A thriplet of speaking engagement that should enthrall and excite in equal measure:

Pattern Recognition 19th July, Shanghai. On the challenges of exploring patterns in human behaviour, culture, society and technology and the art of pulling something of value out of where they all collide. Interested? Follow @janchip for the venue announcement. Very limited seating.

Designing for Illiteracy at the Mobile Money Transfer Conference in Dubai. October 26/27th. An update to this original essay and presentation based on the rampant spread/adoption of mobile technologies around the world. Will also co-host a workshop on the same subject with Olga Morawczynski

The End of The ... As We Know It October 2/3rd Providence Rhode Island at the A Better World By Design conference. The full list of, way more talented speakers here (I assume they'll update my bio at some point).

Sometimes you want the elephant and sometimes you don't - the trick is in knowing what time this is. Photos from Mumbai.

Tehran graffiti shot on location with the original a1one, decks for Tehran Skates here, and more of his recent protest inspired pieces here.

One of a row of trees put up for 'adoption' by a local Brentwood school. Beyond the responsibility of contributing to the tree's maintenance what other rights might be afforded by a relationship with the tree? In the same way that JCDecaux funds public bus shelters and barriers in return for advertising space is a tree a platform? For what?

Urban infrastructure common to Los Angeles - an apartment buzzer that connects the caller to the resident's phone. Or not - in apartment blocks with a high turn over residents, and increasingly apartments without a fixed line phone the buzzer connects to a mystery phone.

The act of pressing a button, speaking to a remote person is part of our urban literacy.

Related buzzers from Ho Chi Minh City and London here.

A farmers market tangerine sold as being 'particularly ugly and sweet'. Cultural notions of what makes something 'pretty' or 'ugly'? How these norms affect what is sold on super market shelves. And the point where a fruit is so ugly as to be quirkily desirable?

Pity the blemished fruit.

In the past few years our research into how people communicate, how they capture and share experiences has repeatedly touched on issues around privacy, security and trust. Anyone and everyone researching and designing for a networked world knows how important an issue this is and most system designers struggle to find the right balance between ensuring the user (or if user is passive - constituent) is sufficiently aware of what is going on without overloading them with to much information.

We've come across this issue in field studies to probe technology adoption in countries such as Brazil, India, USA and, yes Iran. When the research has been difficult to justify internally I've initiated and funded exploration into Tibet, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan to name a few destinations. The research has covered participants right across the social and income spectrum including communities that don't, or until recently didn't appear on any map - places at the edge of the grid, be they unpaved, un-sewered, un-electrified or un-networked. The level of ingenuity we've encountered in these places have often surprised us and the stories that we heard from 'everyday' people often left us humbled.

Finding the right balance between working for and being rewarded by a large corporation and respectfully engaging / disengaging with people and communities is a challenging one - whether it's because of the inherent power imbalance, practical time constraints of working at a corporate pace, privacy issues, informed data consent, acknowledging people's intellectual property or because we need to understand behaviours that are on the edges of legality - be they 'online piracy', street hacks, or fakes. Doing the right thing by our study participants is something we take seriously and requires an even more nuanced understanding as things become increasingly connected. (If you work in this space and this isn't a challenge then you're either short changing your clients or you're short changing the study participants).

Over the years I've documented and shared a lot of what we've learned on Future Perfect, through a steady stream of presentations and an ongoing dialog with various communities. This site is written on my own time and paid for by my own dime - but credit also goes to my employer for providing a relatively free reign in putting the research out there.

Earlier this week this article on network monitoring in Iran appeared in the Wall Street Journal, and given the current election related interest in that country it is no surprise the article has been widely disseminated. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) was mentioned in the article and their official response is posted here. It's worth noting that NSN providse a forum for comments from a range of perspectives (with the practical constraint of them needing to be written in English).

The passion with which English speaking world is engaging with the #iranelection is encouraging - and puts many of the critical comments on the NSN blog into perspective. It's obvious that tools like Twitter have enabled people to feel directly and personally connected to events on the ground in Iran, although it's worth noting they are largely connecting with people posting in English.

Having followed some of the recent debate around technology use you might be interested in these 10 relatively modest insights drawn from studies of mainstream users around the world:

1. People who don't trust their government (whether they live in the UK, the US or Iran) tend to not to have much trust in the networks that carry their communication. But just because they don't trust it doesn't mean they don't use it - in particular the ease of connecting to the people that matter often trumps the risk of perceived breaches to their privacy, security.
2. Even if people are able to rationalise why they shouldn't use the network e.g. the risk of being arrested, events can take over. They may feel that as part of a large crowd they won't stand out; they may be caught up in the heat of the moment and turn to the tools they know; or simply at that moment in time the network is the least worst option.
3. People have very fuzzy mental models of how the network functions - for example not understanding where data is stored, or the implications of different types of storage. It doesn't take much imagination to understand the implications of using online backup services like MobileMe or Ovi Share in situations where, rightly or wrongly, people percieve the network to be compromised.
4. Mobile phone's don't need the network to be useful: they often include cameras and video cameras, in many urban centers adult penetration is ~100%, they are carried everywhere putting them in a prime position to capture and later share experiences - the Neda video is a good example.
5. In some countries side loading media is common - be it via cable, memory card, or Bluetooth. The practice of BluetoothMe - flirting and sharing files via Bluetooth is reasonably common amongst the youth in the Middle East and to some extent Iran with sensitive material being transferred from phone to phone in this way. It's not particularly practical except in contexts where people know each other and where people and devices are likely to remain in range with one another - the lecture theatre, the bus, the subway. Keep an eye on what's happening with micro-USB for data transfer going forward.
6. For all the discussion around sophisticated network tracking - interception often boils down to the man with the uniform and the truncheon checking your camera, your phone's inbox, your call log. Those photos of your mate throwing a gas canister? It puts you in a time and place.
7. The more there is at stake the more people will strive to understand the trade-offs in connecting to the system or network. And vice versa - if you've grown up around a good network access and, say location positioning then that's just how life is - there is less reason to question. Ditto censorship.
8. Increasingly the choice of whether to adopt, or opt-in to a technology is one of whether to opt-out of society.
9. People tend to adopt strategies to separate very private communication from the merely private, but in a world of cookies and call logs it's increasingly difficult to keep the two apart. If you have the time take a peek at the features that support very private communication (typically extra-marital affairs) on some Japanese mobile phones.
10. In any country where tracking is considered widespread - be careful about gifts from strangers. You never know where that mobile phone or SIM card has been and whether it makes you a target.

Read this, go here. Then spend time with Ethan Zuckerman and Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices.

Photos? More peaceful times in Tehran.

Got a two week field study coming up in Malaysia in mid-August and am looking for a few talented local guides/designers/... to help sort local logistics, arrange interviews etc. If you know someone who is qualified to join our team please ask them to contact me on info at janchipchase dot com. Ta.

How do you communicate with clients the trade-offs you need to make in the design process? The trade-offs they need to make? How about when they're from the exacting world of spreadsheets, returns on investment, absolutes?

Maybe they give you the time and space to explain the nuances, the details. Maybe you're tempted to pull some figures out of the air, and bluster your way through the ensuing presentation? Or, more likely, you both walk away from the table slightly frustrated, worlds apart.

If you've ever been in this situation then you'll appreciate The Quantitative and Qualitative Measuring Devices so-called lost project by colleague Rhys Newman that starts with the designer's adage "good, cheap, fast - pick two" and ends in a triangular ruler with added tension. You can measure the immeasurable, just how well will depends on the story that goes with it.

A historical novella by another design studio colleague Julian here. Do inanimate objects experience the Hawthorne Effect? How about networked inanimate objects?

Gosh.

A map showing the no-bicycle-parking-on-street zone in and around Shibuya Station - highlighting official bicycle parking lots. The map serves as a background reminder to anyone foolish enough to leave their bicycle for too long - thousands are carted off to the bicycle impound every day and it can cost ~3,000 Yen (22 Euro) + time to recover.

Parking is a atoms-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time kinda problem - how best to location shift the bicycle from [where you are now] to [where the bicycle needs to be to be sufficiently out of the way] whilst it is not needed to [where you are now] when you are ready to ride again?

When everyone carries a device to mediate their own view of the city (greater awareness of parking restrictions, alternatives), we have a greater, real-time awareness of the objects that matter to us (absolute and/or relative location positioning & vice versa the object's awareness of us, it's status), and the ability to create micro-markets on the fly (micro-payments + trust models + social networks + some degree of predictive models) we'll see new forms of 21st century valet parking where your bicycle is just where you expect it to be.

4am and the Shibuya McDonalds clientele is split evenly between clubbers killing time before the first train and long term homeless trying to get some sleep. For many people McDonalds is already the default public restroom of choice. 120 Yen (0.8 Euro) buys a small premium roast coffee, a place to rest your head and a ringside view of sub-cultures gently chaffing.

A week spent working out of Tokyo/cafes. The three best places in Tokyo to sup coffee, write and soak up the ambience?

• The under the arches Dexee Diner - half way between Shibuya and Ebisu - you might even encounter the odd J-Pop starlet with Fifi in tow.
• D&Dept the perfect opportunity to stock up on contemporary Japanese design classics in their expansive upstairs warehouse - with the bonus that you're unlikely to encounter any other foreigners.
• Upstairs at Cibone in Jyugaoka.
• Montoak and Lotus - both by the design duo Ichiro Katami and Uichi Yamamoto and both in the vicinity of Omotesando.

All have the level of service and attention to detail that one comes to expect from Tokyo, and have a great lunch menu.

If you prefer quirky: Lion in the Dogenzaka love hotel district close to Shibuya Station is worth it for it's monesterial ambience and cultural refugees - through it's more of moleskin than MacBook kinda vibe.

Both Organic and the 2nd floor of the Nakameguro Shopping Center would have made the list except that they've succumbed to the continued mainstreamification of Nakame. R.I.P.

Photos: Montoak, Omoteando.

This gent bending down to have his face scanned by a fag/cigarette vending machine - one of those beautiful urban scenes that, for better or for worse Japan excels at: a high technology vending machine that uses a combination of facial recognition and ID card to authenticate that the user is indeed legally of age to purchase. I'm unsure whether the face is remotely assessed, and no information is posted about what happens to the database of faces that each vending machine collects.

The vending machine comes complete with mirror, two strips of white LEDs and no less than five sets of instructions on where to stand, and what you need to do to deliver a fix. The only thing missing is a remote voice providing instructions - a notion that you might laugh at if it were not already in widespread use in ATM/loan machines and rural train stations ticketing machines.

After the government mandated that all cigarette vending machines validate the consumer's age - most machines use a pre-registered TASPO identification card. Getting hold of a false ID is however easy and some neighbourhood machines even leave a card dangling from a piece of string.

Facial recognition technologies are becoming more accurate - it's only a matter of time before the tools to identify photos of faces in close-to-realtime are in people's pockets. How might these photos be used today? In five years time?

Related: the use of spoken interfaces in the Japanese home, our orally enhanced future perfect.

Acknowledging for a moment that this article at the Harvard Business Review is written for a particular audience, that experiences vary from corporation to corporation and that its scope goes beyond engineers versus anthropologists - for most of you reading Future Perfect the article largely misses the point.

For all the current buzz currently surrounding ethnographic / anthropological research - this isn't the only way to feel out what or how to design (in the broadest sense of the word), doesn't always provide value, and absolutely shouldn't be part of every design process - anyone who thinks otherwise isn't asking enough questions about what their client needs and hasn't factored in the skills of the team at hand. At it's worst ethnographic research is an expensive, time-consuming distraction that can take the design team (and the client they represent) in the wrong direction.

At it's best, well, at its best it inspires, informs, and delivers insights that can shape and sustain ideas/products/services/resources through the organisation all the way to the consumer, it's cost effective, it's timely, its responsive. Its as much about bridging corporate culture as bridging cultures. In short it's all about finding the right people with skills that stretch across multiple disciplines and the right blend of project management, strategic thinking, diplomacy, leadership, humility, media awareness, extrapolation, psychology, street smarts combined with an instinct for bridging experiences from the field and understanding what it takes to make them relevant. I probably forgot listening. Damn. (The ability to apply academic rigour to the task at hand is a bonus, but on more than one occasion I've seen it get in the way of the best interests of the project and the client.)

It's what my design studio colleagues would probably call an in-between job - living in a space between existing disciplines, existing ways of doing things. Not sure quite where that sits in the corporate career path. Not sure I care to know.

A very common feature in Tokyo - privately bought ramps.

An integral part of the everyday urban landscape in Japan - the light baton wielding building site guard. Fixated by form.

Wondering whether batons being wielded on the streets of Tehran these past few days were made locally to that country - or whether they were imported from your great nation? Related Tehran research here.

Hunting down the perfect ocha pot in my local Tokyo tea house.