Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect

Lessons for the Design of Mobile Money Services

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:00:01 +0900

Hang around a telecoms industry conference long enough and you start to get big-number fatigue - as one stack of seemingly impressive statistic blurs into the next. The numbers that have stuck with me over the years came from our research into the lives of the working illiterate: people who have jobs and want to keep them - spending time with people who work 16 hours days, 7 days a week with just a few days off per year is not uncommon. Who benefits more from the introduction of mobile money management services - a white-collar worker in New York City or a migrant manual labourer living out of a dormitory in Xi'an? For many access to mobile money services is a game-changer.

The slides from last week's Dubai presentation on Designing Services for Financial Inclusion can be viewed above or:

Download the presentation here (PowerPoint, 23MB)

Download the paper here (PDF, 9MB)

For practitioners working in this space (hei hei) the most useful content is likely to be on mobile phone practices and behaviours: covering mediated use from the perspective of customers; agents and the service providers themselves; charging; and multiple-SIM card practices.

Why Buy the Cow When You Can Get the Milk for Free?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:06:53 +0900

Is it possible to experience the core benefits of mobile phone ownership without having a mobile phone?

In contexts where income is highly variable people living on the poverty line are more likely to be forced to sell off assets in order to buy essentials such as food. The mobile phone is such an asset. The net result is that there are people with a sufficient technological literacy to understand what a phone can do, a nuanced understanding of the communication norms, own an active SIM card but no mobile phone and most likely live in a community where people understand the variability of income and ownership. In these contexts it can be socially acceptable to ask peers, even strangers to borrow their phone, take out their SIM, insert their own and send off text messages or make calls - since the monetary costs are passed on the SIM card owner.

The increasing prevalence of dual-SIM card supporting mobile phones and the tools to manage current calls costs make this an interesting space to watch since it lowers the barriers to sharing, whether for personal or profitable reasons.

Conducive Spaces / Theatres

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:03:51 +0900

Middle of the day, proprietor allows a nose around the cinema, all to the background soundtrack of a 1970's Bollywood blockbuster. Downstairs also includes family areas - half a dozen seats set apart from the rest of the cinema.

These days however it's strictly for males. Q: apart from watching the fine selection of fleshy-action movies during the middle of the day what other activities does the darkness, noise and relative emptiness offer a young, privacy deprived Kabuli lad?

Go figure. Now wash your hands.

Definitely take time out to see these movie theatres in rural Uganda; and the micro-plexes in Chengdu and in Dharavi.

Kabul Street Phone Charging Norms

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:59:06 +0900

See the thread on charging.

Kabul Fried Chicken == Afghan Fried Chicken

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:26:15 +0900

It was another one of those sorties into the city, trying to explain to the driver that we needed to go to the local KFC - Kabul Fried Chicken. Not for the food I hasten to add, but to reshoot some of these photos - which have served well to explain the street hack culture prevalent around the world. Except that the three local branches of Kabul Fried Chicken are no more, shut down and now replaced by AFC - Afghan Fried Chicken, which actually does a decent job of serving up fast food - in the fast, air-conditioned, calorific sense of the word, itself no mean feat for Kabul.

How does Afghan fried chicken differ from the fast food joints of your 'hood? For a start - a guard with a submachine gun loitering outside, fast food being an obvious 'foreign' target.

Relative Value

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:14:26 +0900

What is more precious? Water or paper?

Martyrs, Hajj, Honoured

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:28:01 +0900

Green flag denoting either a martyr or the deceased has completed the hajj.

Kabul Wedding Singers: Identity Norms

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:43:34 +0900

Always interesting to see how Photoshop is applied to create and mold identity. In Kabul these wedding singers use: multiple selves, dreamy backgrounds and transparent layers. That Photoshop skills are available, used in this context is no longer an issue of debate.

Expertise Clusters

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:43:33 +0900

The wedding singer district: the extent to which and reasons why particular businesses cluster around one physical location.

Getting married in Kabul? Insist on a demonstration.

Ritualised Luck

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:20:13 +0900

At the beginning of every journey the driver touches the prayer, blesses the ride.

Packaging in Context

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:06:35 +0900

Memory Formats 2029

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:55:50 +0900

Tangible memories from the '68 summer Olympics in Mexico - note the black and white photos retouched with colour.

Reflect for a moment on your own experiences captured - photos, video, audio, the music you've listened to, what you've bought, who you've been hanging out with. Multiple sources of data - some that you control, others that you don't. How will you be sharing your experiences from today in 2029? What happens when you combine the capture of rich experiences with a life-times worth of data; sufficiently good 3D printing and the ability to recycle and rebuild prints from the latter. Temporary tangibles.

Prayers Answered

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:16:30 +0900

A turba (clay prayer stone) available for purchase close to the mosque in Murad Khane, Kabul's old city.

The district has been transformed in the past few years due to the diligence work of Turquoise Mountain in conjunction with the local community - it's difficult to see from the photo below - but that ~2 meter pile of rubbish in the center-top marked the top of the garbage that had built up over the years - the rest has been cleared away. Click on photo to enlarge The New York Times has a write up here.

With thanks to local guide extraordinaire.

And ending today on a faith thread, quote of the day from the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion conference: "There is no need for collateral on the loan, because obviously defaulting to a diety would result in death" in a presentation titled - Borrowing from the Gods: Oracular Deities as Traditional Sources of Credit Among the Igbo of Nigeria. Lovely stuff.

Faith in Numbers

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:19:49 +0900

786 is considered auspicious for some Muslims - used as a psychological battering ram on the front of this Pakistani commodities truck.

The Stuff of Life, on the Streets, for Free

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:55:50 +0900

Four heaters serving up boiling water to the traders around Kabul's Pul-e Khishti Mosque, with a box of tea-pots, fresh tea leaves, and a container for tea dregs. It sits as a stark reminder of continued privatisation of life that you can find from Tokyo to London. There's now so much money wrapped up in offering us liquid sustenance that in my culture, and probably also yours - providing fresh tap water to the high street public and something clean to drink it out of could be considered a subversive act.