Jan Chipchase: Design anthropology
Summary
TLDRThe speaker from Frog, a design and innovation consultancy, discusses global research insights on technology's societal impact. They delve into cultural nuances, ethical dilemmas in commercial research, and the essence of design in resource-constrained environments. Highlighting examples like a simple gas station in Vietnam and dog-repelling car tires in China, the talk underscores the evolving role of technology in shaping social norms and individual identity, urging designers to consider the broader implications of their creations on society.
Takeaways
- 🌏 The speaker works for Frog, a global design and innovation consultancy with a wide reach and significant scale.
- 🔍 Frog focuses on conducting in-depth, context-driven research to understand the role of technology in society across various cultures and environments.
- 🏠 The research process involves spending time in people's homes to gain insights into their motivations and behaviors in their natural settings.
- 🌐 Frog's studies range from trivial everyday observations to significant societal impacts, such as the role of social media in the Middle East and banking services in Afghanistan.
- 👥 The consultancy operates with a team-based approach, often including local hires to ensure cultural understanding and community engagement.
- 📈 The logistical challenges of conducting global research are significant, requiring rapid team assembly and adaptation to new environments and languages.
- 💡 The speaker highlights the importance of understanding social rules and norms in different cultures, as they influence the adoption and use of technology.
- 📱 The script discusses the ethical and moral implications of technology, particularly how it can be used to surveil and collect data on individuals without their explicit consent.
- 👨👩👧👦 The decision to use technology is increasingly tied to social participation, raising questions about privacy and the role of technology in society.
- 🔬 The mainstreaming of DNA testing is changing how individuals and organizations understand and interact with genetic information, with potential implications for family structures.
- 📘 The speaker concludes with a call for designers to consider the broader implications of their work, moving from designing for consumers to designing for constituents within a social context.
Q & A
What is the role of the speaker at frog, a design and innovation consultancy?
-The speaker is the head of research at frog, where they help leading companies and organizations bring their ideas to life through design and innovation.
How does the speaker describe the scale of frog's operations?
-Frog has approximately 1,600 employees spread across 15 studios and development centers worldwide.
What is the focus of the speaker's research over the last 15 years?
-The speaker's research has focused on how technology, particularly robotics, plays a role in society, including studies on various societal aspects such as what people carry in their bags, the role of faith in transactions, and the use of social media in the Middle East.
What is a core principle of the research methodology used by the speaker and their team?
-A core principle of their research methodology is to immerse themselves in the context of people's everyday activities, often spending weeks on the ground to understand and engage with local communities.
How does the speaker describe the logistical challenges of conducting global research?
-The logistical challenges include getting a team on the ground in unfamiliar cultures, operating in languages that team members may not understand, and sometimes having as little as one week's notice to prepare.
What is the speaker's approach to dealing with moral and ethical issues in research?
-The speaker acknowledges the moral and ethical issues, especially considering they have commercial clients. They address these issues through decompression sessions and debriefings to ensure the team's well-being and ethical integrity.
What is an example of how the speaker uses observations from resource-constrained environments to inform design?
-The speaker uses the example of a street gasoline station in Vietnam, where a simple setup with a bottle on a brick and a siphon represents the essence of a gas station, teaching designers to focus on the core functionality of a product or service.
What is the significance of the speaker's observation about the use of technology in different cultures?
-The observation highlights how the appropriate use of technology can vary greatly across cultures, influencing social norms and behaviors, and presenting opportunities for designers to innovate within these cultural contexts.
How does the speaker relate the decision to opt into or out of a product or service to societal participation?
-The speaker suggests that the decision to use a product or service is increasingly becoming a choice about participating in society, as many products and services are becoming inherently connected and social.
What challenges does the speaker foresee with the increasing integration of technology into everyday life?
-The speaker foresees challenges related to identity, privacy, and the social etiquette of technology use, as well as the need for designers to adapt their skills to consider the broader implications of their designs on society.
What is the concept of 'caveat emptor' and how does the speaker suggest it should evolve for the future?
-Caveat emptor is the principle of 'let the buyer beware.' The speaker suggests that, in addition to being cautious, designers and consumers should enter into contracts with 'uberrimae fidei,' or utmost good faith, to ensure ethical and responsible use of technology.
Outlines
🌏 Global Research Insights at Frog Design
The speaker introduces their role as head of research at Frog Design, a design and innovation consultancy with a global presence. They discuss the company's scale, with 1,600 employees across 15 studios, and their focus on helping leading companies and organizations bring ideas to life. The speaker's personal experience includes 15 years of global research, particularly on the impact of technology and robotics in society. They delve into various studies, from examining everyday items in Japan to the role of faith in transactions in India, social media in the Middle East, and banking services in Afghanistan. The approach to research emphasizes context, with the team spending time on the ground, engaging with communities, and conducting interviews in homes and local settings to understand motivations and behaviors.
🔍 Ethical Challenges and Observations in Global Research
This paragraph delves into the ethical and moral challenges faced during global research, especially when dealing with commercial clients. The speaker shares anecdotes from team decompression sessions and uses examples from resource-constrained environments to illustrate learning opportunities for designers. They highlight the simplicity of a 'street gas station' in Vietnam and a dog deterrent in China to emphasize the importance of understanding the essence of products and services. The speaker also discusses social rules and behaviors, such as the unspoken etiquette around technology use in public spaces, and how these rules can vary across cultures, impacting the adoption of new technologies.
📱 The Social Implications of Ubiquitous Technology
The speaker explores how the increasing connectivity and social elements of products and services are influencing societal norms and behaviors. They discuss the decision to adopt technology as a choice between participating in society or opting out, using examples like car windshield phone numbers in Seoul and a vending machine in Tokyo that tailors its display based on the gender of passersby. The speaker also addresses the challenges designers face in transitioning from designing for consumers to designing for constituents who may not be aware they are using a product or service, and the need for the design profession to adapt to this shift.
🕊️ The Evolution of Privacy and Identity in a Technologically Advanced Society
This paragraph focuses on the evolving concepts of privacy and identity in a society where technology is increasingly integrated into everyday life. The speaker discusses the use of facial recognition technology in various settings and the implications for personal identity, including the potential for misuse of biometric data. They also touch on the mainstreaming of DNA testing and its social repercussions, such as the revelation of non-paternity within families, which can challenge traditional notions of family structure. The speaker suggests that these technological advancements are prompting a reevaluation of social norms and the boundaries between what is considered social and anti-social behavior.
🤝 Trust and Responsibility in the Age of Advanced Technology
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker emphasizes the importance of trust and responsibility in the design and use of technology. They reference the concept of 'caveat emptor' and propose a new principle, 'bona fide', which means to enter into a contract with the utmost faith. The speaker encourages designers to consider the broader implications of their work, including the potential for technology to redefine social norms and the family unit. They leave the audience with a call to action to approach technology with a sense of responsibility and trust, considering the impact on society as a whole.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Design and Innovation Consultancy
💡Robot Technology
💡Contextual Research
💡Cultural Sensitivity
💡Ethical Issues
💡Resource-Constrained Environments
💡Social Rules
💡Opting into Society
💡DNA Testing
💡Parental Discrepancy
💡Caveat Emptor
💡Fidei
Highlights
Introduction of the speaker's role at Frog, a design and innovation consultancy.
Frog's global presence with 1,600 employees across 15 studios and development centers.
The speaker's 15 years of research on technology's role in society.
Exploration of social media's role in the Middle East, particularly post-revolution Egypt.
The importance of context in research and engaging with communities on their terms.
Methodology of conducting research on the ground for days to a month.
Challenges of conducting global research in unfamiliar cultures and languages.
Frog's hiring principle of employing local individuals to support and understand communities.
Ethical considerations in commercial research and its impact on researchers.
The speaker's approach to identifying opportunities in resource-constrained environments.
Example of a street gas station in Vietnam illustrating the essence of a product or service.
Observation of social rules and behaviors that govern how we interact with technology.
Cultural differences in technology adoption and social norms, exemplified by dog pee deterrents in China.
The impact of technology on society's social fabric and the challenges it poses to designers.
The concept of identity in the digital age and who owns it, highlighted by a loan shark example.
Discussion on the mainstreaming of DNA testing and its implications for family structures.
The potential for technology to redefine social norms and the role of designers in this evolution.
The importance of entering into contracts with utmost faith in the context of technology and society.
Transcripts
hi first off it's wonderful to be here
and thanks for everyone for being so
welcoming here at pop tech so so I work
for frog which is a design and
innovation consultancy and I'm the head
of research frog has about 60 just to
give you a sense of scale we have about
1,600 folks spread across 15 studios and
development centers worldwide and we
serve and many leading companies and
organizations and help them bring their
ideas to life we help them make things I
spent much of the last 15 years
conducting research around the world
and particularly looking at how
technology the robot technology plays in
society any the studies can be anything
from something as notionally trivial as
what people carry in their bags and why
in Japan the role of faith in
transactions in India we were fortunate
enough to be working in Egypt and just
post-revolution and so we explored the
role of social media in the Middle East
and something that might be very dear to
the pop tech community is working in
Afghanistan and trying to understand
what it would take to bring rudimentary
banking services to consumers with who
are on one or two dollars a day actually
while we were in the Egypt we managed to
pop down to Libya just just for a little
bit to figure out how to try to figure
out how someone had managed to hack the
Libyan a cellular network this is
Gaddafi in his better days
so and one of the core principles of how
we work is that we want to get into the
context that people do the everyday
things that they do when we run the
research and typically we're on the
ground for anything from a few days
excuse me
up to one month on the ground and so we
like to get into the context that people
do the things that they do we've become
adept at figuring out where in the
community we're able to engage people on
their own terms wherever we are in the
world this is actually in a barber shop
in Jalalabad where we are conducting
interviews and but nearly always our
search starts in people's homes and you
can figure out so much about what drives
people and what their motivations are by
being invited into their home and being
given access to to actually very
intimate moments in their life and very
intimate spaces as well and we do this
in much of the kind of industrialized
world and we do this in I guess the
majority world or in communities which
are very tight-knit and people on very
low levels of income for example here in
Dharavi Mumbai you know this is a home
for a family of four and it's six by
four meters and so you know how as a
team how do you what's the appropriate
way to be able to go into these spaces
in a very short space of time and
collect meaningful data and as you might
imagine you know we run this worldwide
and we had a meeting in Austin recently
and we calculated we probably run
seventy to a hundred studies a year in
frog and as you might imagine there are
numerous logistical challenges to doing
this kind of research sometimes we have
to get a team on the ground in a culture
that we really don't know operating in a
language that nobody on the team on our
team yet understands and sometimes with
as little as one weeks notice ideally we
run a lot more than that but it can be
as little as one week swear notice and
we've built a process and we've
developed and refined and honed a
process for building putting together a
team
we have a few principles similar to
Malenko and we hire local we like to
spend local because we're pumping money
into the local communities and we
typically live in people's homes or in a
guest house with the whole team
including the locals and a local
assistance kind of think sometimes it's
a bit of a holiday to be invited into it
into that space but actually we get them
from 4 a.m. till 2 a.m.
kind of so we can actually work them
pretty hard and some of the you know
that the logistical challenges are many
and but some of the most interesting
challenges I think are the moral and
ethical issues that we have in doing
this research given that we have largely
commercial clients and sometimes it
drives some of our team to desperation
no this is this is actually we typically
have a decompression at the end of a
study this is the train between Jian in
China to last two days in our train with
the team to breathe a debrief over the
data that's actually my colleagues
sitting on the top rank so I'm going to
give you a little taster of things that
we're looking for and kind of the way
that we see the world and a lot of our
research is is you know we we spend
weeks on the on the ground and we can
interact with many many people but
sometimes there's a few things that can
highlight kind of our approach and what
we can learn one of the things I love
about resource constrained environments
is what they can teach us particularly
as designers and makers so can anyone
tell me what this is the foot gasoline
anyone else eliminated
palm oil okay it's taken on the streets
of Ho Chi Minh City and the first
gentleman was correct it's gasoline it's
a gasoline tank it's a gas station now
when most of us think of a gas station
we think of the big canopy we think of
the forecourt we think of the uniforms
the cash register the bathrooms the
coffee the lousy coffee the snacks we
think of all of that and that's the
holistic gas station experience and this
is a wonderful example you can actually
get those gas stations via in Vietnam
but this is a wonderful example of a
street gas station is there anything you
can take away from this and it's still a
gas station the brick why is the brick
there sorry to put the gas on display
could have that purpose anyone else
siphoning okay exactly so if you have
gasoline in a container on a brick it
raises it above the container that
you're trying to siphon it into it's
pretty simple we're pretty simple and so
if you think about a gas station the
next time you see one of those large gas
stations just think of a bottle on a
brick and a siphon and that's what it is
and if you're you know as designers we
like to kind of pare down the
understanding or drill down to the
essence of what our product or our
services and what what it can be before
we then build it up into something else
so this is notionally a relatively
trivial example
and certainly trivial I think after the
the the previous two speakers and this
is taken in Beijing can anyone tell me
what this is or why the wood is there
okay I'll give you a clue it's it's
closure for dogs okay so um China is
already the world's largest car market
it's also the world's largest market of
first time car buyers and if you're a
car buyer part of the holistic
experience of owning a car is that it
retains a sense of cleanliness certainly
you don't want dogs peeing on it and is
it like I said this is a trivial example
but you know when you're operating the
space that we operate in you know I look
at this and I see I see two
opportunities I see one opportunity
which is to develop tires that naturally
propel dogs that encouraged dogs to go
elsewhere and the second thing I think
of is well let's say you live in a
community in San Francisco and you don't
really like the SUVs cluttering up the
streets and you have a problem with that
well what if you develop something that
it would encourage dogs to pee on wheels
and if you want to play both sides you
can develop both so okay so one of the
things I find fascinating about looking
in the world and looking how people
behave is this kind of the the social
rules that govern how we behave the
social rules that govern that you titter
at a certain moment where you clap at
another moment or that whether you jump
a cue or not and all of these little
rules that nobody says what they are but
everyone knows when you've crossed it
and typically there's kind of behaviors
that people exhibit when you do cross it
touching if you're British tutting is a
very is a very common one
so bleaching is another which is in
cafes when someone opens their laptop
and the owners not happy with it that
will clean up around and if they're
really unhappy they'll put bleach on the
cloth and clean up around to encourage
the people to move on and another thing
I'm fascinated is I mean you know we
operate worldwide and I'm fascinated how
people
about what's appropriate the use of a
technology in their particular culture
given that we we operator we live in a
globalized world and this photo for me
is you know what is it that these two
apartments lay out their futons in Japan
and nobody else in the apartment block
does and it's because they as neighbors
that's what they see they're learning
from each other and they're not seeing
what's above and what's what's to the
below them and I'll give you an example
of a kind of niche technology a kind of
use of technology that you're not really
likely to see elsewhere so this is a car
this this photo was taken in Seoul I'm
going to zoom in for the the windscreen
and in Seoul it's typical that when you
have a car you post your phone number on
the windshield because the many of the
roads in Seoul are very narrow and when
you park if you want to be considerate
to your neighbors of course you want to
be able to give them some point of
contact so that you can move your
vehicle to do otherwise would be
anti-social how many people here would
post their their phone number on there
okay and this is interesting because
increasingly as the products and
services that we're developing are
inherently becoming connected and
increasingly as they have more social
elements to them the decision whether to
adopt a technology whether to opt into
or out of using a technology or a
product or a service becomes one of
whether you want to opt into or out of
society it's a fundamental thing I'm
going to repeat that the decision of
whether to opt into or out of a product
or service is increasingly becoming one
of whether to whether to opt into or out
of society and I'm just thinking about
that from the point of view of designers
of services so often when we think of
taking a slightly different tack often
where we think of Big Brother we think
of this this is actually taken close to
the stadium in Shanghai but actually a
lot of the things that allow us to be
surveilled and come from our only use of
technology from mobile phones from
making contact with payments and from
things like this so this is a vending
machine in Tokyo and this vending
machine is a little different from other
vending machines that you may know so
depending on whether you're male or
female as you're passing it will monitor
you and then once it figured out you're
female it will be displaying drinks on
that display that it thinks that you as
a consumer will like this exists today
this has been around for a few months
and you know this is a very Japanese
apparition of or application of
technology but increasingly you're going
to be seeing this and this is displays
that instead of just displaying you can
interact with them and you can pull
information off from them and that seems
like a two-way street but increasingly
what we're seeing is that these displays
are collecting information on the
environment around them and they can do
it 24/7
imagine that every display you see out
there is able to capture what it sees
and who has access to that and as
designers we're confronted with moving
from designing for consumers
increasingly for designing for a
constituents people who may or may not
know that they're actually using a
product or service and as a domain as a
profession we need to change our skill
set and we need to change how we think
about how we design I came across this
quote recently which I love it's from a
an author who wrote an essay called Bill
J and so a moral character dwindles as
our instruments get smaller and this is
actually quite timely you know this is
where's a stage where technically nearly
all of us the technology in a mobile
phone that you're carrying with you
today can be reduce down to something
that could be in your ear and nobody can
see it already you have Bluetooth
headsets but imagine having everything
at cellular into something that size
that other people can't see and
increasingly technology is being
embedded in the displays and the ticket
gates and the fabric of the
infrastructure around us and one of the
issues with that is that you know we
like to think of Big Brother as the and
large corporations as being clumsy or
being malicious without data but
actually I from my experience we us all
of you are the ones that fumble with the
kind of social etiquette of Technology
cameras stuck in your face inappropriate
uses of things and this is how we as a
society figure out what's right and
what's wrong or where the line between
social and anti-social is so instead of
being able to look at this photo here
and think it's seeing the person with
the camera what if every person in this
picture has a camera and maybe they do
maybe you just can't see it
this quote actually is from the amateur
photographer in 1910 and it's from a
time when cameras came from this this
big on a tripod just something that
could be carried around all of a sudden
people could move around communities and
capture people unawares so I'm going to
point out a couple of disruptions things
that I think are going to shake the very
fabric of society
and particularly the social spaces of
the social spaces and the communities
around us and the first is so if you
look at this gentleman this is a male
host in an area of Tokyo male hosting is
relatively popular in Japan where women
go to a place to speak and dine with a
gentleman it's not necessarily sexually
related and you can see the 2d barcode
on there but that's all really outdated
technology as far as I'm concerned this
gentleman's face is the interface the
ability to take a camera in near to real
time in the time it takes for someone to
walk across a room to be able to pull up
data on that person and to know who they
are to know what they posted online to
know what other people have posted about
them online so that is very very very
close and this notion of identity who
owns the identity who owns after that
beta who owns who sees what when they
pull up your face is going to be one of
the the fundamental questions in the
next few years and I'm going to give you
an extreme example this this gentleman
is a loan shark and my assistant had
just borrowed money from him and it's in
Malaysia we were doing a study on money
I blurred out his face to protect his
identity one of the things that a loan
shark does apart from figuring out where
you live is actually take your photo
your photo your image is collateral it's
an extreme example but actually if you
go to many factories in China which are
serviced by or have a lot of migrant
workers when a migrant worker starts
working in a factory they hand over
their ID card the equivalent of the
driver's license
and if they want to leave they need to
ask for that back and they can't just
leave often so if they want to leave any
tip for example get someone
to replace them before they go my last
example is this so does anyone know what
this is
23 ma it's a DNA testing kit thank you
excuse me I'm a little dry and I think
it's about 99 bucks you spit in the
funnel and send it off in a couple of
weeks later 23andme will send you access
to your online profile where you can
figure out whether they will tell you
your genetic disposition to certain
diseases and this is for me an example
of the mainstreaming of DNA DNA testing
and having us as individuals having and
organizations as well having a greater
understanding of what a DNA is and one
of the interesting byproducts of the
mainstreaming of DNA testing is
something called parental discrepancy
and parental discrepancy is when you
figure out because multiple members of
the same family have been tested that
your biological father is not your
father and in this room today
oops there was a slide that's missing
excusing in this room today there's
probably about 500 people in the room
today I hate to say it but probably four
of you statistically probably four of
you your biological father is not your
father okay and it's a little
disconcerting but
so the I mean what's what's it what's
interesting about this for me as a
technology is that it it fundamentally
chat can challenge and motion of family
on the one hand it can it can reinforce
it it reinforces for people who for whom
a biologically linked family is
important it reinforces that but in some
communities in parental discrepancy can
be as high as 20% in very low and low
income low education high unemployment
communities and in those communities
potentially it helps redefine it helps
socialize the redefinition of the family
unit I'm going to end into it with two
things so the first thing is we're all
familiar with caveat emptor let the
buyer beware and this is good the buyer
should beware there's a lot of crap out
there and we have to ask a lot of
questions but as a designer I'm looking
for the next and I like this this is
actually the used by Lloyds of London
ooh buddy beer fidei and it means to
enter into a contract with upmost faith
and so I'd like to leave you with that
you believer fidei thank you
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