125 year old school, 1,000 students per year, beautifully worn.

There are dumb bells, and there are smart bells – these made from machine cogs. From 300 Birr (~17 Euro) for the pair.

Throw a few things into the duffel, packing lenses and assorted field study gear. Tomorrow Shanghai to Addis Ababa for a week on the ground with the frog+ crew in, the beginning of a month and a half on the road/skies/mountain trails that will take in Ethiopia, the Oahu’s North Shore, the TED conference in Long Beach, Old Delhi and surrounds, plus no-doubt one or two more journeys and destinations.

See you on the other side.

Photo: Salloum on the Egyptian-Libyan border.

One of those short stopovers in San Francisco – three hours on the ground.

One of the benchmarks of a nation’s development is its perceived ability to explore unchartered territories – whether heading to the moon, or sending scientific expeditions to the more far flung corners of the globe – this advertisement for the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Adminstration sponsored by Chinese outdoor equipment/clothing brand Toread. As Chinese soft-power grows, so will Chinese brand’s ability to leverage events beyond its borders as proof of (at least) being able to hold its cultural own and (at most) its cultural superiority.

Thought for today: How a growth in soft-power impacts a nation’s ability to reflect on, and publicly acknowledge both the positive and negative of its culture, and beyond that – its ability to take on (constructive) criticism from abroad, and acknowledge the positive in other cultures. And the role of brands such as Toread in writing that narrative.

Makes me want to break out the ice-axe.

Been tracking the contents of people’s bags, pockets and car boots for a while now, to understand how people equip themselves for what lies out there.

Bag mapping is a useful method to get a sense of activities and priorities when people transition between their home space and what lies outside – the participant is asked to bring their ‘most often carried bag’ and lay the objects they carry on a flat surface, talking through the purpose and last-use of each item. Things to look out for – where the bag is kept in the home and what is clustered around it, what is packed/repacked on arrival/departure, and the use of different bags for different activities.

Women tend to be far more sophisticated bag carriers than men, in part because they utilise pockets less and because the social pressures to carry more, such as appearance related objects (make-up, mirror, tissues) or sanitary products is greater. But this sophistication sometimes comes at a cost – handbags carriers (and to a lesser extent other carriers of daily-use bags) are confronted with the handbag paradox that states: it is nearly always easier to add additional items to the bag than to sort through items to be removed, with the net result being that people walk around with significantly more stuff than they need. The moment when the bag carrier appreciates that the bag is over packed is often when they are in a hurry to step out the door (with no time to unpack) or when they are out and about (with nowhere to place and retrieve) what is taken out. It is common for the carrier of an over-filled bag to switch priorities on returning home – deprioritizing the ‘empty bag’ task with something else – such as the ‘empty bladder’ task or ‘make tea’ task, until they are again confronted with an overfilled bag when out and about. The handbag paradox also applies to other everyday bags, hard drives and car boots (trunks). In private-car ownership cultures e.g. the United States, the car (not just the car boot) becomes the overfilled container. (There’s also useful lessons in prioritisation switching depending on context that can apply to many situations).

Bag mapping is a useful exercise to become acquainted with the norms of a society – what we do or don’t decide to carry being a reflection of our selves and the environment in which we live and work.

See also: Scott Mainwaring’s paper on Living for the Global City – Mobile Kits, Urban Interface and Ubicomp and Mobile Essentials: Field Study and Concepting by myself and a number of ex-colleagues at Nokia.

In China a fapioa – the official receipt used for expense claims has a resale face value of 2 – 10% of face value – leaving one behind in a restaurant or taxi is the equivalent of giving a tip (in a culture where tipping is uncommon) and not requesting one allows the person or establishment to avoid ringing the exchange through a cash register. There are two primary practices around handing out fapioa: the first is that they are printed to the exact value; the second is that the seller takes an equivalent sum from book of fapioa that contains various denominations.

In many smaller establishments the seller is reluctant to hand over fapioa since in essence it becomes declared income and it is common to have to ask twice, especially as a foreigner. But in larger service industry chains where (some) tax is a given and employees feel less loyalty to the bottom line over-paying on fapioa (handing back receipts way in excess of the actual sums purchased) is like handing money back to the customer. The social norms dictate that the seller should round up – so if the the lowest denominations are 20 RMB (about 2.5 Euro) a customer could get 40 RMB of fapioa for a 25 RMB drink.

Thoughts for today: the situations where the buyer or seller will shift a measurable value (cash, money) into other less comparable forms (fapioa, …) to disguise the real value of the exchange. Who they are disguising it from. The legal and social rules surrounding the exchange. Aftermarkets for the receipts.

Photo: overpaid fapioa in a Beijing Starbucks, meeting with Jeremy Goldkorn.

Brands in context – Chinese ATM, with a 00.

Day trip to Beijing – picking up a visa for travel later this month. The traffic here is predictably bad to the extent you can plan around the pockets of time spent en route.

Family unit, China style.

Lane house shared sink.
One day these will be retro-retro.
But not today.

I’ve written a long-form piece that seeks to answer these two questions – you can read it here.

Photos: Feeling the sinew of history – Cairo not so long ago.

Imagine this with self-driving cars and the rules of the road.

It might seem counter-productive to travel half way across the world to observe or take part in an activity that we would otherwise try to avoid back at home, but observing or partaking in queues can reveal any number of things about a society: from the kinds of activities that people engage in whilst they are forced to wait; to understanding which groups have priority in that context; peoples tolerance towards waiting and how long; to motivations for, and reactions to social rule breakers. A society’s propensity to queue can teach us about service expectations and scarcity, and in a world that values convenience – can point to opportunities can point to how to shorten the path. The ways in which people overcome or by-pass queues whether its sneaky moves or pulling rank, paying bribes or ultimately giving up, can teach us about consumer and contextual literacy.

In many cultures queues are artificially created: to suggest demand (outside a nightclub, whilst it is empty inside); to reinforce power relationships (the fact that I’m making you wait reinforces my power over you); through to creating new business opportunities (bribe me and I’ll let you save time and jump this queue); or are simply a necessity to cope with continual or contextual demand.

Related: Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd – A Study of the Popular Mind.

Brands we know and love.

The South Korean penchant of convenience stores to place refrigerators on the street. In a world where the company that supplies the fridge, dictates the marketplace – that’s a timeline of of social and legal contracts right there.

Very South Korean detailing on this car cover – includes space to write a phone number to allow a parking-inconvenienced neighbour to get in touch.

A small but significant social nudging behaviour by this street food seller next to Dongdaemon fabric market Seoul: as customers pass by she invites them to sit down – and as they are still assessing whether/what they want to eat she hands them a pack of just-opened chopsticks – the act of opening the packaging being the would-be customer’s commitment to stay. It’s a hard act to pull off without being overly pushy – especially with so many tempting food stall nearby.

For every context, negotiation, transaction – the signs that imply commitment, the social cost of walking away.

Yes, they are electrically heated benches.

Whilst not in the same price-range, consider AT&Ts $3 billion break-up fee payable to T-Mobile, and social contracts in an age of touch.

If you want to understand public interaction with displays, you need to spend time in Seoul.

Seoul Metro now how more than 900 of these Digital View displays – with content by Daum supports interactive maps, IP telephony, content browsing, location based services. Relatively high levels of interactivity for a public terminal – where browsing choices can and is overlooked.

Includes Audience Measurement software by NEC – facial recognition software that ascertains age range, gender, distance to display, location, retention time and level of interest of the viewer to present ‘more relevant’ content and ads.

What affordances do you expect with a touch screen? It supports point-and-drag, but not pinch-and-zoom.

Doors with phone numbers.

The use of public infrastructure to support everyday activities, and how objects-left-in-public-spaces impacts purchasing decisions.

Late night flight out of Chongqing, ghostly hangers to house sleeping giants.