- Read Ch. 4 from Chipchase Hidden in Plain Sight. Write a response and two questions and post it by midnight on Saturday to OSS.
- Based on the lecture on Place, Location and Ubiquitous technology, post an example of a product, service or design concept and post it on OSS.
Reading response
“You Are What You Carry” chapter starts by talking about how people in general always carry 3 things everywhere: money, keys, and mobile phones as survival tools. People also have developed the habits and strategies to know where their belongings are. The places to put the objects we usually carry are called “centers of gravity”. For example, I usually always put my keys in my front part of my bag.
In addition, people also tend to want to keep their belongings safe. Chipcase introduced the term “range of distribution” which means “the distance that people are willing to let physical objects stray when they are out and about.” Knowing about this fact, one might see a business opportunity that offers safety. One example is Bobby, anti theft backpack.
Lastly, I want to discuss about the last part of the chapter about network and connectivity. Being in the “future”, we are already used to being connected to a lot of information, from accessing digital map using GPS to shopping online using our phones. The effect of losing one’s phone while he is so dependent on it might make him feel vulnerable. Chipchase argues that losing cell connectivity, for him, means that he is loosing his entire support system. I will experiment to not use my phone for the whole day tomorrow as part of week 6’s assignment, and I shudder every time I think about it 🙁
Q1
If someone loses the money-key-mobile phone in one go, how panic will you get? What is the first thing that you will do? For me, I think that I need to memorize someone’s number so that I could borrow someone’s phone to call him or her. Somehow, we still need to rely on our brain, not so much on our phones…
Q2
How safe we really feel about our data on the cloud? Think about the time when finally Whatsapp intended to share user data to Facebook.
Example of ubiquitos technology.
We rely on GPS to play Pokemon Go to locate the pokemons, Gyms (for pokemon battle), and Poke Stop (to retrieve game items).