Category Archives: work

Feb 15 2011
work

Brands as Placebos

 

Placebo! by Akácio S. [ /photographyk ], on Flickr

There’s something quite lazy in blogging about a blog post that someone wrote about someone else’s blog post. But I think that it’s less lazy than having a blog and not blogging. And, in my meagre defence, I do have a proper post up my draft.

Besides, the post comes from Nick, a clever chap who I work with (more accurately underneath) at Dare. And it concerns that trendy Behavioural Economics stuff. The long and short of it is that placebos are hugely powerful things and if you take the idea of a placebo and apply it to a brand you can see the power of branding and experience bias on the apparent efficacy and tolerance of products and services. Take a look-see at Nick’s post (itself a reference of the original work by the Geary Institute)

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Feb 09 2011
work

The Obsolescence Treadmill (feat. Nike Mayfly)

Nike Mayfly

Nike Mayfly by moleitau, on Flickr

Followers of my public streams will be aware that I am engaged on a 16-week training programme* to run the Virgin London Marathon on April 17th. This does rather mean that much of my waking moments are preoccupied with all things running. Occasionally my vocational and extra curricular interests collide, as is the case here with the Nike Bowerman Mayfly running shoe.

Alerted to its existence via Matt Jones’ concise post on the Berg blog, I started to think a little more about what this does to strengthen my opinion of Nike‘s marketing function as one that just gets the psychology of the runner.

It may be stating the obvious to some, but Nike aren’t just a manufacturer of sportswear. Their heritage shows a healthy track record (ahem) of producing products based on solid insight within the running community. In the case of the Mayfly this is insight that runners are want to wear their shoes for too long. The ramifications of this are not inconsiderable: worn-down shoes lead to poor form and consequentially impact-related injuries. In addition, enthusiastic amateur runners may well own multiple pairs of shoes aligned to particular conditions: trail, track and asphalt surfaces for example. Keeping track (again…) of the kilometres out through each pair of shoes is a challenge.

In the case of the Mayfly we have a £20 shoe with a tight limit on their effective usage; you get just 100km wear out of them. A planned obsolescence. The shoes have been designed with a tight engineering tolerance such that their performance is notably degraded once the user (runner) exceeds 100km. This fact isn’t hidden, it’s considered a selling point and the shoes themselves feature a manual odometer for you to clock up the km run on the side as an aide memoir and perhaps badge of intent to fellow runners.

So, what’s happening here, isn’t this just a trick to get us to buy more shoes more often? The cynic might suggest so, but let me suggest:

Scarcity: We are a little biased toward placing greater value on items that have a obvious limitation … the scarcity of the distance you can run in these shoes ensure you use them for only the right conditions (e.g. track running) and not perhaps as your daily runner – they’re your best pair.

Anxiety: Nike have form here – Nike+ on your headphones counts you up to the mid-point and then down to the end point of your run, increasing the performance anxiety. The same ticking clock is at work in these shoes, from the moment you put them on you’re running them into the ground. Of course this is nothing new – all shoes wear out – but these shoes makes it notably more explicit.

Reactance: When faced with a limit we’re rather prone to reacting against it (see anxiety above and consider the effect this has on performance). Does this limit actually challenge the runner to exceed it faster, sooner by covering the mileage at a greater pace or running more often? Mayfly runners might find themselves running harder and faster as consequence. There is little in life that is a simple and free as going running, by placing a limit on such a libertarian behaviour the reaction – if largely subconscious – could be profound.

I’ll concede that this might all be a case of me over-thinking a rather crude marketing strategy – planned obsolescence is nothing new after all – and that instead of positive reactance, consumers might actually react by seeing the limit as a weakness in Nike‘s durability and applicability to their sport. An analogous example might be the restrictions printer manufactures placed on their low usage and non-refillable ink cartridges. Indeed, one of the most significant issues that Nike will face is possibility that consumer watchdogs may deem the practise simply unethical. Perhaps in defence of this – and the inevitable environmental criticism – the shoes have been designed to be recycled by the responsible owner.

For the moment I am happy to continue with the upgrade treadmill of my (Asics) shoes on a 500km cycle which (at a current weekly effort of 30km+) should just see me through the 16 weeks.

John

* – Training programme via the wonderful Sam Murphy from her seminal work Marathon & Half Marathon: From Start to Finish

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Feb 01 2011
work

Olympic Arena: Experience Architecture

Not all my good links, insights and thoughts are lifted off the Twittersphere. Despite having my eyes on over 1000 people now, this little gem came from my brother. He’s had his nose in a few forums, tracking the progress of our developing city – notably the skyscrapers and Olympic village – and he drew my attention to this work in the East End.

The handball arena is finished…. tumbleweed….

Which is kinda my point. It’s a beautiful wee building, clad in copper and with top-spec light-wells in the ceiling but it’s for a sport that has a pretty fringe interest at least in the UK (in spite of efforts) and it’s global popularity is a moot point. Perhaps because of this, the inclusion in the 2012 games in London means that the organisers might fear a repeat of the empty seats we saw in Beijing and have uncovered an innovative solution which also adds a legacy benefit for a stadium unlikely to get capacity crowds easily.

Coloured seats. It’s already used at the Estádio Municipal de Aveiro, Portugal and now it’s in the  Handball Arena, the idea being that – even when partly occupied – the stadium looks more full as glaring solid blocks of coloured seating are not visible. The consequence is that the stadium for players and fans feels more atmospheric in low-crowd situations. It’s just simply good experience design that makes use of our visual attention biases.

As a footnote, the arena will also be used for modern pentathlon events.

> Mark Small’s blog article on 2012 Entrepreneurial designs…
> The 2012 update: Handball arena nears completion

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Jan 27 2011
work

Nike’s social fitness enhancements suffer from an Achilles heel

 

A view of the Nike+ profile homepage for smorgasbord

Nike's attempt at social fitness has an Achilles heel

For the poor, unfortunate souls that follow my musings on Twitter and Facebook it will be rather apparent that I am training to run a marathon this year. Each time I return from one of my sessions I synchronise my iPod with Nike+ and the data from that effort is shared across my social networks. It’s probably a little annoying for people as it is issued as a mindless broadcast but it is important to me to share it with certain people within my friendship group – there is proof that sharing accomplishments like this with your peers makes it significantly more likely that you maintain the motivation to continue. It’s a topic for another post maybe, but it would be nice to exclude certain people from seeing the postings without relying on them to block it. In any event, I think sharing my marathon training is a lot more meaningful and socially acceptable than telling someone that I’ve just bought some chickens on Farmville or that I’ve checked into my local Subway. [NB. I do not use Farmville or 4square].

My beef isn’t so much with this posting behaviour but rather Nike’s desire to incrementally enhance their Nike+ offering without fixing the core functionality on which it relies. To take a step back, let’s look briefly at the tracking and personal data movement. I wrote some time ago (post now deleted sadly) about the rise of personal data logging and how it was peverse, though not unwelcome, that we were seeking data on the most basic elements of our daily lives. Running is a simple endeavour, yet we are now surrounded with an array of methods to track our activity; just as a quick snapshot:

Garmin
Garmin’s Forerunner and similar personal GPS devices track your runs and display the core data in a personal profile page that can easily be shared.

Runkeeper, Mapmyrun, Endomondo
Similar to the Garmin implementation – these are often smartphone apps that use GPS to track your runs. Some integrate with Polar or ANT heart rate monitor straps to overlay cardiovascular data (so, ‘effort’) on the route and pace (‘output’).  These seem to be the most popular in my social media stream at least, if I go to the Runkeeper site it even tells me directly which of my friends are using it.

Nike+, Adidas miCoach
Both sportswear giants have their own systems – Nike were first with their iPod-integrated solution and as Adidas have moved on, their focus has been on realtime coaching as opposed to ex post facto analysis. But, as we will see, Nike+ is not a simple universe…

Others
Of course there are loads more – Timex, Samsung … almost every smartphone and sports timer company have something and there are a bunch of opensource implementations too.

So, to return to Nike+ (since it is the system I use), let’s understand a little more about the offering.

Nike+ and iPod: At it’s most basic, your iPod forms the user-interface to a system that uses a shoe-based sensor to track your stride length and establish a distance run, with all the additional statistics around pace and time. This implementation varies on the age of the iPod and the additional equipment (e.g. heart rate strap). Synchronising your iPod after the run uploads the data to the Nike+ site.

Nike+ and iPhone: There are two implementations here, a native application that does little more than the iPod version above, and then the Nike+ GPS app – a free download which uses GPS tracking to trace your runs and – because it’s connected to the web – additionally allows friends to cheer you on via Facebook comments.

Nike+ GPS sportswatch: The latest development showed-off at CES this winter, a wristwatch powered by TomTom to rival the Garmin offering, taking the basic GPS functionality of the iPhone app and simplifying this to a watch interface at the same time as integrating with heart rate data.

The fact is, this product offering is now more than a little confusing. As an iPhone user I am able to track my run using any of the free apps from Runkeeper, mapmyrun Nike+, Adidas and so on. As an iPod user I may also use my Nike+ shoe sensor. So, I sort of need a reason to use one service over any other. The decision needs to be made based on a few things: Which device gives me the best data? Which device is least hassle (bulk, user-interface) and, crucially, Which device/service are my peers using?

Before the smartphone app trend it was a given that most people were using Nike+ or, possibly, Garmin. Nevertheless it was still tricky to find friends using the service and then compare your efforts. With the wider marketplace it’s even harder as people sign-up for a service, use it and move on. To try and differentiate their service and encourage participation, Nike + continue to innovate. Recently they launched Nike+ Tag – the premise is simple, runners have to avoid being “it” by beating their friends to longer runs, faster speeds or getting up and running earlier in the day.

The trouble with this – and the many other connected challenges on Nike+ – is that they are predicated on having a (wide) circle of friends using the system. In the case of tag, your friends also need to have the particular app and, as we have seen, many may simply have one of the other Nike+ devices. Unfortunately (and after several lengthy paragraphs we are finally at the point of the post) the system for finding friends is fatally flawed. Nike seem to have a long-standing problem with the friend search function within Nike+ on Gmail. Unlike numerous other sites, you cannot import other social network friends only search for signed-up friends via Gmail (which doesn’t work) or by using the native search (which won’t discover your friends if they’re profiles are set to private – which is the default). The end result is that despite having 700-odd people in my Twitter contacts, a hundred or so in Gmail and 300+ in Facebook, without being able to scan for them I have found a grand total of about 6 on Nike+ and most of those are infrequent, lapsed runners. Tag, despite being exciting and well-considered, is all but useless to me (I’m not the only one).

It makes no sense to me that you would build a service that relies on the motivation and challenges of friends and then have such a limited social connection engine. I am quite sure this isn’t the intent but the lack of attention to fixing the technical problems with it jars somewhat with the attention to rolling out new features that rely upon friendship. It all smacks of the same criticisms that continue to face Apple’s Ping:

“Without importing existing networks from Twitter or Facebook (inviting friends through Apple Mail is not enough), there’s a significant investment of time needed to set Ping up. Now social networking is more mature, there’s less appetite for putting in that groundwork – and why should we have to when our networks already exist?” – Jemima Kiss on Ping (Guardian2 ix 2010)

It is peculiar that at least the connection to post my output works largely flawlessly, runs are posted automatically to twitter and Facebook with a near 100% success rate. It’s a touch disappointing then that the simplicity of the service that  first attracted me has been replaced with a complexity in offering designed to retain me (via unsolicited feature-creep) is so hamstrung by fundamental technical flaws that I crave a more simple, socially-integrated solution that increasingly looks likely to exist amongst Nike’s competitors instead.

 

For the record, my Nike+ profile is smorgasbord, please drop by and be my mate.

Oct 22 2010
work

Start-Rite shoes produce a feet of digital integration

Start-Rite shoes homepage screen grabWe’re always on the look out for ideas that cross the digital and physical boundary. This week a Dare client told us about his great experience with Startriteshoes.com. He’s a bit older than their target audience, but his kids aren’t, and he has been impressed by their quality and fit. That said, to get hold of the product, parents will undoubtebly know the discomfort of dragging their children out at the weekend to try shoes, only a trip dentist can match the inevitable lack of enthusiasm.

Ideally this process would happen online;  largely quiet, no crowds, calm. If only you could be sure of getting the right fit. For adults, buying shoes online is easy but the frequency with which kids’ sizes change makes getting the right fit a little harder.

Our client was delighted to discover that Startriteshoes.com featured an tool (Click’n’Fit) that made the most of the ubiquity of digital cameras to allow a shoe fitting to take place online at home and consequently the purchase can take place without having to suffer the tantrums, smelly socks and sulky staff of the high-street shoe shop.

How Start-rite sole-ved the problem of buying online

1. You photograph your child’s feet positioned on a special grid (which you print off) in three orientations.

2. Upload these photos

3. the site responds with accurate sizing based on an analysis of the feet in relation to the grid.

I have seen plenty of examples of the web solving the friction of offline experiences (grocery shopping deliveries) and even the embarrasment factor (men buying lingerie). Start-Rite is a great example of using a digital environment to bring some theatre to the experience. Kids can get involved in printing and photographing each other’s feet and the interactions and relationships take place in the intimacy and comfort of home. Later, when it is time for more shoes, one could conceive of the children asking to “do the photograph thing”.

The success of Kodak was in taking a previously laborious film and developing interaction and turning it into simple cartridge roll film – “you press the button and we do the rest“. iTunes did a similar thing a hundred years later for music; it might not bequite so revolutionary but digital photo-sizing for children’s shoes means Startrite have left miserable shoe shopping on its last legs and at they continue to make kid’s feet more comfortable. Double rainbow.

Oct 19 2010
work

Creating the perfect Information Architecture workspace

A former fellow student at my alma mater, the University of York, is Dr. Mark Batey. Mark moderates a couple of great groups on LinkedIn. If dip in and out of these as a lurker. Though Mark and I both started out on the BSc. Psychology course, I would not consider myself of sufficient academic weight to contribute meaningfully to the specific conversations that take place in the forums. That said, I do pay particularly close attention to any posts about the working environment and creativity.

I consider myself a creative information architect. I certainly don’t shy away from the more procedural and mundane information science elements of the role but I get up in the morning to do stuff that is creative, not simply organisational. What this means in practise is that I sketch more than I Visio. I write my own placeholder copy (in the full and frank knowledge that others will write it better). I over-style my wireframes and fret too much about typefaces, imagery and visual design.

Consequently I am looking forward to our impending office move at Dare. We have an opportunity to create a space more specifically designed around creating good IA. But what would this space look like? What does needs-analysis tell us about this space. Applying the same principles we would to a digital experience, we want [tongue a little in cheek] to develop an exceptional environment for creating exceptional experiences. To this end, I requested advice from the good people at the IxDA forum.

The thoughts of the IxDA community might be summarised as follows:

On (Clear) Desks
Such a policy is person-dependent (some are tidy, some not) but consideration might be given to the ‘unfinished’ nature of the thinking process. Do we leave our work in a state to instantly return to? Does getting your stuff back out of a file/folder/drawer really make that process more ‘final’? Clearly, some thinkers Alice Twemlow & Massimo Vignelli for example, put great value onthe desk as a workspace.

On Stimulants
Books, articles, design magazines and inspirational visuals (i.e. print outs of pages/experiences we have loved) all seem like naturally good things to be surrounded by. My personal copies of Dan Brown and Luke Wroblewski’s books are in arm’s reach an very well thumbed. Jakob’s books tend to fill the spaces nowadays and Visio ‘bibles’ are used to prop-up my screen. It’s easy to default to online sources when a good flick through a reference book can work wonders.

On Separation
A few people assume that team collaboration can only be effective with proximal seating. I am not convinced that the team that sits together necessarily works together or the team that sits apart works independently. On myFry  I worked three floors away from the tech and creative team yet the end result was a consequence of regular collaborative working. The desire to achieve this method of collaboration has a huge part to play in overcoming the physical separation.

On a related theme, enclosures and cubicles are torn down and open desks that facilitate eye-to-eye contact remind us of being human. I loved Pauric’s thoughts around have a window to gaze out of, to dissociate and disconnect for a while.

I remember an article in Monocle (April 2010 Vol. 4 Issue 32) which mentioned Studioilse who had two spaces – a thinking space and a doing space. The concept really appeals to me.

On Noise
People need noisy and quiet places. Often the tendency is to up the music and create a fun atmosphere but I see plenty of people retreating to headphone-mode to escape the communal music. Equally I see people slinking off to work in silence… IT is task dependent. Churning through a templated wireframe in visio or  some repetitive/mindless task and music increases the working rhythm. Need to sink into deep concentrated thought, space and silence may be your friend.

On Vertical Space
Walls tend to be bigger than desks. Anyone who has been to Leah Buley’s excellent Good Design Faster workshop will see the instant benefit of vertical space for sharing and discussing ideas. Thinking, literally, on our feet is stimulating by virtue of its novelty factor. Think of the fast-paced radio shows that are presented by people standing or the scrum/huddle approach to energetic short catchups. Vertical spaces are key for projections too – projecting an interface and then scribbling on it might be a worthwhile activity.

On Things
PostIts (duh), brown paper (c.f. Leah Buley), drafting dots/masking tape, highlighters, sharpies, whiteboard film

On Asking
At the risk of being asked for a “faster horse”, there was the sensible suggestion of practising our craft by actually asking our users (us) what we need to be able to do and to develop the experiences and spaces to support those. Direct questions about the type of desk, chair or screen rig will get subjective responses a standard deviation or two from where we are today. I want to encourage a bit of left-brain thinking.

Other themes
Stephen Kochan on LinkedIn mentioned the Göran Ekvall work on the 10 Creative Dimensions which had me running to my Organisational Psychology books to refresh my memory (grouped around Resources, Motivation & Exploration). Worth looking into those studies if you have time.

As you can imagine, there are a gazillion links to good material on creating creative workspaces. I loved (thanks again Pauric) “The Brilliance of Creative Chaos” by Clive James in the BBC Magazine.

Right, I think it’s time to watch that infamous IDEO video again … just get trying stuff and ask for forgiveness later.

John (this article is still being edited and cross-referenced)

IxDA Member thanks
Sam Menter,  Matthew Nish-Lapidus, Sean Gerety, Pauric O’Callaghan

 

Oct 06 2010
links, work

smörgåsbord choice cuts (iv)

The usual selection of things I have seen and absorbed in the last few days around the internets.

Innovation
The laundrette that emails you when your clothes are done. Rather obvious idea that makes you wonder 1. why hasn’t someone done it before? 2. who still uses laundrettes?

Social Commentary
Daniel Pink questions what it means for (American) society now that the data shows for the first time that more people aged 25-34 have never been married than are married. He looks at Economics, Culture, Politics and new business opportunities.

Apple
According to Apple Insider (and probably two minutes earlier/later by Mac Rumors), the new Sharp phone has a display that matches the Retina display on the iPhone 4.

UX
One from the ‘No shit, Sherlock‘ school of UX insight. UX Movement alerts us to the news that right-aligned buttons on web forms work best. It suggests that you might use left-aligned buttons on single-page forms because: “it creates a clear and direct path to the button that users can’t miss” but doesn’t sufficiently explain why having it on the right in this instance wouldn’t be just as good. Because right-aligned buttons work best on multiple page/section forms, users have got used to them being on the right – such is the way conventions work. Why swap it around for the single page forms? This sort of article is potentially useful for a real newbie in UX design but it isn’t really telling me anything a lot of comparitive research and common sense wouldn’t. Not to mention the complete ignorance of languages that aren’t read left-to-right.

However, redeeming themselves, there is also a cute post from UX Movement about New York City reverting to Title Case on their signage to improve readability from the previous capitalised approach.

Moleskine
I am generally quite critical of hipster trends but I concede to loving my Moleskine and my Apple portables. This has made a bit of noise this week on the web, but in case (ahem) you missed it: Moleskine case covers for iPad and iPhone incorporating notepads.

Health & Fitness
As someone who has dabbled in dietary supplements (Chrondoitin, Gingko Biloba, Glucosamine, Omega 3) and who lives on a meat-light diet, I am struck by a conflict between believing marketing hype about supplements and knowing the evidence is light. David McCandless & Andy Perkins’ active infographic on Information Is Beautiful “Snake Oil?” helps sort the supplements by evidence. Multiple bubbles exist for supplements depending on the number of health benefits associated. Very compelling visual and (amongst an awful lot of info-graphic noise recently) one with a genuine enlightening purpose. I don’t think the concept is new, it was a static graphic before no? but i believe the interactive element is.

Design
37 Signals admit on their blog that their site is much-imitated and that this may be a part of why they attempt a redesign every 6 months. The new look is a bit of a “back to basics” for them. There is a real emphasis on copywriting and on using colour sparingly for highlighting. It was interesting that their summary didn’t mention IA or structure as such – perhaps that is because it is a given in their processes.

A bit of a lightweight piece on Six Revisions about single-page websites. The accompanying text is a little frothy but it is notable for the showcase of attractive examples.

Finally,
As if to underline the point above about frothy analysis, 90 Percent of Everything had a great post earlier this week about why we should return to a little more academic rigour in our sharing of knowledge and testing of hypotheses. It suggests a few approaches including:

:: Returning to primary sources, not relying on second-hand re-telling of material
:: Ensure enough detail is included to allow the test or experience to be reproduced and re-evaluated. This includes sharing all the data.
:: Be honest about shortcomings. There aren’t enough examples of failure shared in the Information Architecture and User Experience community.

The author acknowledges the difficulty in achieving this in commercial and sensitive situations (client confidentiality for example) but it is a welcome piece of advice for us to avoid issuing sanitised soundbites for instant sharing. Very much worth a read and I wholeheartedly concur (even if I am guilty of just this fast food ux snacking on this very blog).

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Oct 04 2010
cycling, links, work

smörgåsbord choice cuts (iii)

Cycling
I have flirted with the idea of stripping-back my old Orange P7 ever since seeing the beautiful work at the Orange P7 project site . Back in 1995-6 I saved everything I earned at Sainsbury’s as a checkout assistant to buy my beloved bike. Back then it cost £1,200. It astonishes me that I could afford that when I couldn’t even justifiably cobble that together today for a MacBook Pro. Every so often the idea of bringing it back from the dead is freshened up and the post of the GT Bravado I saw on Cycle EXIF just serves to remind me what beautiful single-speeds 90s MTBs can make when treated with design dignity.

Information Architecture
Regular readers will know I curate (word of the moment for these days) thisisIA. The site showcases everyday examples of information design and organisation. I added a wonderful example today from Iain Tait’s crackunit blog that resonates with my autistic desire for order in cabling (Dare people should take a look at my zip-tied desk cables..).

Service
A quick look at a wonderful idea from the Hotel Exerda (found on PSFK) whereby hotel diners can see the recipes for the dishes they eat. Very much along the lines of those hotels where you can buy the fixtures and fittings.

Social
A very cute and simple idea seen in this Vimeo demo from Studio Sophisti [in het Nederlands] to use two lamps connected by the net (Ping) to sense when the other is on and consequently burn brighter. In so-doing the lights create a non-verbal communication link between the two users. I love the subtlety and intimacy of this idea that could be a very sweet way of connecting with loved ones. Away from your wife or girlfriend, both of you have connected lamps and you are working away when the lamp begins to burn brighter … touching.

Miscellaneous
A great find last week from my friend @Ppparkaboy was John Crace’s review in The Guardian of Roland Huntford’s new book “Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen“. This review draws our attention to the fact we seem to laud Scott of the Antarctic despite of his catastrophic failure, yet Shackleton – “who didn’t lose a man .. remains a footnote in the national psyche”. I suspect, when we think about this, we can find similar examples amongst many of the modern era’s heroes – athletes, talent-show contestents and so-on. Huntford continues:

“Only in Britain do we revere the man who died in failure above the survivor. Elsewhere in the world, Scott is seen as rather second-rate – an incompetent loser who battled nature rather than tried to understand it.”

It is definitely worth absorbing the remainder of this review.

Nota: I have added a few more sources to my collection of regularly-monitored feeds to mix things up a bit. I get a little bit of a PSFK and FlowingData overload so would like to share a little more UX. I will also try and keep to the subheaded structure to allow scanners to skip past content they’re not interested

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Oct 04 2010
work

When tinkering with charges might not be enough

Take a look at the video explaining about SF Park, a federally-funded initiative in San Francisco to imrpove the efficiency of finding and using parking.

I like the objective, I like the easy-peasy visualisation and the fact that it is so impressive in its scale. What worries me is the logic behind it. Whilst the cost of parking is important – and could nudge behaviour – the proximity of spaces to your planned destination is so significant (particularly to such a perambulatory-challenged nation) as to put the kybosh on the scheme?

Even if parking is significantly cheaper three blocks away, is that sufficient to offset the extra walk? What if that area is one where the lighting and security is poor?

What about the execution: Parking places are spotted and taken so quickly in urban areas that checking availability online (even on a mobile device) is not particularly helpful to the driver. It might have relevance if your passenger is on a smart phone screaming, “two blocks north there’s a space … hit it!”, how about feeding this information into your TomTom or broadcasting on local radio?

Aside: When you go to a multi-storey car park and it says ‘spaces’, what sort of tolerance do they run? Is it a literal count in must <  out + spaces? Do they allow a 5-10 car tolerance to account for people frenetically driving around looking for space? In Kingston-Upon-Thames at least one parking facility has clever little marker lights at the end of vacant bays and incorporates a live count of space per floor to inform drivers and speed up the locate-and-park situation.

Nevertheless, what a nice federally-funded project. It’s about time basic tech was applied to this sort of problem. I would encourage you to add your thoughts to the comments.

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Oct 02 2010
links, work

TomTom directing drivers to shorter travel times

Nota: This post was originally published on our client-facing blog at Dare in edited form. I love the editors deeply but I wanted to share with you, dear reader, the full vestal version.


It doesn’t seem that long ago that the sight of a GPS in a car had the same reaction of someone using an iPad on the train does today. A sort of curious mix of jealousy and cynicism about their efficacy.

And then the prices fell and the world and his wife were getting them for Christmas. From the executive saloon to the student runabout, almost every car sports some sort of touch-screen map these days. It is this progress to ubiquity that has led TomTom to assume a critical mass is being reached such that their latest initiative has a chance of succeeding.

Boldy termed a Traffic Manifesto, the Dutch navigation giant has published its objective of making “better use of [the] existing road capacity” in Europe to “reduce journey times for everyone by up to 5%”. Quite some lofty objective given that this is predicated on the take-up of its HD Traffic service reaching 10% of the driving community in Europe. Soak that up. 10% penetration in Europe. Add to this aspiration the cold hard fact that just 2.2% of TomTom’s 45million drivers connect to such a service and one wonders quite what they’re putting in the tea over in Amsterdam.

Leaving that aside, the technology and the ethics behind it are quite pleasing. In TomTom’s own words, this is how it works:

“TomTom HD Traffic uses a revolutionary new source of traffic information: the traffic flow of up to 80 million anonymous mobile phone users on the road. From this anonymous data, TomTom knows exactly where, in which direction and at what speed all these mobile phone users are traveling throughout the road network. This real-time data is combined with other existing quality traffic information sources, resulting in the most complete and reliable traffic information.” [Source: TomTom website]

The campaign activity to support this includes offering this data up to local broadcast networks across the continent for free. The cynic in me assumes this is to offset the simple truth that an in-car device capable of real-time traffic data and re-routing rather makes the hyper-local radio bulletin (ergo much of  the stations’ raison d’être) redundant.

We seem rather obsessed at the moment with geographic social networking. Whether it is initiatives such as this or more frivolous pursuits such as Places,Foursquare, Nike+, History Pin and even the BBC’s Dimensions project, it seems a rather curious paradox that the more our lives are being tracked and traced in the digital world, the more we seek relevance from the physical environment around us: to seek out new routes, new places and new people in the vicinity. So, while the TomTom traffic data is helpful in the now, imagine  aggregating this data  over a longitudinal study to identify new places to commute from? Well, social graphs such as Harry Kao’s commuter map and Mapumental are doing just that sort of thing.

After all, isn’t it nice to find examples where crowd-sourced information is genuinely useful, even if CEO’s like TomTom’s Harold Goddijn can’t resist making somewhat grandiose claims.

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