Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect Where’s The Phone

This essay presents data from a series of Nokia street surveys conducted between 2003 and 2006 that explored where people carry their mobile phones and why. The first study in this series, conducted in Helsinki during the summer of 2003, was designed to understand the extent to which people noticed incoming communication. Since then the study has evolved to encompass the carrying location of other objects, collect a visual snapshot of mobile phones and their ‘owner’s’ and has since been run in eleven countries across four continents.

We am what you eats

A Japanese friend has drawn my attention to Amupurin, the website of a husband and wife who’ve gone “back to the land” after working as graphic designers in Tokyo. They’ve built a wooden house in Hokkaido and made a “pudding factory cottage”, selling the resulting puddings online. Their nearest town has no stores, not even a vending machine, but they do have a pretty solid DSL connection and update their site frequently. They also have a separate blog, The 3 Points Supper, which is a simple record of the food they eat each day (one photo per meal).

The visual poetry of the Amupurin food blog is complemented by beautifully stilted English labels. “Sardine’s plum tree dry boiling, Japanese yam, Wheat meal, Miso soup, Tokyo, 15.04.2007″ reads yesterday’s entry. Friday’s lists “Leek natto, OKAHIJIKI, Pickled Chinese cabbage, Leaf red pepper, The miso soup, The cereals rice, Tokyo, 13.04.2007″. Sometimes it might be something as simple as “Beer, Salmon’s canned food, Potato salad & onion, Hokkaido, 04.04.2007″.

The formula isn’t new. Cornelius is the first person I’m aware of to have maintained a strictly food-only blog, but keitai cameras make it a commonplace today. In fact, it’s considerably easier to see the food a Japanese person eats each day than to see representations of the person herself. This is because it’s considered bad etiquette in Japan to push yourself forward for admiration. But cooing over food is not only okay, it’s more or less obligatory. Japanese TV, for instance, is at least 50% filled up with people cooing over food.

Mulling the meaning of this, I happened to be watching Michael Wood’s epic TV series “Legacy: The Origins of Civilisations”. In the film on China, Wood says “A cuisine is a whole way of seeing the world. It’s one of the simplest and most direct ways in which people can enjoy life — a mark of civilisation. And the Chinese excelled in it. As they still do.”

One of the ways you can tell you’ve passed from one civilisation to another is that the binaries no longer work the same way. Things you took to be natural opposites suddenly no longer are. And it occurs to me that the food blog is a beautiful tool with which to slice and dice Western binary oppositions. Let’s try it on a few of the best-known.

Body / Soul (a specifically Christian binary): I’ve often heard Japanese people say that, in the Japanese conception of what a person is, the stomach is the absolute centre of things — a very tangible and worldly equivalent to the nebulous, otherworldly centre Christians are likely to designate “the soul”. But of course Japan’s fusion (via Shinto) of spirituality with the seasonal agrarian cycle means that to oppose the tangible and the spiritual is a false opposition; stomach and soul are the same thing (the nearest equivalent we have in the West is the black American expression “soul food”). That’s why a portrait of what a Japanese person ate might be a much better depiction of who they are than a picture of their face.

Individual / Collective: We can also perhaps collapse the Western binary between the individual and the collective if we think of a blog showing the food an individual consumes daily as a kind of self-portrait which acknowledges dependence on others. Japanese preface eating with “Itadakimasu!” — I will receive! It’s an acknowledgment of interdependence and of the collective nature of food-making. But without that collectivity (of seeding, planting, growing, of trading and purchasing, of preparation and serving), and without the belief system that binds all this together into a spiritual as well as a logistical whole, no individual.

The idea of food as a portrait isn’t a purely Japanese one, though. The 18th century French philosopher Jean-Anthelm Brillat-Savarin said “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”. It’s a line Tucker Shaw quotes in his book “Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth” (2005).

High / Low: And Tucker puts his finger on another key Western binary — high / low — when he criticizes the way Western food is usually presented: “Food magazines are like fashion magazines: They celebrate what’s beautiful, new, or unusual, but very rarely report on what people really wear or eat.” His demotic, documentary approach is more “Japanese” in the same way that a street fashion magazine like FRUiTS challenges the standard high / low binary of the top-down fashion industry. FRUiTS (much like Fumi Nagasaki’s Street Life video report for Flasher) is a grassroots documentary approach to what people are actually wearing, rather than what celebrity fashion professionals like Karl Lagerfeld or Hedi Slimane would like them to be wearing.

As if to prove he’s an American after all, Tucker Shaw justifies the demotic grassroots sociology of his food blook with a bit of paradoxical bragging: “This project is a shameless bid to make history. I want my pictures to show up in anthropology textbooks 200 years from now. Some day, people are going to wonder about what people ate in New York City around the turn of the century. Maybe I’ll be the one of the guys they talk about.”

He da man! Well, da mankind.

Originally from Click opera
reBlogged by michael on Apr 16, 2007, 5:50AM

Ning: cultural implications of the new social networking

Originally from This Blog Sits at the by Grant McCracken
reBlogged by michael on Feb 27, 2007, 10:17PM

épater les bourgeois

An anthropologist who studies America is struck by the fact that there
are some people in this culture who believe they know better than other
people in this culture.  It’s not always a delusion and when indeed
they do know better, we are well served.  Smart, thoughtful people give
us the benefit of their advice.

But too often the critics act as
if they are they only ones who "get it," that without them the rest of
us wander without light, unable to see what is wrong, unable to see
that something is wrong, and certainly unable to put wrong things right. 

Here is A.O. Scott in today’s New York Times. 

[T]he
phenomenon of family viewing - the mothers and fathers of American
taking their children to the movies - has become a central cultural
activity consistent with the highly participatory style of parenthood
currently in vogue.  I would not wish it otherwise, but I also worry
that the dominance of the family film has a limiting, constraining
effect of the imaginations of children. 

Here the film critic
presumes to know what happens in the interaction between child and
family film.  Mr. Scott may actually have done research here or
consulted those who do, but I would be very surprised if this were the
case.  No, this is the almost certainly something that has just
occurred to Mr. Scott.  It is his little worry, a stray thought.  Now,
lots of us have lots of stray thoughts and some of us are shameless in
our efforts to blog and flog these thoughts.  But only a few of us
presume to issue a "cultural advisory" of this kind, as if Mr. Scott
were a tweedy version of the Director of the Center for Disease Control
and called upon here to put the nation on alert.  ("Honey, where’s that
Jules et Jim DVD? Tommy’s seen Shrek so many times his eyes are
starting to roll back in his head.") 

But that the real
problem is not the alert, it’s that the alert is always the same.  Oh,
look out, popular culture is dumbing down and bottoming out.  In this
case, that movies has fantastically imaginative as Nemo are putting our
children at risk. Evidently, these critics believe themselves to be the
canaries in the coal mine.  When they exercise their higher faculties
it is to see what we cannot, that our culture is in trouble.  It is
this presumption (this arrogation) of superior knowledge that puts my
teeth on edge. 

Oh, sure, I’m sure there are moments when
warnings are in order.  But warning is the critic’s penny whistle.
Really, there are only so many tunes it can play.  The trouble is there
is a lot of other, more pressing, critical work to do.  Indeed, the
warning function of the critic is now so reflexive, it does not
represent a genuinely analytical or explanatory accomplishment.  Now,
it’s just yet another blast on dime store plastic.  The anthropologist
can help feeling that there are other things to observe, but as long as
the critic is captive of critical orthodoxy, the real work of
anthropology (or whatever one calls one brand of pattern recognition)
goes undone. 

We know where this comes from the what Lionel
Trilling called the “subversive” role of the critic: “to detach the
reader from habits of thought, giving him ground from which to judge
and condemn the culture around him.”  Now that the culture has escaped
the uniformities and conformities of mass culture, this work is done.
(I wonder if it was ever necessary.  I think popular culture
rehabilitated itself.  Aaron Spelling lived long enough to see TV
transform itself.  What displaced or at least transcended him, was the
likes of Homicide’s Tom Fontana and The Wire’s David Simon, and not
Lionel Trilling’s intellectuals.)

Anne Thompson has a great column today in the Hollywood Reporter.  She described the new novel by Tolkin, Return of the Player.  (Tolkin wrote The Player
the Altman made the basis of his famous movie of the same name.  Anne
is very  kind but it is hard not to suppose that Tolkin is not applying
old model criticism to a new model world. 

Return of the Player
provides a moral dissection of the values of the entertainment world’s
moneyed elite.  It’s about how panic, selfishness, greed and fear can
"drive you to do things you shouldn’t do," [Tolkin] says.  "It’s about
the difference between panic and social responsibility."

This is boiler plate and the very stain that every word smith wishes to
inflict about tinsel town.  But when we read on we discover that some
of the fear and panic comes not from greed but something else. 

"The
entertainment industry has been unsure of where things are going, how
to conduct business, what movies should be or what entertainment is.
It is TV, or a download?  Everyone was grabbing at what the Next Thing
should be.  I was interested in that anxiety, fear and panic.  That’s
what the book is about."

Hmm.  If this is what the book is
really about, it’s not about Hollywood, it’s about all the world.
Everyone is grabbing at what the Next Thing will be.  Our professional
lives depend upon it.  At least the Hollywood execs are coming to terms
with the world as it is, which is more than can be said for the camp
that promotes critical orthodoxy. 

But am I not the author of a massive contraction?  Do I not presume
to know better when I criticize critics for presuming to know better?
No and here’s why.  I never think its my job to give warning about what
is happening in contemporary culture.  (Let this blog be entered into evidence.)  It’s my job to describe it
and to have a go at explaining it.  My private feelings are a private
matter.  I may be appalled by My Super Sweet 16, but that doesn’t
matter.  The last thing the world needs is another Mr. Smarty Pants
rendering judgment.  I can’t believe our patience has held out so
long.  Surely, the time will come when we repudiate the experts.  (For
a wonderfully quiet act of repudiation, see the article by Chris Hedges
on Mark Chrispin Miller.)

No doubt I feel too passionately about this issue because I’m
Canadian.  Wha?  I was raised on the West coast of Canada where we were
the constant recipient of moral advise and policy directives from the
mandarins in Ottawa.  We thanked God we were thousands of miles away
from the center of things, and a little sorry that telegraph,
telephone, and newspaper distribution stretched far enough to reach
us.  We hoped that one day Canada Post would break down, that mountain
paths would fill in, that train tracks would twist and buckle, that
cloud cover would prove inpenetrable, and that finally our betters
would just shut up and leave us alone.  I don’t know what we thought we
would do with our little village in the rain forest but at least our
mistakes would be our own.

But I digress.  The point I wish to make here is that fantastic intellectual resources are now locked up in the "critical" school of cultural commentary.  We can only release these resources when we persuade the offenders to give up judgment and take up the work of explanation, or at least investigation.  More plainly, no more pony rides on the high horse of righteous indignation.   No more cultural advisories from the Center for Disease Control.  Cease and desist judging us from on high.  Or as my dear friend Hargurchet Bhabra used to say, it isn’t popular culture anymore, it’s our culture.  Judge it if you must, explain it if you can. 

References

Hedges, Chris.  2001.  Public Lives: Watching Bush’s Language, and Television. The New York Times.  June 13, 2001. here. 

Scott, A.O.  2007.  And You’ll Be a Moviegoer, My Son.  The New York Times.  January 5, 2007. here.  

Thompson,
Anne.  2007.  Risky business: Tolkin’s new "Player" in everyman
territory.  The Hollywood Reporter.  January 5, 2007.  here.  subscription
required.

Thanks to Zyra for the image.  See Zyra’s website here.

Originally
from This Blog Sits at the

by Grant McCracken


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 5, 2007, 11:21PM

UK Design Council on user-centred design and experience design

The re-designed website of the UK Design Council features a series of new sections, including some on user-centred design and experience design. User-centred design The central premise of user-centred design is that the best-designed products and services result from understanding the needs of the people who will use them. User-centred designers engage actively with end-users to gather insights that drive design from the earliest stages of product and service development, right through the design process. Psychologist Alison Black gives an insight into how a user-centred approach can lead to innovative products and services that deliver real consumer benefit. Experience design Experience design concentrates on moments of engagement between people and brands, and the memories these moments create. For customers, all these moments of corporate experience combine to shape perceptions, motivate their brand commitment and influence the likelihood of repurchase in the future. Brand experience has the power to engender a greater degree of empathy, trust and loyalty from both customers and employees. Ralph Ardill of the Brand Experience Consultancy gives an overview of how experience design delivers new insights into how brands are perceived.   Unfortunately the experience design section is strongly brand-focused and therefore company-centric, rather than people-centric, and the write-up is seriously criticised by Peter Merholz, president of Adaptive Path, in a reaction to this post entitled “Experience design is not about brands“: “For ‘experience design’ to truly succeed as a discipline, it will need to distinguish itself from brand strategy and design, and demonstrate its distinct value as a contributor to business. Unfortunately, the Design Councils attempt at definition simply muddles things further.“ Other sections that caught my eye: Roger Coleman explains how inclusive design ensures that goods, services and environments are accessible to more people. The ability of trends research to generate vital insights into customers’ and users’ future needs is making the practice increasingly important for all sectors. Trends expert James Woudhuysen explores the issues The UK services sector is growing, but service design and its management are often poorly planned, argues Bill Hollins. This article reveals how companies can gain competitive advantage by applying design techniques when creating and improving their services. Interaction design is the key skill used in creating an interface through which information technology can be manipulated, writes Nico Macdonald. As products and services are increasingly being created using information technology, interaction design is likely to become the key design skill of this century.

Originally
from Putting people first

by Experientia


reBlogged

by michael

on Dec 31, 2006, 7:40AM

Street cool - virtual ethnography in the blogosphere

For business trends Mr Evers has a network of spotters who rely on blogs covering business ideas. “Often those blogs are local, so especially our Japanese, Chinese and Brazilian contributors pick up stuff that may not pop up in mainstream US and British publications,” he says.

“We actively scan MySpace, Cyworld, Habbo Hotel, Flickr and YouTube, as one can keep a finger on the pulse of (youth) culture by reading what people are putting out there, what they do, what they like. It is the same for activities in virtual worlds like Second Life.

“Everything is available, everything can be found and observed, with millions more joining this space each year and contributing.

“Our role is becoming more of a curator as the average marketer just doesn’t have the time any more to track everything. We are also an adviser on what to actually do with these observations if you’re a brand. What we do is virtual anthropology.”

Read full article here.

…

Originally
from core77.com's design blog

reBlogged

by michael

on Oct 2, 2006, 8:17AM

Ethnographic research on teens and brands

Starcom MediaVest Group (a subsidiary of the Publicis Group) and CNET Networks, Inc. revealed the results of an ethnographic study on teens and brands. The extensive ethnographic youth study was aimed at “helping marketers understand how to reach today’s elusive population of 13- to 34-year-olds, responsible for $600 billion each year in consumer spending”. The study set out to assess “how young people feel about brands, how they talk about them with friends, and how they take in, manipulate, and redistribute marketing messages”. In addition, the study identifies ‘brand sirens’, i.e. “the super-influencers of the youth market, including who they are, what they do, and how marketers can better reach them”. Not surprisingly (in light of the sponsors), the study shows that “today’s young people care about the brands they use, talk often with their friends about brands, and like watching real-time television”. - Read press release - Go to study website - Download presentation (pdf, 29.3 mb, 58 slides)

Originally
from Putting people first

by Experientia


reBlogged

by michael

on Sep 26, 2006, 6:03AM

the trouble with theory (EPIC ethnography III)

My EPIC presentation took a position impatient with theory.  I will
later accused of being anti-intellectual.  This must be wrong.  As my neice pointed out, I am uncle-intellectual.

The trouble is not with me.  The trouble is with what it means to solve
problems in a dynamic culture.  The trouble is with theory.

Marshall Sahlins argues that every theory is a bargain with reality.
It gives us certain kinds of knowledge by denying us the possibility of
other kinds of knowledge.  (My phrasing.  All regrets if the master had
hoped for something more nuanced.)

Working for clients, we are obliged to deal always with shifting
perspectives, mountains of data, complicated problem sets and an urgent
time line.  As good marketers, there is lots to crunch, much to
contemplate, and the BFI (big f*cking idea) can come from any where.
Anyone who is a slave to any one theory puts the enterprise at risk. 

Solving the problems of most clients demands methodological lability and
an intellectual opportunism.  We want to have all the theories we have
ever encountered at our disposal.  In my case, this must mean a
willingness to draw upon structuralism, semiotics, structural
functionalism, functionalism, post modernism, and much else besides.
We want to be agnostic.

Theoretical loyalty is a terrible idea not least because we are willing
away all the other insights that promiscuity make available.
Theoretical loyalty, that’s precisely the sort of thing that is likely
to appeal to academics for whom tribal loyalty is the very point of the
exercise, not least because it is so often used to decide whether and
where they will be allowed to teach and publish. 

No, a certain intellectual mobility is called for.   Typically, we have
10 days between our introduction to the problem and the our
conclusion.  That’s 10 days to get from, say, a deep ignorance of the mutual
fund industry to insights and recommendations that are capable of
adding real value.  I think we can not unless we are prepared to press
into service any and all the intellectual patterns with which we are acquainted.

I am not arguing the case for no theory.  The world of marketing began, I guess, in retail.  Someone would go to the shop floor and see what was selling.  This was all the intelligence one needed to stay in business.  This was no theory.  But every corporation is now a ship in high seas.  Every kind of data must be consulted.  Every kind of strategy contemplated.  Only consultants who are prepared to make use of everything they know can serve.  We do not wish these consultants to forsake theory.  We want them to forsake the idea of a single theory.  But a blue helmet on them if we must, but "ecumenical" is the watch word here. 

Originally
from This Blog Sits at the

by Grant McCracken


reBlogged

by michael

on Sep 28, 2006, 11:35PM