural fabric. The Chinese, after only 20 years of “freedom”, are still at the very bottom for the most part, so the idea of design is still quite foreign. This also explains that they haven’t fully understood our creative processes and have only imitated them so far, unable to develop their own. The idea that there are also different types of design and that design is both a verb and a noun is also something they struggle to understand. Clearly the fact that most of us can’t define most of them makes things even worse.

I must say that I found this seminar fascinating, especiall since China has been in the spotlight recently for not so glorious reasons. I remember hearing back in 2004, as I graduated from my BA about how the Chinese market was going to kill our industries, etc… and I still hear or read that refrain in the design industry sometimes. The fact is, not very many of us have gone to China, and so the mystery acts as a veil for the truth. Like any foreign land we’ve had little contact with, (or anything foreign for that matter) the first reaction is to get defensive and worry.

The more educated we become about this perceived “enemy”, the more we might just find ourselves facing new challenges and reevaluating how we view our work and our profession, which surely can’t be a bad thing. :)
More from Elaine in this Plastic news article.

A very merry un-Birthday Ale! (well one month in advance exactly, but nevermind :)

(Paul Hildebrandt in pure American fashion, trying to get the audience all rallied up, unsuccessfully.)
“Boy, the British really are reserved! Isn’t there another American in the room?”

(My friend Brock from the back of the room)

“Yeh, I’m trying to fit in!”

“When I take a plane and look out the window now I think: “this is just like Google Earth but without the zooming options”

Matt who obviously travels a lot.

Empty…

Originally uploaded by alexandra666.

Is a very “quebecer” expression that means that too much is like too little. This is a concept that truly and most definitely applies to communication in large corporations. Having spent the past month in what i will brand as one of the world’s “major communications company” it actually amazed me to witness people’s use of communication channels.

Firstly you’d be lucky if anyone answered their phones, most people would rather let it ring and at some point listen to all their voicemail messages, than deal with information straight away. Oh sure they would phone you back at some point, but its interesting to to see phone technologies being used as a sort of log more than anything.

Then there’s the question of meetings, because you’d be able to see people’s agendas, other people can book and therefore flood your time for you. A result of this is that people will book themselves “fake” meetings to make sure they actually have time to do actual work and not spend all their times in meetings. Meeting rooms were always booked which begged the questions why are people meeting in the first place? Might this be related to the open-space office model? Before, you had your own office space with a door, you could have a quick chat with someone about something that didn’t need more than a few minutes, or you could shut your door and blinds if you were having an affair with your secretary, i mean, working ; )

So what does this say about people and communications technology…i think the lesson here is that people will always find a way around technology, a way to get their way, control it and shape it to fit their attention span or ability to deal with information. I think there is therefore a real need for working structures that cater to that, instead of evading them, shouldn’t we enjoy and positively use the communication channels we are given?

In the meantime, i’ll just watch the office people around me having informal meetings at the Starbucks where i’m picking up wifi.

I had a fairly shocking meeting with a man who was supposedly interested in redesigning Youth centres in the UK. This sounded great to me especially because the landscape of childhood now, with the addition of technology, is very different from my own. Growing up in the 80s I only had contact with technology later on in life through my first walkman at age 11 maybe, my first computer at the age of 15 and was introduced to it through school computers when i was young, and then DOS and Windows 3.1 classes in Saudi Arabia. Ok so maybe i didnt have a classic childhood to begin with, but that’s not the point… : )

Now children have access to cell phones at age 6, a computer present in the house from birth, and they probably try to suck on an iPod shuffle once or twice…Age compression they call it in large toy companies, or the changes that children have gone through that make their traditional toys irrelevant more quickly, is an example of this change.

As children grow up, their social dynamics are now shaped by the tools they have: cell phones, texting, emails, chat, online communities such as MySpace (or Bebo in the UK) etc…

With all this in mind you would think that anyone attempting to redesign Youth Centres would be interested , even a little, in the ways that “growing up” have changed. You would also think that as an adult designer, you would want to have a very user-centrered design approach to that problem. Why aren’t joung kids using these youth centres. What is their perception of them. What so they seek elsewhere that the centre doesn’t provide? What would they like out of an urban structure that is supposedly catering to them? Those would be just a few of a miriad of quesions that one could ask kids of all ages. Wouldn’t this be the perfect way to make sure you’re not perpetrating the “patriarchal designer” model… the “i know best” model which has proven to fail and has led to the web-2.0-user-generated- content generation of applications to emerge?

But no. I sat there in Greenwitch park listening to a man who thinks that when designing youth centres “people don’t know what they want”, “children are not my client, society is my client”, “i dont understand the web”, “we need to work with experts in child development”, ” a child doesnt know what it needs to grow up properly”. I’m not saying that i disagree with all of what he was suggesting… but this is such a dangerous approach to take. It was like talking to a product designer who doesn’t know that people use his product. It was like going back in time and as i spoke to him about Fresh Start and experience prototyping, iterative design, etc… I saw how far removed I am from the normal world. I think I need to dumb things down these days for anyone outside of my field to understand me. I’m not sure what this means for me as a professional, but what I do know is that as Ezio Manzini (who I admire greatly) said :

“[Start with the premise that] people are smart” and what you will design with ultimately be better.

Another 8 hour-long sunday brunch sun-dappling, eating lovely home made food and drinking wine, what else is life for? The weather was a bit moody this time around so we had to move inside for the end of it but we had a lovely time. The nice thing about professionals in my field and the surrounding fields as well is that everyone has signed NDAs and rather than talk about work, you end up talking about what really fascinates and moves you. That’s got to be the most beautiful thing in the world, to watch someone talk about what they love doing or what makes them tick. So a lazy sunday with great and smart people, what else do you need?

Present at Alex’s brunch version 2.0:
Ben
Lee, Yuki and Mika
Liz
Pablo.

Alex’s place

Originally uploaded by merci.

The next version tomorrow starting at 12 on Oldenbarneveldtstraat in Amsterdam…might be rain this time around…: /

No there are no pixels involved here… its just that’s its the second one i put together and gosh did i meet a whole bunch of new people. Since I don’t know who will show up until they get here, ill post up who I had the pleasure of meeting last time to entice new people to show up tomorrow:

People who dropped by Alex’s sunday brunch version 1.0 in July 2006:

Ben
Lee , Yuki and Mika
Andy and Nadya
Tom and Matt (they often come as a pair)
Michael and Elena
Bradley
Richard and Merien
Merci.

Arrived

Originally uploaded by mbiddulph.

Matt is in San francisco at Foo Camp (Friends of O’Reilly) an awesome sounding invite-only web geek conference (or unconference where participants make up the conference by signing up to give talks and people camp out or in this case sleep on office floors) and I can’t help but feeling somewhat left out. As an interaction and industrial designer, where the hell do I get my networking done? Where do I get to mingle with like-minded people in a formal/informal setting? Where do I get to hang out with my peers who understand what i do and get stimulated by great work being presented, cold drinks and inside-jokes?

CHI ? Pff, too many events, not homy enough and too technical and structured and bloody expensive at that. Doors of Perception? Well i’d need to get shots for malaryia… and very theme-based again. SIGGRAPH? Well I’d feel not geeky enough and i didn’t go to MIT : P

Then there’s the “festivals” of the industry where it really gets boring. There’s SIDIM for a nice display of bathroon appliances and plastic swatches, then the London Design Festival which is great but always feels like i have to take a week away from my life to see everything and it’s more of an urban activity anyway…. same for the Salone del Mobile in Milan, where you could find really interesting things or get stuck looking at chairs all day if you’re not savvy enough or new to the scene.

Ok so what would i like to see happen? Well… i’d love to see people in an old abandoned warehouse or something, gather up their cool projects, their work, their work in progress products, interactions, etc… and then hang out and talk about it. Designers, especially industrial, don’t get the opportunity to talk about their work very often, what influences them, what they like, what they don’t… we’re all whiny and critical but at the end of the day, its about the result, a lot gets diluted by production and client restrictions. Maybe it would be cool to have the “left-overs of projects”, ie. cool stuff that doesn’t get made but illustrate that person’s thinking. To have a kind of informal structure that’s not based around exchanging business cards between talks (if you happen to be able to approach the speaker and beat the swarms of suck ups away) would be beneficial… more like creating discussions and new opportunities for new thinking through critiquing, chatting, even working on projects right there and then. Kinda like a workshop but less directed and more people around. Multi-disciplinary is also key to an vibrant mix of people…

So is there anything out there that caters to these thoughts? I haven’t seen anything… maybe i should just put my money where my mouth is… maybe i’ll just keep making 10 hour long brunches with people and put up the menu list of who attended after… there’s nothing more un-conferency than a brunch after all : )

I am back from a much too short trip to New Zealand ( I will spare you the horrors that followed my initial 11 hour delay, the lost luggage, additional 18 hour delay in Singapore etc… yuck), then back in Amsterdam I went to see the Airworld exhibition at the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam and talking to Victor and Molly I now have enough to write a very looong rant about air travel. So pull your tray table up and your seat in the upright position and off we go.

Let’s just lay down some basics I boarded a plane 6 times in a week, with 2 airline companies. I was also counting and have taken a plane 20 times in the past 2 years…(ugh, so much for sustainable living) so that kinda allows me at this point to draw some conclusions about the experience of flying with low cost airline companies and regular ones as well.

Lets start with the beginning: the half way journey. You’ve packed, you spent hours choosing how many pairs of shoes you really do need for a 4 day trip. (5? or 6?) and now its the painful bit. It’s the transport to the airport that’s the worse. Of course there’s always taxis, or a car, but in general taxis are soooo expensive (eg. in Amsterdam its 3, 60 euros to take the 15 minute train to Schipol or 40 euros to take a taxi). So what about a special oversized shuttle you could book perhaps, like the ones you have at hotels? SMS your address and time of pickup and it goes and picks you up and a bunch of other people, maybe even people from the same flight!

Then when you get to the airport, already sweating and wishing for a shower, commences the check-in process. With any air travel of course come the luggage restrictions (never mind the more recent restrictions), which usually means that i have excess luggage every time and have to pay a hefty sum of local currency. Why on earth is it that you can’t pay for excess luggage at the same point where you check in. You’re there, you hauled your luggage halfway across town, you cued up half an hour or more, the bags are on the scale, they’re inevitably heavier than 20 kgs, and then they ask you to go to ticket booth number blabla over there, take your bags with you, then come back with the receipt and drop them off again. So you pick up everything again, clue up at booth number blabla, and try to pay with your credit card but they only take cash. This would imply you’d have to then look for an atm, cue up again, pay , dragging your luggage with you. What I would like to see is someone at the check in say “oh yeh i have 12 kgs less?” and remove their clothing from the luggage right there and then (because really who wouldn’t pay the fine, its not like you can repack on site) then say “here, ill take this as a carry on then”…
How about this then? What if you were able, to go online before leaving, and once you’ve packed everything, go to your ticket reservation and pay the fine right there… you have a scale at home you can figure it out… and then if you declare a false weight, the luggage still gets checked at the check-in directly. A few steps removed to make for a smoother experience.

Now to the in-flight experience. After I went to the Airworld exhibition I was surprised to learn that the first seats were made out of wicker which they eventually covered with some padding and then made in metal. How odd to think of that material with airplane design nowadays. I guess this is just to say that the seat design is absolutely terrible, not only the position itself but especially the cushion they provide. I appreciate the very strict conditions under which they are operating but i would love to see an integrated and foldable piece of foam that would actually support my head when i am trying to sleep and fall sideways toward another person’s seat. The cushion they provide are a joke, more like 2 pieces of thick toilet paper stitched together…. sigh another thing that i discovered is that meals during flights were a big part of the appeal and a way to 1) give a sense of security to people flying the first planes, because surely if you can eat on a plane, nothing bad could possibly happen : / and 2) a way to divide time in manageable chunks. This now resulted in me eating close to 6 meals in 24 hours… i’m meant to be traveling not bingeing! Is there a way to perhaps deflect attention without necessarily having to deal with food? In one of the flights, I had a Sudoku grid on my snack box, nice idea but where do i get a pen from if i want to solve it? I remember as a child having color crayons and toys given to me to distract me… what’s the adult equivalent? TV? that’s it? What about the intraweb!!!! its fun and people can spend houuuurss on it without seeing the time go by : )

Speaking of food, the experience was practically surreal on the KLM flight on the way to Singapore the first time around… the first thing they fed us was a choice of either ice-cream or a Cup-o-Noodle! Branded and all! This is something that, for the majority of people my age at least is the food you get during your college education coz you can’t afford anything else… and this is what they give to people who’ve just paid a few grand for that flight…wow… : / Would this be a lame attempt at introducing passengers to asian cuisine? I hope not otherwise we’re all doomed.

Then came the Heinz meal of chicken, more branding but little taste. Because my boyfriend is a vegetarian, I’m particularly aware of this at the moment and noticed that there were absolutely no vegetarian options… i wonder if you must mention it when you order your ticket… ill have to do this next time, because 4 meat dishes in a day is just gross. This could make airlines think about who their passengers are and how long they’ve been flying as well. Transfer passengers have been sitting down for what feels like years and need much more useful stimulation than food at that point. Anything else? Inflight yoga stretching solutions? (that actually take into consideration the lack of personal space that you have?)

It was also the first time since sept 11th that I was given metal cutlery , something that I’m sure has been banned again in light of recent events, but boy did that feel weird after so many years of plastic utensils. ( I was once told that companies do all their utensil and cutlery design tests on El Al the Isreali airline because of the religious restrictions. If it passes the El Al tests, it’s good for everyone.)

The one last archaic notion that I think could use great improvement, especially as a woman is the onboard duty-free store. Ask any woman and if you gave her the choice between an expensive piece of kitsch jewelry or a small bottle of hand cream of a moisturizer the choice is quite obvious. Body Shop products anyone? Travel portions of useful in-flight beauty products would sell no problem. All the women in the flight all have their little pouch of stuff to make you feel like you’re not a zombie when you fly and when you step out the plane… there’s definitely opportunities there.

So be smarter, listen to people who are power users and get me a bottle of Evian facial mist!

I can now declare I am cursed.

It’s monday night and i am still in Amsterdam. I showed up with Matt at the airport only to see on the blinking billboard in red LEDs under the delayed column a 8:00. I didnt know what to think at first: delayed 8 hours? 8 cabbages? No it was really delayed to 8 o’clock tomorrow morning. This means that I would get into Singapore at midnight tomorrow night and would have to stay overnight and leave at 20:20 on wednesday night and then get to Auckland on thursday morning, a ful 24 hours later than planned and with an extra night in Singapore… arghhh and jetlagged I would have to go back on sunday morning…

I am cursed…

I’ve been blogging for over a year now and i often wonder if perhaps i’m just talking to myself. I know of a few people who might be reading these rants of mine but I am unsure really of who my captive and wonderful audience might be… maybe you can post up a comment introducing yourself?

Maybe this will stop me ranting…maybe not. But that’s why you love me right? ; )

The Guardian sometimes loves to highlight how completely off the map americans can be. This is the perfect example of useless puritan and conservative America: a photographer takes pictures of children crying because she’s taken away their looli-pop and the net goes wild screaming of child abuse… while of course seeing the body of a dead and tortured man in Irak is still perfectly acceptable… people! dont drink and blog!