The hidden lives of ordinary things

I wanted you to read about it here first.

Which is why I have rushed it to print with not much commentary. But it looks fantastic, and the little that I have read, I love.

Enjoy!

Vantage points and the real question

I'd like to share with you a simple exercise I take students through. Or anyone who cares to listen, frankly.

Here goes the exercise:
Every morning I walk into the bathroom to brush my teeth. One particular morning I pick up the toothpaste and find that someone has left the cap off. Something that happens all the time and annoys me a lot. I shout out: "Who left the cap off the toothpaste AGAIN?"

No one replies.

So hold the above picture in your head. Better still, freeze frame the film. You are a design student with a brief to identify NPD opportunities for toothpaste. You have just watched the above event on film. Listening to me, you would quite rightly think you have identified a need for caps that are connected to the toothpaste tube or caps that somehow encourage people to close the toothpaste tube. You may well come up with many concepts around toothpaste tubes and caps which cannot be separated for very long. Whatever, my cry has sent you, the designer, down a specific design path.

So let's replay the above scene again and think to ourselves: what is the real question I (me the subject) should have asked? Instead of trying to identify the culprit (one of my three kids or my wife) perhaps I should have taken a step back and asked:

"How do we make sure the cap is never left off the toothpaste tube again?"

This time, family members not feeling threatened, give me a bunch of suggestions.

I could also have asked:

"How can we make sure the toothpaste is put away in the drawer or cupboard - forcing people to replace the cap?"
"How can we not have toothpaste at all to avoid the problem of the left open cap?" Extreme I know.
"How can we never have to take the lid off the toothpaste tube yet still be able to use to it?"

Once asked, the designer has many more routes to travel down, and more opportunities begin to reveal themselves.

Another way of describing this process is what I can only explain as finding new vantage points to look at the same situation. Vantage points the participant will never see or speak from.

Thoughts?

The work of a cobbler

Another one of my masterclass teams conducted a day of filming with various cobblers in Pune. Note this film has no sound because they were narrating it and pointing out sequences themselves.

Broadly, the learnings were as follows:

• They rely on passing footfall and need to be as visible as possible
• Yet they need to watch out for police or trading officials so they can quickly pack up and disappear
• All of their tools are homemade or found
• Any boxes or stands are home made
• Health and safety is non-existent
• Often they provide replacement flip flops while repairing shoes
• The idea of closing shop is fascinating - even while putting away tools they keep an eye out for potential new customers - and things are never completely put away until they absolutely need to be
• Transporting their stall to and from different locations is extremely challenging
• Any design solutions should not simply address their current situation. These people are striving for better lives.

The subjects all agreed to be filmed once they were reassured we were not journalists or trading officials.

The design solutions were fantastic.

Next up will be the hospital ethnography.

Railways station ethnography - can you see what my students saw?

Here is the first of a bunch of films I will be sharing with you. They were made by a team of students from my ethnography week at DSK Pune Industrial Design School.

This exploration included the waiting areas, ticket office, platforms and, obviously, the passengers navigating and interacting with these areas. I won't go into too much detail but the theme they cut these edits together for was 'waiting'. Trains are never on time and people have no idea how late the trains will be. Yet if they knew how long, the wait would be far less stressful and much more productive.

The design brief, based on films, disentangled observations, insights and a thinking framework for the design team aimed to create a physical rather than a service based product. Again, I won't share unless readers twist my arm. This post is to showcase they film which they narrated beautifully and insightfully during their presentation.

My challenge to reader: Can you see what they say on these films? Answers in comments please.

Pune Morning day 5

I'm the fat one in the middle.

I must admit to being a little anxious this morning when the students were followed into class by 4 or 5 lecturers and heads of department curious to see the results of the ethnography masterclass.

But I needn't have worried. The students were a triumph. Considering it was their first time in the hands of an ethno-bore like me, they triumphed. They triumphed with their thinking, with their seeing and their ability to translate observations into insights and concepts.

There were, of course, huge learning curves, many corrections and numerous barks up wrong trees. But I think they all 'got it' in the end. And you could see it in their faces.

In the course of the next week, I will be posting the final outputs including the films which were made including hospitals, railways stations, a cobbler at work and even a toll booth. I feel blessed and proud and slightly cheeky since I always learn so much more from my students they do from me.

Here's wishing each and every one of them a successful and insightful future.

Pune Day 4 afternoon

The teams debriefed each other just before noon and are now rushing against the clock to:

Get their films edited to 3 minutes maximum length
Ensure they are adding to their films when presenting
Make up 2 posters to present starting with their concepts then working back to the insights and films
Practice presenting everything within 10 minutes
Make sure their presentation has flow and tells a story

Each group will come back to be before the end of day with their posters so I can check them before the big deal presentations tomorrow morning - before all the heads of the various departments - in the main theatre.

Excited. And some more pictures for you.

The campus at night

I watched people eating

And then ate some food myself

And little did I know that lamb on the menu meant a
whole leg of lamb

Pune Day 3 evening

It was an interesting afternoon of tweaking observations so they made sense and generating insight statements. We spent the final hour of the day writing a brief which included an orientation list, insights, observations and films (with meanings and interpretations). Every team will brief the next team to become designers for a mornings and come up with concepts. All concepts will be delivered by noon tomorrow. I can't wait to see them.

Pune Day 3 Just after lunch - with some pictures

Lots of stray dogs around the campus. Who are given
plenty of love by the students.

Suntanning statues.

A stunning campus, whether you are into the post modernist
style or not.

It's been a morning of watching films, creating themes and translating them, when we can, into insight statements.

All the students are learning to 'see' for the first time. One example from this morning; I was being taken through a bunch of films of a local railway station. People were queueing, buying tickets, waiting on the platforms and boarding trains. Great film making skills and lots of interesting observations. I started to have a think about what I couldn't see. Something I tend to do when I have seen everything I can see.

"Are the trains late or on time usually?"

Before I had even finished asking the question, one of the students had logged onto a railway website showing all the expected vs actual train times for the last few weeks.

"Have a look at this..."

All without exception were between 20 to 45 minutes LATE!

"So everything we are seeing on these films can be framed by people having no idea how long they will have to wait." I ventured.

Thoughtful silence.

"Think about how stressful not knowing is." I pushed. "And signage won't help because the information systems don't exist. So what can you do as a bunch of Industrial designers? Are you even needed here?"

They have gone away to watch and to think some more.

I will report back.

Pune Day 2 evening

It has been a relatively quiet day.

Students filmed patient physician interactions at a local clinic. They even caught an emergency arrival of a patient in the midst of a stroke. Obviously such footage is kept under lock and keys and will be returned to the physician in charge.

Tomorrow, as I keep reminding them all, is the day we generate themes from the films - or cluster them, pull out key observations and see if we can't translate them into insights. We will be trying hard reframe the ordinary as extraordinary.

I will be posting outputs from tomorrow so do stay tuned.

Finally, three interesting discoveries/anecdotes:

1) Do you know why 90% of Indian Android phones are dual sim? Even the S4 in this country has two sim card slots. The reason is that networks are so flaky that when one cuts out people need to be able to immediately switch to another. So dual sims are vital.

2) Do you know how many Indians are killed on railway lines each year? Conservative figures say 60,000 and most agree on around 100,000 deaths a year.

3) Indian train carriages have doors but they are left open through out the journey!

Pune Day 2 morning

We have a couple of new explorations this morning. One of my groups wants to explore how the kitchens work in local eateries. The ones you find by the side of main roads for mainly working class people - I will find out tomorrow what they mean by working class.

Otherwise sitting in one of the classrooms waiting for reports back from the students (from the field) via email and attached films. Perhaps I should have got them to use EthOS but feel paranoid about being accused of plugging our app.

It's tomorrow I am really looking forward to when they return edited films for us to deconstruct.

Pune Day 1 evening

I briefed each and every team on their respective ethno-explorations tomorrow: They are:

1. Pune bus terminal navigation
2. Public bus journey experience
3. Patient physician consultations using a portable imaging device
4. Browsing and choosing MP3 players and headphones
5. Car journey experiences for kids 

Numbers 3-5 are live projects with real clients. Each team - 'client team' - will generate a brief for another team who will act as the design agency. The client team has to use ethno-observations to highlight pain-points with their brand, product or service. They will then need to articulate these as observations to translate into insights, if they can, before generating a design brief. All this by tomorrow evening.

Let's see how they do. 

Pune Day 1 afternoon

I talked them through some exercises today: the Frozen Dr pepper clip, P&G film and Four step selection system. Never fails to wake them up. Also introduced the notion that if they didn't learn to think strategically and critically, they were doomed to end their days behind drawing boards.

Have some free time now because I have given them a Hotel project to watch and come up with service concepts. So 8 groups of 5 students have broken out into huddles around a laptop watching films and taking notes. In a a few minutes the presentations start. They have 10 minutes each to convey 6 insights or observations. Miracle if I see a single insight. Which won't bother me because this first exercise is all about getting them on the right page

Can't wait!

Pune Day 1

My lunch in the university canteen. Heaven.

Welcome to my daily diary, this week only, of teaching 40 year 3 and year 5 industrial and transport design students here in Pune, India.

I have a five day master class (their title not mine) planned around ethnography. This will include a live project which will see many of them go out and film people and situations in their everyday lives. The project topics have yet to be finalised. And I'd like to thank the 15 or so readers who sent me project suggestion in responser to my last post. The head of school also sent me a list of long term projects which all of the students are involved in and asked me if I can make sure a few of the live projects fed into them. So by close of today everyone has to organise themselves into groups and decide what they want their live project to be.

I remember from my masterclass here last year that the most interesting task was helping students distinguish between an observation and an insight. I received so many, 'Is this an insight?' questions that I have lost count. Critically, I had to help them identify observations that could be translated as insights. We had about three in total. My favourite one was, most people use the sink to wash dishes and put them away. Students use the sink to wash dishes so they use the same dishes immediately. There was no obvious action, but the observation was fantastic. A great example of something obvious hidden in plain sight.

Let's see what today brings.

Monday morning: Pune day 1

Welcome to my daily diary, this week only, of teaching 40 year 3 and year 5 industrial and transport design students here in Pune, India.

I have a five day master class (their title not mine) planned around ethnography. This will include a live project which will see many of them go out and film people and situations in their everyday lives. The project topics have yet to be finalised. And I'd like to thank the 15 or so readers who sent me project suggestion in responser to my last post. The head of school also sent me a list of long term projects which all of the students are involved in and asked me if I can make sure a few of the live projects fed into them. So by close of today everyone has to organise themselves into groups and decide what they want their live project to be.

I remember from my masterclass here last year that the most interesting task was helping students distinguish between an observation and an insight. I received so many, 'Is this an insight?' questions that I have lost count. Critically, I had to help them identify observations that could be translated as insights. We had about three in total. My favourite one was, most people use the sink to wash dishes and put them away. Students use the sink to wash dishes so they use the same dishes immediately. There was no obvious action, but the observation was fantastic. A great example of something obvious hidden in plain sight.

Let's see what today brings.