designswarm thoughts

I’m writing this, half thinking I should probably wait to leave the country.

Walking through Singapore, you cannot but wonder who really lives here. Impeccable streets (and I really mean impeccable, not a single piece of rubbish on any lawn or anywhere), very little public space or street benches, ads on the telly about parental planning, and an airconed shopping mall at every corner.

A friend of mine called it “the most american city in Asia” and I think that’s probably true in the 1984 sense of the word America.

The Wikipedia page is strangely absent of any political history section and Google reeks of not so happy reports on what the situation might be like and how people have been taught to feel about it. I met a few people this weekend who went to jail or had been arrested for what seemed like quite foolish reasons.

All slightly unsettling. I leave tomorrow evening.

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A by-product of traveling so much as a child was that I ended up learning English in an American schoolin Kuwait and have never been able to shake off the middle of the road accent that came with it. This makes for interesting conversations with bewildered Americans who can’t believe I’m Canadian and that my mother tongue is actually French. Perhaps that’s what I resent the most when I travel to the US: I can blend in so perfectly. I’m used to sticking out like a sore thumb in Europe and there’s something nice about that, it keeps me eager to learn about local flavours and let them rub off on me.

I’m also the first to admit that I greet everything American with an unhealthy dose of cynicism which would explain why an 8 day trip to San Francisco wasn’t exactly something I was looking forward to (11h flight from London, argh). Everyone around me, especially Matt, has always been a big fan claiming that SF and NYC “weren’t like the rest of America” and were much more European. In hindsight, I would have settled for “nice” instead and let the city impress me on its own for what it was. Here are a few random suggestions of things you might not have accounted for:

1. IT GETS COLD
“Due to its sharp topography and maritime influences, San Francisco exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates. “

There’s a little phenomenon called fog that somehow people forget to mention. Huge and fluffy fog rolling down from the top of the city’s hills downward, lowering the temperature dramatically in mid-afternoon. Doesn’t matter if it’s mid-July, it’ll get cold, trust me. Bring layers.

2. RENT A CAR
The city is essentially made to be driven through, most blocks being quite short and interrupted by 4 lane, 2 way streets, making the number of interactions with cars quite frequent. Biking isn’t out of the question, but the rolling hills are really steep, so a car comes in handy if you want to see more than your neighbourhood. If you don’t rent a car, expect to spend your time hailing taxis or mostly looking for them. Having the exact address of where you’re going to helps as taxi drivers don’t need to know the city very well to get a license and you’ll get the odd n00b who will charge you 40 dollars because he got lost.

3. DON’T STAY DOWNTOWN
“Nestled between successful commercial areas and high priced residential areas, parts of the Tenderloin have historically resisted gentrification, maintaining a seedy character and reputation for crime.”

Unlike most cities, the area which one might assume is the most touristy, is adjacent to a poverty and crime ridden area that will make any Parisian suburban ghetto look like a walk in the park. Stay in Hayes Valley or in the Mission.

4. GET A COMPLETE MAP OF THE CITY
Somewhat related to the point above, the city’s downtown area is actually not the most interesting, and the nice walkable parts of the city are a little more southward.

5. GET A COFFEE AND CHECK YOUR EMAIL
This is of course the best wifi-friendly place by far but be prepared to have to sit in a caffé to have access to it. Not that many consumption-free environments in general. Some cities are good at public space (benches, parks, etc), this isn’t one of them.

6. DON’T LOOK FOR ONE STYLE
From winding streets, 40 degree hills, silli cake-like art-deco mansions and refurbished cinemas, this city has been influenced by many an earthquake, fire and economic ups and downs, making every street a different and totally unexpected experience.

Just went through 2 “secondary security” checks at San Francisco airport today and got introduced to this delightful contraption.

“To collect microscopic particles for analysis, the EntryScan³ takes advantage of a natural upward airflow around the body called the “human convection plume.” By not using forced airflow from a fan-which stirs up dust and other contaminants-cleaner samples are collected.”

What this means is that you walk into this box with glass doors on one end and without warning they will spray you with air quickly and at every angle. Not only is it really scary and unexpected, but you also get the added pleasure of having it blow your shirt upwards… not usually what you’re looking for from a security device.

Gotta love the US.

Just to cheer me up… here’s some of the latest lovely things from Dopplr

Coming back from a trip to Israel reminded me about what it used to be like to commute to and from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the 90s when I was young. There’s lot of stuff about sur and sousveillance and much digital ink has been spilt on the subject of security and fear, but airport interactions in 2008 either make you feel safe, afraid, frustrated or bored. From the long cues at Heathrow where you really feel you are wasting your time and might never see your luggage again, to the other end of the spectrum, embodied by my experience with  El Al.

The whole thing started because I was late. The truth is I hate flying long-haul as I get completely bored and usually drive Matt insane after a few hours. Living and traveling around Europe, I never usually have to deal with that particular issue as most flight last under 2 hours. A glorified bus.

After a number of poor timing and transportation decisions around London, I showed up at the El Al counter an hour before the flight. I immediately knew I was in trouble as the young assistants (one seemed to be about 19) started questioning me quite thouroughly: “Where are you going in Israel”, “Who do you know there”, “How long have you known them”, “Where did you study”, “What do you do”. This didnt feel like anything you’d get out of the Ryanair staff. The young women (there were 3 of them at that point) were looking at me quite intently as if they had already made up their mind that I was a danger to their airline and by extention, their country. There was absolutely no agressive behaviour, the tone of voice was not raised, but the suspicion lay under the surface. They then proceeded to put my luggage (I hadn’t checked in at that point you must remember) through an x-ray machine larger than your average kitchen. Something in my laptop bag disturbed one of the young women and she asked for it to be scanned at least 5 other times. My check-in luggage was then carefully put on a table, as one of the other young women proceeded to ask me more questions about where I had lived and tell me a bit about her own travel, opened, all carefully packed items removed one by one, inspected and swabbed for explosives.

I settled into a state I can only describe as submissive as my future clearly lay in their hands.

They then proceeded to tell me that my hand luggage would be waiting for me at the gate (this implied they didnt want me to add anything to it before I got into the plane) and that I had to get to the gate as fast as possible (ie “run Alex run”) because the flight was leaving soon. So with little other than my passport, boarding pass and iPod, I sprinted through El Al’s dedicated security line guarded by a policeman (soldier?) holding a machine gun.
I ran like my life depended on it across the terminal only to get to the gate and have to go through body search and x-ray all over again. At that point it was clear the flight had been delayed, so panting and coughing, I relaxed at last.
I guess at the time I booked my tickets, I had wanted to make it a more authentic experience and never thought I would get in the plane with respect for a country and a company I had never encountered before. Safety and security at it’s most literal level.

I’m in Tel Aviv. My nose is sun-burnt. It’s warm all the time. First vacation since backpacking in Spain in 2003 which was also the last time I went for a swim in the sea. Yes, yes, 4 days isn’t exactly long enough, but I take what I can get.
Note to self: should do this more often.

They may look unrelated but these words will save your life here.

Pants = underwear as opposed to trousers

Bin = garbage

Chips = fries

Crisps = chips (i know, very confusing)

Wanker = idiot

1. London doesn’t want you here, which is why the weather is always shit. It’s your job to carry an umbrella at ALL TIMES. Even on those sunny-looking days. It’s a trick, don’t lt it get you.

2. Always remember to comment on how shit the weather is, it’ll make you agreeable to the locals.

3. If you’re Canadian, when accused of being American, enjoy those few moments of embarrassment the person will go through, while finding a reason they really loooove Canada and have been skiing there once.

4. London still doesn’t want you here, which is why it’ll try driving you off the sidewalk by put half of its inhabitants in your way on Oxford Street. You need to develop an equally agressive and fast pace and directional skills usually required for video games.

5. Alcohol is social glue here. If you don’t want to become a functional alcoholic, and antisocial, make sure to pay for the next round, but leave enough in your glass to not end up drinking at everyone’s pace. (Remember, glasses are larger here as well so when they serve you a “large glass” of wine, that’s actually a quarter of a bottle.)

6. You are here  because you WANT to be here, not because the quality of life is high, believe me it isn’t .

2 days to go to the glamourous and always exhausting Salone del Mobile.

Hopefully I will have time to see more things as last year I was exhibiting Topoware with Karola. Looking forward to some apperitivos with old friends and new ones.

If you’re in town, ping me!

For a number of reasons, I was looking into cutting my Brussels visit short by a few days. Looked up on my 2 non-favorite super cheap airlines only to find that a flight from Brussels to London does not exist.

That’s the first time a travel resctriction made me think “thank god!”. So I’ll just stay put and enjoy the mussels instead of wasting 10 times my weight in carbon.

As a “frequent traveller” I really enjoy work that rethinks our relationships to maps and geography. I wish I could wear my trips on sleeves sometimes as it would help avoid the very long drawn conversation I need to have with people to explain why I love Europe so much and that the only North American thing about me is my accent.

Lovely work by Elisabeth Lecourt.

I’m trying to tie loose ends before I go spend 2 weeks working with the wonderful people at fo.am in Brussels. Yes grant you it’s not very far, but I really need to step out of London once in a while, to remind myself that the rest of world doesn’t live this frantically.

While I’m there I’ll be the first speaker at Pecha Kucha Brussels where I’ll be talking through a presentation entitled: “Or how I stopped worrying and learnt to love electronics”, about the work we do at Tinker and what I think it means for designers.

If you’re in the area, do ping!

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.

The London Underground is one of the few places where you’re likely to find me reading adverts, and I bet I’m not the only one (see Lesson 23). Fact of the matter is the Tube is the fastest way to get where you want to go, but the price to pay is higher than the £1.70 on your Oyster card.
Taking “The Tube”, is a most brutal experience, both socially isolating and physically violating as half of London (it seems) tries to cram themselves in the same carriage as you. Your mind wants to desperately wander as you stand there, squashed, avoiding looking at others at all cost, looking up to the overhead advertising banners. It’s a moment of boredom and mental survival at the same time and somehow having an iPod doesn’t quite help.

Molly Steenson wrote (and spoke at this week’s IxDA conference) about how boredom can influence designers and architects, but what I also find fascinating is how to design for someone who is essentially stuck in an environment that will force them to see your design… out of boredom. Would you want to design for that environment at all?
The motivation for the “user” here is not genuine interest after all, but escapism. Give them something to read, and not only will they read it, but they’ll be grateful for it (which explains why there are about 3 free papers distributed outside of stations in London).

Is there opportunity to change the nature of the environment or to change the nature of the relationship to its content? Should the carriage know where you’re at in your book and display the next page, even if others might read it too? Should there be theme-based carriages? Events at the back, products in the middle, news at the front? Should the real-time location of the train be somehow displayed, showing how long there is to go till the next station and alleviating some of the stress?

Just some thoughts and I don’t claim to think they are all that interesting :) but I think there are lots of opportunities both for really playful interactions to exist in this shared experience and environment.

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So I am no longer a “St-Pancreas virgin” as a fellow traveller in the train referred to it, and it’s frankly really great. It took me a little over 2 hours (or about 40 rows of knitting since that’s what’s making transportation such a breeze these days) to get to Bruxelles and 1h50 minutes to come back! I can’t even get out of London in a car in half that time!

The problem of course with super efficient services everything else starts to pale in comparison and your expectations get skewed.

I was supposed to get to Antwerp for lunchtime on Friday and since it took me 2 hours to cross the Channel and get into Belgium, I figured going to the Netherlands was going to be a breeze… what an idiot!
Turns out it takes about 3 hours both ways and would have cost me about half of the price of my Eurostar ticket. Obviously this was unacceptable and totally unfeasible (It would have meant I would have had to be in Antwerp for a little over 2 hours before turning back to be able to catch my train home), so I had to cancel…

Would I have planned better without the Eurostar? Probably. But I would have ended up taking the less sustainable solution of grabbing a flight back to London… Maybe this is something services like Dopplr can start to address more clearly: managing travel expectations in a world where the diversity in service delivery forces users to make less sustainable decisions.

“You can fly tomorrow and meet Y, and if you’re in town B suggests you go have coffee at Tree & Leaf”.

Thanks to Lina from fo.am for a great stay in Bruxelles.