Unlike software locking mechanisms, this hardware lock not only restricts the use of the phone to a specific country and network provider, it also dictates the location of use.

As you guessed correctly, the precautions are intended to prevent theft of the devices. With the shop owner of the convenience store behind the counter and the phones oriented towards the crowded side street, there are just too many chances for opportunist theft.

Bottom line: If a software solution is not appropriate, a hardware solution might work.

You have probably all heard by now that Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, predicted in a Wall Street Journal interview that in the future we may be able to change our name once we have reach adulthood “in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on [our] friends’ social media sites”.

Can we really re-define ourselves online or even offline? Do we need to wear identity masks to protect our privacy? To what extent can we control what masks we wear?

I like the way Laurent Haug suggests that despite all the controversial discussion recently, privacy is still here and doing well:

It is just different, and not something that is granted at birth anymore. You have to create it, using the tools that were supposedly taking it away from you. You used to have to build your public image, now you have to build the private one. It’s a small change if you know how to do it.

Which role will the new gatekeepers (google, facebook, apple et al.) play in this I-know-who-where-why-you-are-game? What could motivate them to protect our privacy? From whom?

I’ll leave you with another quote from Mr. Schmidt:

The power of individual targeting – the technology will be so good it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them.

While this sounds scary at first, I agree with Laurent that these gatekeepers may actually have an interest in protecting our privacy. Why? Because only if we can trust them we will share the oh so precious information that defines our identity and makes us a viable target for advertising (and potentially many other things). To support his point, Laurent hints to a study which shows, that already >50% of social network users aged between 13 and 18 feed the networks with fake personal data. Obviously, self-regulation is on its way.

The bottom line: No matter what community we are designing for, we ought to give the users control – a framework that they can trust in. I expect that trust will increasingly become an important dimension in the customer/brand experience. It already is. We all know that. So let’s design for it.

And the photos above? The inner of a veteran communist party building in Venice I visited last year. A place full of identity statements and memories. So many different research questions to explore here. Cheers to the ground crew for enabling us to peek into this community.

Despite silly season we had a great time during my workshop on design research synthesis at the IxDA Munich meeting.

We worked in three mixed groups and we tried to visualize the synthesis process, including input/output, activities, methods and tools used, stakeholders involved, ways of “storing” findings/insights for later re-use and personal positive/negative experience during synthesis.

Here are a couple of topics that came up during the discussion:

• Is synthesis a process? Can it be formalized?
  
  Some participants mentioned that synthesis is a subjective and subconscious act that cannot be externalized or formalized. Nevertheless they suggested that synthesis can be facilitated by providing an optimal (work/analysis/synthesis)-environment e.g. stress free schedules, lots of room to interact with data and colleagues etc.
• How to collect the right amount of data?
  
  To be able to do “good synthesis” it was indicated that the initial process of data collection has to be planned carefully. Having a clear understanding of what to collect and which questions to answer helps to avoid the phenomenon of “death by data“ during synthesis. The synthesis process is perceived to be easier with less visual noise. One proposed solution was labeling data-chunks during deconstruction with a distinct icon to have a comprehensive view of all collected data, without having to read the textual information.
• How many people are involved during synthesis?
  
  While in some organizations synthesis as a process is done by one person only, there were also examples of synthesis as a collaborative activity. Often the project-scope, the available time and budget seem to influence how many people can get involved. All participants agreed that an inclusion of other researchers/designers or related-stakeholders during synthesis might be beneficial (embracing different points of view, building upon insights of others etc.)
• Should we integrate clients during synthesis?
  
  There was the suggestion that an integration of clients during research and synthesis helps to build empathy and commitment. Integration (even when it is done only partially) makes synthesis transparent to decision makers and enables them to “get“ insights (both in the sense of understanding the findings and having insights for themselves, in contrast to “being lectured” by the researcher.
• What are good deliverables of the synthesis process?
  
  The question what good deliverables look like strongly related to the discussion of when to go digital during synthesis. There was a discussion of “excel spreadsheets“ vs “post-it wall pictures“ or rephrased: when is it better rather to inspire than to inform with the output of the synthesis process? How can we adequately communicate meaning (of our insights/findings)? And is it necessary to educate our clients to realize what deliverables they really need?

Due to the time-restriction of our meeting, we could not dig any deeper. All in all, there seems to be a strong interest in the topic of design research synthesis among practitioners from various backgrounds. We agreed to bring up the topic in one of our future meetings and we may also consider collecting best practices, and design synthesis theory in a Wiki or a more formal form of publication. We were not sure though, whether it is possible to mold such an abstract activity as synthesis into a paper-based representation. Only time will tell.

If you are interested in collaboration on analysis/synthesis, feel free to drop me a line.

Cheers to all participants for making this event so enjoyable. A big thanks to the IxDA Munich organizers for enabling all this and ¡muchas gracias! to IDEO for making the office space available (once again).

Slides from the workshop:

Creativity and Rapid Prototyping at its best.

It was interesting to observe how many people instantly tried to photograph these two young artists by using their mobile phones. Look at the cyclist on the right. Drive-by-shooting. Yes, I confess myself guilty, although in my case I used my trusty DSLR at hand.

In the youtube-decade the time-to-market (actually time-to-user) has decreased tremendously. The delay from artistic performance to internet-hero-for-five-minutes is only limited by the amount of time it takes to name, tag and upload the material.

Where are we going with our always-on culture? What is the next step? Online-streaming of video-recordings with mobile phones? Eventually we’re there already. Think some decades ahead: How about brain-implants directly hooking into our visual cortex? No need to handle/carry a phone.

Scary?

Ever since reading Don Norman’s classic “the design of everyday things” forcing functions became one of my favorite topics. I always keep a sharp lookout for them.

In the example above you can see the thermostat of a typical German shower. By default the maximum adjustable temperature is 38° Celsius (100 F). That’s hot enough to soften the hardest dried-up dirt but it still feels comfortable to shower. If you want to go for the extra boost of heat, say after a winters night out in the cold, you have to push the red button to be able to rotate the thermostat beyond the 38°C limitation.

I guess the forcing function was implemented to save you from accidently burning your skin. It can happen easily. You know what I mean. Take for example those awkward moments at the beginning of your bathing experience, when you wait for the water to get hot and then all of a sudden it does get hot – hard-boiled eggs hot. Traveling a lot lately gave me insights into the scientific world of adjusting water temperature: an interesting topic indeed, given the multitude of influencing factors like handle design, thermostat placement, clockwise/anti-clockwise rotation, different water pressure of hot/cold water pipes, delay of temperature change etc.

But in the above example: once again saved by the simple pleasure of thoughtful design.

What is your favorite forcing function?

How do the shoe laces on the left feel compared to the ones on the right?

Which are better?

Why?

Tomorrow Monday (July 26th) I will be hosting a workshop on design research synthesis during the Interaction Design Association meeting at IDEO Munich.

See the official announcement on IxDA Munich or Linkedin. Slides of the presentation will be available here after the workshop.

Drop by if you’re around. The more the merrier.

This switch is attached to a tree in a heavily frequented plaza of a small hostel in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

There are no gadgets, no machinery or any other electric devices that could be triggered by that switch. The way it is taped onto the tree might suggest, that you can turn the tree on or off. But what sense would that make? So it probably has a different function.

It is interesting to observe people standing in front of that switch, wondering what it would trigger. The question is: why do most people not dare to try and find out?

There is a thin line between curiosity and uncertainty. Are you allowed to flip that switch? Will it do something (potentially) harmful or costly? To you? To others? Why is the switch taped to a tree? The surface of a tree does not really have a strong affordance to tape anything onto it, right? Maybe it has been intentionally placed in a central, accessible place? If it were dangerous to flip that switch, it would not have been installed in such a public space, right? So why not flip it?

What are the costs of getting it wrong?

Whether you are designing services or products: when your customer doesn’t know what his actions are going to trigger and what the potential losses are, uncertainty wins over curiosity most of the time. Bottom line: Never assume someone knows how your service/product works. Provide frameworks and forcing-functions that minimize losses.

And the switch? Turns out, it’s a remote bell to call for the hostel service. Curiosity won on this one.

I recently returned from a 2-month trip to South America.

It was an intense time of roaming the southern hemisphere. Traveling lightweight both physically and mentally facilitates the awareness of freedom. To experience life at its best, it is beneficial to challenge your comfort zone. Losing focus or getting lost isn’t that bad when you do it on purpose, right?

Arriving back home after a longer time on the road gives you the opportunity to do a honest assessment of all your “stuff.” You were able to make it for quite some time without it, right? Time to focus. The book you haven’t read in 2 years, the gadget that hasn’t been picked up since the battery died … all the clothes you keep, but never wear. Do you still own the stuff, or does the stuff own you?

A brutal riddance. Change is good. Getting rid of things gives you the breathing room to acclimatize to your new, old home.

The longing for the next journey begins.

You really shouldn’t park here.