The Institute for Money, Tecnhology and Financial Inclusion has generated a list of 11 Design Principles for Financial Services for the Poor, drawn from a cohort of 20+ research projects they are running around the world:

1 Design for social obligation
2 Design for social rank
3 Flexibility with sanctions
4 Structured illiquidity
5 Change the iconography, design with local values
6 Design for convertibility
7 Calculate convertibility
8 Design for relative volume, not increment
9 Lucky Numbers
10 Tranches and Tiers
11 Design for Cyclical Events

Download the principles here.

The IMTFI is funded, in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in 2010 is set to more than double the number of projects around the globe.

Full disclosure: I'm on the IMTFI external advisory board.

Its difficult to imagine a more perfectly balanced graffitied waste bin - nothing to add, nothing to take away.

The notion that the forces of nature are constant.

Outdoor lighting console - unusual to see such imprecise, assumptive language - "common trouble" in such a formal object. With the move towards software rather than hardwired systems; a move towards the use of displays in public spaces; and personally carried devices that can be used to controls such systems - the extent to which the interface language can, or should be tailored towards the user - from language, to font-size, to level of expertise.

Challenge the whole notion of putting something in, having to remember to take something out.

Thoughts for today: for any given service the difference between what is required and what is used; what happens to the surplus - whether it will find its way back to the customer, reclaimed by the service provider as excess profit (or waste) or through the magic of connectivity is location shifted to someone else, or time shifted to your future (or past, heh) self.

And how it affects the role of the calculator in the negotiations for more expensive, haggle-worthy objects?

Triple A's decision to monetise/sell/pimp the information provided by customers applying for an insurance quote - creates a short term monetary gain for long term erosion in trust in their brand.

For every service/process - what information do you share as part of the negotiation of whether to use the service? What happens when the organisation selling your data to the highest bidder is a government agency? How long before consumers are able to sign up to a personal data brokerage that manages and provides information to the services you are applying for? One where the BigCorps need to click on the I Agree To These Terms and Conditions checkbox before the data is handed over.

Think small-print reversed.

1. The extent to which increased security in airports, train stations and hotels changes our purchasing and carrying behaviours of taboo products - people are more likely to buy items like this at their destination rather than risk discovery. An unfortunate personal example from Helsinki here.
2. Eggs used in Indonesian street vendor tonics to cure all ailments and enhance libido here.
3. Raising the red lantern during a recent trip to in Oman.
4. The role of design of libido enhancer packaging in China.
5. Continuing on the lonely, well trodden path that is male pleasuring devices - the all-time most popular Future Perfect post remains the Tokyo Design Week chandelier made from penis pleasuring-device inserts. I just post it - it's you dear reader that makes it popular.
6. And to end things on a more wholesome note: the use of colour coding to denote which eggs are boiled and which are not from Afghanistan here.

Kinder. Surprised? They probably would be.

Monk counting donations at the end of the day - the notes are tucked into, and placed on religious artifacts by worshippers. We can design systems to make it all digital, but there will always be contexts where the physical is preferred.

Thought for today: physical artifacts representing value in a world that has only ever known the digital.

Photos: from Lhasa.

I'd rather face a night stuck in Kathmandu airport than walk the floor of a trade show, so it was with much chagrin that I forced myself into the Adult Entertainment Expo before making a sharp exit from Las Vegas.

The photos show custom male pleasuring device heads featuring the vaginas and anuses (or should that be ani, anii?) of a number of female porn stars. The future perfect link in all of this is: in mainstream society today what body parts are by default measured? And why? And as technology becomes increasingly wearable what other body part measurements are we likely to see mainstreamed - beyond feet, eyes, ...? What value added services might the known measurements of celebrities, porn or otherwise then enable?

For example is there a time when custom molded ear pieces become mainstream? And in turn how will this affect usage behaviour such as device sharing, and demand for personal ownership?

Enjoyed a walk-on part in a Sin City morality play today - delivering a short segment in the guvnor's CES keynote. There's only so much you can or want to cover in such as short time but given follow up new readers might like the following links:

• an example of the research, exploring mobile transactions here
• life on the road looks something like this
• the street hacks thread covers grassroots innovation
• see only photos from Afghanistan, Mongolia, India or China
• a short essay on 'fakes' in China here

And/or follow @janchip.

The dual-sim, and chinese gent spooning rice photos in the presentation were taken by Younghee Jung. Photo above: the CES Hilton Theatre in a quieter moment.

Motivations behind the annotation of physical measuring devices? Someone has written a date on the gauge's backplate.

As new forms of digital augmentation emerge and eventually go mainstream we're increasingly going to see traces of the digital cross over into the physical - with new guidelines, markings, colours added to the easy to recognise & augment shapes already prevalent in our towns and cities. Think service driven tagging.

The augmented reality thread here, common urban shapes here and here and my personal favourite example of augmented reality already prevalent in Japan here.

Photo from a Sunday spent trawling through Kashi, China.

Suit trousers protected from the dust swirling around the floor of Kashi market through the use of bags, that also double up as advertising hoardings.

The little neighbourhood of Los Angeles that I currently call home includes a 7/11 store that ebbs and flows to the rhythm of the local community: early morning commuters picking up their drive-to-work breakfast; the late-afternoon latino highschool kids alternating between preening and munching Doritos; a late night beacon for some of the many, many homeless who live around these parts. The 7/11 also includes an increasingly familiar site in the US of A: a redbox video vending machine. It looks innocent enough and sure I've walked past it enough times with nary a glance, but its modest frame belies its impact on our future perfect.

If you shut your eyes and listen carefully you can hear the sound of a machete cleaving its way through the neck of a dying, bloated cash-cow by the name of Blockbuster. That roar? That's you and you and you and me standing by the sidelines cheering in relief at knowing we're never going to put up with that kind of experience again. redbox's parent company, Coinstar who modestly pitch themselves as 'the world's leading supplier of valuable services that make life easier for consumers' has reinvented the rental of tangible media through destination site big-box video stores and consumers are lovin' it. And that sharp intake of breath? That's the major studios compelled to watch the slaughter from the side lines but who are now wondering how they are going to pay for their dry cleaning bill from blood splatters.

American customers can browse titles in any given vending machine and make a reservation online - try it here (non-US readers might want to start with the zipcode 90210). Since one vending machine holds up to 500 DVD units you're not going to find Delicatessen or Vanishing Point but that misses the point - it's like complaining that the Flip is too simple to use. All of their movies including new releases are offered at flat cost of $1 + tax for one nights rental. Interaction is minimal - the vending machine has a touch screen, one slot for receiving/returning DVDs and a credit card swiper. Without the need to hire in-store staff, their HR needs are focussed on customer support; keeping vending machines stocked with the latest releases and updating the advertising poster. The niggly issue of cleaning the DVDs is passed onto the customer - and I suspect scratched media is one of their biggest headaches.

Whilst their vending machines have prime placement next to the entrance of many 7/11+ stores - the cost of renting this space is likely to be discounted because DVD rental encourages footfall - a video watched one day is likely to be returned the next. By being able to browse titles online the time-consuming guesswork is taken out of the rental process and with ~19,000 machines in the US and growing they are becoming ubiquitous. Whilst humans are creatures of habit and are likely to return the DVD to the same machine it was rented from the model also supports the convenience-psychology of 'DVDs can be returned to any redbox'. Props to redbox for making movie rental process as convenient as nipping down to the corner store to buy popcorn to snack on whilst you're watching the movie. By, golly the coders amongst you are enjoying the infinite loopness of it all. They've delivered up against nimble competitors such as NetFlix and the Brother's Torrent.

For those of you glancing nervously into the future perfect redbox's real impact goes far further than merely renting out DVDs: they have introduced new forms of interaction into the American urban landscape making it more acceptable to use touch screens to browse content in high-footfall, outdoor public spaces; it introduces non-beverage/non-snack vending machine use to a new demographic; and most importantly the value proposition provides sufficient pull for customers to take out a credit card and swipe to authenticate (for rental pick-ups) and complete transactions. Yes - this swiping behaviour is the mainstay of petrol/gas stations on this side of the pond, but the physical distance between customers and passers by is that much less with a redbox, the process is that much more observable. Lovely stuff. In years to come, the more reflective amongst you will recognised this as an important evolutionary leap for American consumers, so often global 'technology' laggards.

Some trends to consider before we leap into 2010: as our abilty to track objects, people and their preferences is continually refined - how small can the marketplace/vending machine for tangible media and other goods go? Why doesn't every apartment block have it's own redbox equivilent?; what value added services might be introduced to add convenience - the obvious being neighbourhood delivery and pick-up, and given that this hasn't yet evolved in the US of A in which cultures is it more likely occur? For people and communities with limited access to high-speed connectivity this could be the platform to extend the internet.

And at what point can a similar infrastructure support the just-in-time creation of other tangible objects? The obvious is to burn content onto a DVD/SD/... for pickup, but with 3D printers new, valued forms will emerge. Don't think of it as a vending machine but a platform through which to support the time-shifted exchange of tangible objects.

What does a company with prime, interactive, transactional real estate do next? A space to watch.

Wall Street Journal has a litle write up of RedBox versus Blockbuster Express here and more on micro-markets here.

Way, way too long to be writing on a day like today - mountains + pain beckon.

From the car park here.

This may come as a surprise: professionals whose livelihood depends on being able to travel the globe and decode the nuances of what they experience suffer from culture shock. Everyone is susceptible. It can impact an individual researcher's ability to function in their role, significantly affects team dynamics and can continue to resonate long after returning home.

If the field study aims include documenting and interpreting local culture and advising clients based on the findings then the research results will likely be biased. That the topic is a somewhat taboo amongst would-be professionals makes it more difficult to address the cause and effects - for example an account manager is unlikely to bring the issue up with clients.

I've seen first hand and have on occasion experienced the symptoms of culture shock including: increased irritability; becoming hypercritical of locals and local practices; withdrawal - in particularly spending long time resting or in bed; physiological reactions; and excessive eating, drinking or drug use.

There are many factors that can hasten the onset of culture shock including: feeling out of control - particularly when it comes to food, hygiene and language; personal insecurity issues; limited prior experience of other cultures; illness and low levels of energy - something that is often exacerbated by jetlag; significantly poor quality accommodation and/or working environment; feeling separated from friends, family and professional network. In addition the corporate researcher often has to contend with the everyday stresses of working for a large organisation such as the cyclical job insecurity that comes from yet another reorganization - working out whether there is a new position in the new power structure is a bitch when you're a couple of mountain ranges away from cellular connectivity and 10 time-zones away from the decision makers.

The one sure-fire way of avoiding culture shock is not to travel, which might sound glib, until you consider that you can affect which of your colleagues will join the study. Recognise that not everyone is cut out for work travel and don't be afraid to voice your opinion and authority before the study commences.

Once you are in the field the easiest way to reduce the likelihood of culture shock is to foster a strong sense of camaraderie across the entire team of locals and visitors, and create plenty of space for formal and informal interaction. Other reducing factors include: assigning clearly structured roles; having a comfortable shared working space and creating practices around its use - there can be a tendency to want to retreat into sleeping quarters; monitoring stress and energy levels and scheduling time off; ensuring that team members have the space and resources to communicate with remote loved ones. The time of the day that team members tend to be most vulnerable is early morning/at breakfast - supporting rituals around hot drinks can be a particularly effective 'normaliser' - it requires minimal forethought to invest in a particular blend of tea or the tools to make a killer cappuccino.

Some people also experience re-entry shock on returning home - whether it's a come-down from the adrenalin or emotional highs of working towards a shared goal with a tight knit team on the edge of something big; the contrast of returning to the humdrum of everyday life - the commute, laundry, weekly shopping, and not having an expense account; or simply becoming more aware of the negativities in relationships, home and work life. The effects of re-entry shock can be mitigated by scheduling a couple of decompression days at the end of the study and encouraging team members to take vacation days the culture where the study takes place before or after the study has finished.

The local team can also go through a form of experiential or organisational culture shock from interacting with the 'visitors', but that's a topic for another day.

Related: processing field study experiences.

Photos? Shibuya station a year ago today - en route to here.

Extrapolating the notion of micro-markets - how small, dynamic, location-flexible can the marketplace for labour become? This is the zipcar of labour.

Who creates the platform for serving up 'advertising/experiential' augmentable realities? What is their delivery mechanism?

Will consumers have a choice whether to tune-out?

Will subsidised consumers have a choice whether to tune-out?

Hotel bathroom in Lhasa - in addition to illuminating the scene the light is also designed to heat the bather and dry the room. Wholly inefficient, yet indicative of a clear-cut solution-to-a-problem mindset.

14 hours from Lhasa to Golmud, one power socket in the carriage alternately occupied by the guards laptop and the guards printer. Infrastructure is: what you expect to have sufficient access to when you're out and about.

Is the current Facebook privacy discussion as some have argued their Microsoft Moment that point where the internal perception of themselves starts to significantly, negatively diverge from the public perception? Or will we look back on it as more akin to the iMac Floppy Moment where Apple launched said computer without, gasp, a floppy drive. Sure it pissed off a bunch of old-skoolers wallowing in the comfort of their own infrastructural lethargy but frankly it read and called the winds of change, and dragged us into the USB future faster than would otherwise have happened?

Whether history will judge Facebook favourably will depend in part on whether they and their ecosystem can deliver sufficient value to sufficient numbers of people, without the negative externalities becoming apparent. 300 million users might seem like a lot of users to adjust to the new way of doing things, but Facebook also recognises that globally it's small fry. As a comparison there are 4 billion+ mobile phone users out there.

Most people assume the past to be a fixed, known entity whereas the future is there for shaping. Except that the past is in fact pleasantly malleable - not in the sense of wanting to rewrite history which is interesting enough, but simply in terms of being able to recall history. Increasingly we offload the need to remember the minutiae our day-to-day lives to services such as Gmail, Dopplr, Evernote, Reader, and Facebook and the trend will only continue in this direction as we are increasingly able to draw new rich streams of data such as location and transactions.

What happens when these services become the front-end to a life-times worth of memories?

Recollection through the oh-so-monetisable Facebook interface? Welcome to history's newest gatekeepers.

And the photo? An evening in a Lhasa cafe spent discussing the finer points of tracking and surveillance using mobile phones - that blurry light is part of the government installed close circuit TV system in the old city.

It might look like a mask but it's actually a cultural grenade.

This week I walked into the italian delicatessen next to our design studio wearing anti-bacterial face mask. The deli wasn't contaminated but given the reaction of one of the staff to the mask you might have assumed that it was.

Been under the weather these last couple of days - the result of a flu-like bug picked up somewhere between Pu Dong and LAX and amplified by layers of jet lag. Given all the travel this year it's surprisingly my first illness this year - only 3 weeks shy of an otherwise genki 2009. The default assumption for people from individualistic societies such as America when they see someone wearing a face mask is that the mask is there to protect the wearer from others, whereas in more collectivist societies such as Japan the opposite is true - the mask is there to protect others from you. Which is why the deli-staff reaction was so understandable - the mask sent a signal to their other customers that their staff were infected, their working environment was unclean.

Does a face mask actually work in cutting down the risk of infecting others? The mask works on a number of levels: the physical filter reduces the spread of germs - though this is never going to be 100%; more importantly it's obvious physical presence sends a signal to other people that you are sick and that, if the cost of them becoming infected is extreme (pregnant spouses, upcoming wedding, ...) they should steer clear; your physical presence says 'despite being sick, I'm here, you're that important'; and depending on the context can also suggest 'I'm sick, I actually don't care whether I infect other people, because obviously I'm here'. In cultures where masks are not common - most of this goes unsaid.

As a Danish colleague pointed out - if you're that sick don't come into work, but of course sickness is a matter of degrees. In many Japanese offices the pressure to be seen to be around is great - the collective desire for social cohesion, to maintain rank can out trump more practical concerns such as whether there is 'hands-on work' to be done - if you're sick you'll come into work and try to avoid infecting others. My mask motivation: was over the worst and wanted to minimise any risk of infecting colleagues that can ill-afford to be likewise infected.

How might this social positioning play out in our bacterially rich future perfect? As our ability to understand and manipulate bodily bacteria evolves it might be the newly terraformed blotches on the palm of your hand, the tint of eyes/contact lenses or the tips of your ears that indicate to others the state of your health.

Should you decide to share it.

Should you have the choice.

Go forth and spawn.

Dawn over California - an early morning flight to attend the Frog Design hosted Forbes Future of Computing workshop.

It looks innocent enough, but these ladies are sharks.

The scene - a local theatre up two flights of stairs in a neighbourhood close to our team accommodation in Xi'an. That we even knew of this venue was the result of an interview with a local (male) sex (shop) worker that left both yours truly and our heroic local fixer with a compelling desire to disinfect - playing the role of impartial interviewer is difficult when the topic is so loaded and the context so unloaded upon. I digress to the point of flashbacks.

It works like this: the ladies take their turn in singing, during which time they fight to catch the eye of patrons - old geezers from the neighbourhood, and the gaggle of new money that's just blown through the door. Like what you're hearing, or just succumb to the intense social pressure of a half-dozen 50-something ladies intent on squeezing every last drop out of you? Hand signals trigger payments: a scarf costs 10RMB (1 Euro), a bouquet of flowers 100 RMB (10Euro). Pay on the way out.

DVDs sold close to a Kabul mosque - religious fables in a modern medium.

As our ability to track consumption becomes more refined - moving from documenting every pause and fast-forward to understanding details such as who is co-present and where content is consumed - we are going to see highly contextually defined delivery. Which you might assume will mean being offered contextually 'appropriate' religious fables close to your local mosque/church/synagog/... except that it's more likely will reveal that there's a lot of ~porn consumption going on.

An oldie but goodie - a bathing shoko spotted in Tokyo, with more on its cultural origins here. BAPE + Aum cult leader Shoko Asahara.

How does the role of the photographer change in a world where billions of sensors combine to capture ~octillions of experiences? Does 'the camera' change from being a experience time-and-location shifting device to something more aligned to triggering experiences?

One might be tempted to assume that the days of the camera are numbered - why carry something when the features it offers are so inherently part of the everyday urban infrastructure - running the full gamut from surveillance (big brother) to sousveillance (little sister)? Perhaps, even the importance of knowing whose finger is on the trigger will also fade as our desire for, and sense of ownership blurs?

But as far as habits go, the everyday theatre that is snapshot photography will take a long time to fade from our collective consciousness - it is after all so damn social. The future perfect camera may well shift to one of facilitator - helping co-ordinate the sensor ecosystem before, during and after the moment.

Beyond the obvious manipulation of tech-sensors in what contexts will it be desirable to guide/trigger postures, expressions or emotions in subjects - for example through a camera interface that reacts to the subjects actions/reactions or, looking a few more years out the remote control of stimulants into the subjects bloodstream? Think connected bio-tech hacked for the recreational market.

In what contexts would subjects be willing absolve a high degrees of control over what is pumped into their bodies to the person holding 'the camera'? You might not consider it a direct correlation but its not really that far off - the inspirational/aspirational/emotional fix offered up by a Nike store is perhaps more aggressively manipulative in its understanding of our pressure points than you care to admit. And where NIke, Amazon, Tesco and Google now lead with the massively relational understanding of our behaviour the rest are sure to follow or wither away in uncompetitiveness.

Mine's a double, ta.

Photos: kindly posing for documentation this week in Shanghai (above) and a selca, self-documentation moment in Seoul (below).

A few days bouncing between meetings in the big smoke provides an opportunity to absorb the city through new eyes, an exploration that included four nights in three hotels. Where to stay in Shanghai when you're not crashing sofas? URBN maintains a feel-good vibe and once they eventually figure out the finer details of running a hotel it'll probably trump out the Jia. But they're not quite there yet. The Old House is well located for early morning walks but otherwise comes in a distant, distant, distant third.

Cheers to the Shanghai crew for pleasantries.

A week of grid skipping ahead: late night flight to meet our friends in the North, then Shanghai via Tokyo. Photos? Last weeks view atop of California's tallest peak - the Pacific lies smothered underneath the cloud cover.

Looking for a daily fix of grid skipping?

With research presentations and downloads here and essays here.

Waylaid by roadside sculptures, meetings running to Indian Standard Time, Ahmedabad some while back.

Photojournalist's view of the gangs of Rio over at the Guardian and on this page a few photos of BOPE (special forces military police) headquarters taken as part of our recent field study in Rio de Janeiro. As the Guardian puts it: BOPE "are renowned for not carrying handcuffs" i.e. they are renowned for coming back with bodies that aren't in a position to struggle. S'more BOPE photos here.

The research to understand life and opportunities in 'shanty towns' also spanned Chongqing, Accra and Mumbai is detailed below.

Styling vs. efficiency At.

Central post office in downtown Accra - always interesting to understand fixed points of reference in an otherwise fluid world, and the factors that go into framing peoples perception of what those fixed points can be used for: sufficiently secure; sufficiently convenient to both parties in the exchange; cost effective; a known entity supporting standardised sizes.

Ergo, it's not actually a mail box, but rather a way of sufficiently securely/conveniently time shifting the exchange of tangible objects between two or more parties. The trends to watch in this space include: infrastructure that supports remote access - Japan leads in this respect in part driven by people working long hours and living in single occupancy apartments; the mainstream adoption of tools/mobile phones that enable remote access and notification; and new services that take advantage of the prevalent infrastructure.

Related: how location-shifting meals will make super-chefs the power-brokers of the future.

If you're an early riser, drive a car to work and are an heavy iPod user then you've probably been confronted with a drained car battery at the end of the day. Why?

Because the car lights are switched on when you leave home; the iPod is increasingly being worn in-car (who wants to listen to a 20th century model of advertising-interrupted content when you can totally control your listening experience?); the iPod with a superior pair of earbuds offers a similar/comforting/superior audio experience to that available in-car; the visual design cues on the dashboard, typically an illuminated headlight icon is difficult to notice by the time you arrive in full day light at your destination; and the secondary design cues - often a continuos high-pitched sound is difficult to hear when you're still wearing earbuds. Personal cocooned content being listened from door to (car) door to door and on occasion the lights stay on, the battery drains.

It's a wonderful, if sometimes road-dangerous form of behavioural leakage - where well established practices (personal stereo for mood management, listening to ~music, cocooning) leaks into unexpected spaces (the car with its 'superior' in-car stereo, limited content in compromised format). And whilst it's probably too much of a niche distraction for their design teams to be bothered with I'm intrigued what a purely Apple designed in-car hub would look like.

Every forward looking automotive manufacturer has been thinking about vehicles as connected objects for quite some time. To what extent is it acceptable for the manufacturer to modify interface elements such as secondary design cues after the vehicle has been sold? Is there a point when consumers expect to be able to fully adapt their in-car and out-car interface? Does the pressure to be able to adapt come from consumers; legislation?

Mountain bike riders can be roughly categorised as riding in one of two climate zones: those where the mud flies up and sticks onto the underside of the bottom-tube or those where trail dust kicks up and attaches itself to sweat dripped onto the top-side of top-tube. Latter.

A tad more on the commute here.

Cali Skate exhibition, distinctly stick free.

Ah, the joys of Japanese supermarket shopping: the obscure correlation between oversized biscuits and bra-cup size.

Rare that one gets to enjoy being a pedestrian in this city. Embassy hopping this morning - luv ya, multi-entry.

Entrance/exit norms, how they affect perception of, and use of inside/outside.

Behavioural/aspirational poster in this Xi'an McDonalds. At what point did the laptop replace the mobile phone (which in turn replaced the luggable laptop) as a symbol of modernity? How long before the mainstream prevalence of netbooks pushes another displacement?

And as the technologies that we associate with 'modernity' miniaturise, blend into the background of everyday life, at what point will posters such as this highlight behaviours rather than technologies? How will future designs support our socially driven need to show both action and intent to people around us?

Related video talk at the LIFT conference: 9 trends shaping the future of social interaction.