Thursday, June 18, 2009

Related project - geotwitter

There are three ways to identify where the twitter is.

<1>Goe-located by smart phone:
Twinkle (free), TwitterFon (free), Tweetie ($2.99), and Twittelator Pro ($4.99). The main purpose of these applications is for twittering on phone and using gps to geo-tag the twitter post. Therefore, users can see the twitters nearby. It is very precise but the information is not so location-related.

<2>Hashtag:
Localtweeps is attempting to organize the local Twitterverse using a hashtag. The idea is that users add themselves on the Localtweeps site by registering their zip code, then any time they tweet about something relevant to their local audience, they append the #lt hashtag. Localtweeps them parses those tweets on their web site and publishes them in a city-restricted stream.

<3>Twitter search engine api
Nearby Tweets


These applications are devoted to find the twitters nearby. It is more like using the other way to access twitters. However, when trying to find the twitters about a location, it is not easy. In the other words, there are a lots of opportunities in it.

Insights from User research

Here are the insights from user research

on-the-go information:
Every thing is news, but journalists extract the parts which related to most of people as news on newspaper and TV. Therefore, there are still some news useful to small group of people or people in specific place and time. This kind of information could be the meat super discount before store closing or rainbow in the sky. There are two features of on-the-go information, location specific and expired in a short time.

Real-time micro news
The news on newspaper normally are the average of an area. For example, the weather is the average of a city during a day. However, people may want to know what is the weather in the park now. Take education information as the other example. Parents may want to know the news about the school nearby instead of the national education policy.

Personality of the store
This is directly from the last post Nokia's chef(http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=5825667414375488540).


By the personal interest, I will go for the "personality of the store". However, it doesn't mean giving up the other two, because these concepts will be used when realizing the "personality of the store"

Nokia's Chef

The chef of Nokia canteen uses twitter a lot. Everyday he will share his happiness of making great food. For example my vivid impression is last time he shared his proud pancake and everyone rushed to get it. This is an interesting example that technology bringing back the intimacy to the relationship of the restaurant and customer.


In the old day, the restaurants are every close to customers. They are neighbors almost for life long, so they know each other very well just like friend relationship. Therefore, there are more intimacy interaction between restaurant and customer. For example, when there are more fresh or great food material, they will share and recommend with neighbors.

In modern society restaurants serve for mass. The restaurants are trained to be de-humanized for providing a image of standard food quality. There is no personality inside. With the technology nowadays, it is good chance to bring this intimacy back to cold communication between people.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Interview with journalist

Journalists are the mediator of communication between people. They find the story and broadcast to mass like an agent.

Journalist First
quotes
“They will publish the official press release before the event”
“Journalists like a magnet to news. When people want to speak out, they will have the way to find the journalist”
“Journalists try to maintain good relationship with stakeholders such polish officer to get social news”
“Most of the news about new restaurant are paid by them”
“Audiences don’t buy the advertisement from restaurant but they believe the report of restaurant in the newspaper”
“For politics news journalist, they almost always stay at government’s journalist room”
“Micro-news media is more about gathering the same interest people and sharing information”
“I will see the sharing, twitter and blogs, of specific group of people”


Journalist Second
“Media company will spy the radio to know where there is a fire or car accident”
“TV company has two deadline during a day, 12:00 and 5:00. We will follow the newspaper’s news for 12:00 deadline. We have to find the new news for the 5:00 deadline”
“There are four ways of finding news:
asking the police officer and fireman
research on internet like bbs or twitter
citizen expose
informer like friends

“Every thing is news but we only report what mass concerns”
“There are two kind of news, event and trend. We have to interpret what we see into trend”
“Local tv station focus on very local news which is very different from national news”
“We all use cell phone to communicate with coordinator who take control of every journalist”
“Blog becomes a usual way to find news”

Obseration - communication on the street

I try to get a sense of how people communicate in urban scale. Here is a series of photos , evidences, I shot on the street.

<1> The sign in front of the store is like a index of the store.
<2> The stores directly show the quality of the goods.

<3> Show the intagible status outside<4> Spread the events to mass
<5>to find the cat
<6> to find the job<7> to find the same interest people
<8>unveil the function inside the building
<9>the space with all events of the city
<10> In Denmark, if living in an apartment, it is usual to post a note on building board to inform neighbors that they are going to have a party. This communication is interesting, because it is like a proof of consideration.

Interview with people in work environment

I try to understand people who have high demand on communication and the characters of communication.

User 1
male
TSMC, semiconductor, biggest company in Taiwan
works in a nine people team
responds to maintain the quality of chips by fixing machine

Qutoes
“my supervisor knows what I am working on by the request email from clients”
“we will have meeting all together once a week, it is good time to know what each other are doing now”
“There is a database with formal reports”
“I have too many unsolved problems, I don’t have time to deal with it”
“My boss wants me to have ability of working individually”
“sometime I am too busy, I will ignore the 84% yield rate by averaging with 98%”
“When I face-to-face talk to my supervisor, we always only talk about the problems I face and then help me. I want to share my findings.”


User 2
male
team leader in design consultancy firm
interaction designer

Quotes
“Understanding the culture in Big company is similar to peeking a room in a hole”
“it is important to share the same vision in the team of Design consultancy”
“there are two part of the work. One is design. the other is get-thing-done. Averagely it is 50% to 50% of time”
“I think there is no communication problem but collaborating with wrong person”
“Small company communicate face-to-face and make decision very fast”
“When I divide the project to specific task, I finish 70% of work”
“The best work environment is everyone woking in the same space”
“We had a project working remotely. I discuss by phone with the other leader in xxxx, and we both made sure our own team’s result ”
“Sometimes some colleges are not good to decide something together, because them have different mental model. However, he is the stakeholder. It is good to inform he officially but doesn’t know”
“Design is not like manufacture. It is impossible to deliver things with standard to the others”
“Communication in company under 35 persons is the ideal for every one, because it is easy to face-to-face communication. Company beyond 35 persons is totally different story”




User 3
male
working in R&D department of P&G
interaction designer

Quotes
“we have internal instant message system. It is easy to discuss, sharing and arrange things”
“There are lots of powerful function on internal communication system such as meeting, redirect skype call to cell phone. However, I never use it”
“In design team, it is more important to establish unspoken consensus than to have good communication tool”
“Design work can’t be managed by time”

Interview with micro-blogging user

User 1
Femal
She is 20 years old, girl. She is from Taiwan, studies at denmark high school and has been here for four years.
Using bbs from 12 years old
ptt heavy user
have a personal board on bbs

Quotes
“There is no category in plurk. It is not easy to find and maintain resources”
“My mon lives in US. When we are on phone, I don’t talk too much detail about what happens to me. However, now she will check my plurk where she knows lots of details such as I feel headache today. Now, she has more reasons to nag me”
“Karma makes me feel accomplishment, and if it is high I have more emotion icon to use”
“I will feel comforted, if friend sends me a hug icon”
“Most of the friends on Plurk is the friend on net. I have not met them before”
“I don’t have to rise a conversation but still can keep posted what happened to friends”
“I want to mark the post like star in gmail”
“I will check my friends’ friends. It is good way to meet new friend”
“It is more “real” to meet new friend on Plurk, because I can see the his Plurk first”
“I check friends Plurk for keeping posted. I check net star for new information”
“It is more easy to have conversation topic with friends after using plurk”
“For me, blog is for writing something serious such as introducing Denmark, because it is very public space. BBS’s personal board is for venting her emotion, because not so many people know this place. Plurk is for nagging or something not so serious.”
“I don’t like facebook, because I always spent too much time on that”
“I will open computer for Plurk”



User 2
Male
30 years old
phd student in japan
first time using internet is 17 years old(13 years ago).
interaction designer

Quotes
“ I use iphone to Plurk with photo. I don’t write by iPhone, because it is too hard to use keyboard”
“Sometimes, I just to want to document my life. I don’t care the quality of photo but care the events”
“At beginning, I just want to write some program with twitter”
“I have an Plurk account long time ago. There are no so many people using it then, so I didn’t use it. However now lots of my friends use it, so I use it a lot now”
“I connect all my social network by Plurk. When I publish something in Plurk, it will also appear on my facebook, twitter and blog.”
“I don’t care who see my post. My collage can see my personal life”
“My professor in collage is very busy. It always take days to reply my email and sometimes he misses it. Last week, I tried to reach him by the Plurk and the result is much faster than email”
“I bought a new iPhone, I asked some questions on Plurk. Some strangers answer my questions. It is amazing. I have no ideas why they know my post.”
“I follow john maeda’s twitter”
“I used to check my friends’ nickname of msn but after using Plurk I don’t do that anymore”
“There is one kind of friend who will contact once a month. After using Plurk, I keep posted with them”
“I will write special things on blog and unimportant things on Plurk”
“One of my friend write Plurk by iPhone. He writes lots of details such as I am eating now. It is my routine to see it everyday”
“Recently, I don’t have regular life. I go to bed too late. I try to document the time I wake up and go to bed. Now I have better idea of my life”
“For me, Plurk is a tool to broadcast to friends”
“I would like to subscribe some interesting information. I depend on google reader a lot now”
“Most of time when I am in break I will check my friends’ Plurk and post new one”