Strange Systems

The Culture Code: An ingenious way to understand why people around the world live and buy as they do.
by Clotaire Rapaille

Having spent substantial portions of my life in 3 very different cultures on 3 different continents (US, UK, Korea), I found "The Culture Code", very insightful, entertaining and surprising.

The Culture Code. as defined by the author, is the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing - a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country - via the culture in which we are raised.

The author uses the Jeep Wrangler as an example of how different cultures have different codes when relating to it: Chrysler didn't know what direction they should push the Wrangler, and asking people hadn't helped. The author didn't ask what people wanted, he asked what their earliest memories ("imprints") of Jeeps were. Many recalled open land, going where no normal car would go. This reveal the code for Jeep in America is "horse". Hence Jeep didn't need luxurious touches, such as soft leather seats. It needed removable doors, and an open top. In contrast, the code for Jeep in France and Germany is "liberator" since many associated the Jeep to the liberation of Europe during the Second World War.

It had always puzzled me why Americans love carry their coffee around, drinking it on the go - on streets, in cars. I would see American exchange students on campus in Korea, faithfully carrying their big travel mugs heading to class. Only American students seems to do this. A sure sign of an American student was his/her coffee, backpack, sandals and large water bottles.

This, I learned, was because Americans equate health with movement, (the American code for health is "movement") and that Americans have a strong ethic for work and getting things done and have no patience for taking a backseat or enjoying things for its own pleasure. Therefore consumption of coffee (= productivity), on the go (= movement, efficiency) makes practical sense to the common American where it would puzzle your average European or Asian.

The books goes on to explore various codes for love, beauty, fat, health, youth, home, work, money, quality, alcohol, shopping and towards the end the code for America itself.

The book was somewhat therapeutic for me. I never imagined that a branding/marketing book would end up being a self-help book. It helped me understand how growing up in different cultures informs the way we think and helps explain some of the differences between my wife who grew up in the States and I who grew up in the UK. Why I read instructions and she doesn't.

The study of how Americans perceive quality was also informative. American code for quality is simply "it works". What this says is Americans prefer basic function over design. American are very forgiving towards design as long as it performs it expected function (How else would you explain the abundance of such bad car designs coming out of Detroit). In the mobile phone industry, this attitude is perfectly exemplified in the Verizon ads with the bespectacled man who goes around simply saying, "Can you hear me now?" In comparison, Koreans, Japanese and British people are far more conscious about the way cell phones look.

The author bring all the observations around cultural differences to a conclusion about global marketing:

Global strategy requires customizing for each culture, though it is always important that the strategy embrace "American-ness.

The author suggests that branding needs to be tailored to cultures however when a brand is global, it is always in its best interest to project an image of its local roots:

Cultures perceive globalization as a direct attack on their survival. If the world becomes truly flat and we all exist under one huge planet-wide culture, then we lose the individual cultural identities that have defined us. When brands extend themselves into the global market by championing their village of origin, they accomplish two tasks at once: they perpetuate their own culture and they celebrate everyone's cultural identity.

Think Mini Cooper. They are owned by BMW, but they are branding (rightfully, successfully) as a British icon. Think Evian or Levi's. These are global brands, but still have something very local about them. Evian is water from the Alps and Levi's is the icons American apparel.

In the end I had to wonder about Korea. How Koreans perceive themselves. Also how Korea is perceived by others outside Korea. What is the code for America in Korea? How should Samsung, LG, Hyundai be market themselves? What is uniquely Korean about these brands?

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On this heels of one book that explores the differences between cultures comes another: I just started reading: The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... and Why. This book promises to be more of an academic read.

At some point in the near future, the term mobile "phone" will be too limiting to describe what we'll be carrying around in our pockets.

Take the iPhone (or any smartphone) as an example. Currently there are 8GB and 16GB versions available, but at the rate memory is increasing and coming down in price, soon we'll be getting 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions in the next few years (or months?). What will it mean to carry that much capacity on a mobile phone.

All my music files are about 50GB, all my photos 30GB, my email 5GB, and another couple for all the movies files shot on my camera. That means I can be carrying all my digital possessions with me on my phone. The term "phone" refers to a communication device. With high-quality camera and movie capture capabilities along with massive storage, it is something more that a mere phone. At this point it become a life caching device.

Nokia and Samsung have already been busy exploring this concept, however they are still in very early stages of development. I always thought that Cyworld needs to move in this direction in order for it to remain relevant - i.e. provide a life-caching service closely coupled with mobile service, but I digress.

For a life caching mobile device/phone to be useful/usable, it needs to address some pretty fundamental challenges:

• Powerful Search When you have so much stuff on such a small device you need something more close to Apple OS X's Spotlight to find the stuff you are looking for.
• Rapid Browsing Browsing photos on a traditional cell phone is pretty painful with the key-mapped interface. Touch interfaces (à la iPhone) with flicking provide faster access and browsing experience to photos, music, movies, email and message lists.
• Logical Cross-Referecing It's still a communications device after all, and it makes sense to be able to access content via people. When you find a person in your address book, you should be able to view all the content related to that person.
• Easy Backup Heaven knows what will happen if (or is it a matter of when) you lose you life-cached possessions stored on your device.
• QWERTY Keypad You'll need to do a lot of typing to tag all the content coming into your device and well as for posting and sharing your content with others.
• Web-PC-Device interoperability Your portable device is good for capturing precious moments, communicating and transporting content, but for sharing the web is still king. As for editing all the movies and photos, and backing up, the PC is still your best bet. Each device has its merits and content should be easily transferable between platforms.

The Point is a simple website with a clear purpose: making things happen. The way they do it is helping users formulate a campaign statement for action with a clear goal. Users can then choose to participate in the campaign. When the goal is met (or "the point" is tipped), an email is sent to the participants to act. For example:

Stop Zippy Oil from polluting Lake Apache Zippy Oil must stop dumping waske into Lake Apache or else we will boycott ZippyPump when 100,000 people join

The campaigns can be serious or silly, which is a nice twist:

Bow-tie Tuesday Andrew Mason will wear a bow tie every Tuesday if 8 people do the same.

The site has a collaboration section for brainstorming ways to approach a problem and also a social networking component to connect people with similar interest.

Aside from a few companies such as Amazon, Google or Facebook, the value of Web2.0 for the business world is still unclear, and return on investment still seems murky at best. However for the non-profit world, the value of Web2.0 is clear - the more the users are empowered and congregate around interest that they share, the better the opportunities for action.

In Korea, where I work, there is a lot of businesses coming online based on Web2.0 models, and a lot of talk around using Web2.0 to enhance service offerings and user experience, but little talk about the social impact that Web2.0, which to me is missing the whole point of Web2.0.

Tim O'Reilly said back in 2005, Web is a platform. A platform to do what? We should at least consider the potential of it becoming an agent for change and the betterment of society as a whole.

What is encouraging is that there are already many services by the big players in the Korean online space that make online donation easy and fun. Korea's leading social networking site, Cyworld has its online volunteer matching and giving site called Cytogether where you can donate your time or "acorns" to a cause. Naver, the Korean search engine / online portal behemoth has a service called Happy Bean where you collect "beans" worth about 10 cents for every email you sent through their email service. You can donate these you causes and donations are matched by corporate sponsors. CJ Foundation (CJ is part of the Samsung conglomerate) has its own version of the US site DonorsChoose.org called DonorsCamp.

A culture of donation doesn't spring up overnight, but if you look at the numbers, citizens who are online (or "netizens" as they are called here) are beginning to donate generously.

But these services are only limited in their scope and potential and only scratch at the surface of serious change. In one of the most wired places on earth, shouldn't we expect more innovative services that enable and empower people to think differently.

When I was recently asked to give a 1 hour presentation at OpenTide China, in Beijing, on a subject of my choice, I chose to put together a presentation highlighting some of the work that I was involved in while I was working at Forum One Communications (my previous place of employment), that involved innovative use of Web2.0 for social action. I ended up giving the same presentation again to staff at VINYL, Seoul, where I currently work. The presentation outline Web2.0 principles and then introduces 4 "stories" or projects I was directly or indirectly involved in. The projects are CARMA, Changemakers, Ask Your Lawmaker and DonorsChoose (I didn't have direct involvement but know the project well because I good friend worked on the Korean counterpart DonorsCamp).

Here's the presentation I gave:

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I've been struggling to define exactly what "convergence" means in today's wired world. I think I've found the best definition yet.

Convergence is sometimes viewed as the consolidation of multiple technologies towards a singular uber-device. I prefer to define convergence as the tendency of technologies, as they grow in complexity and scope, to overlap (and consolidate) functions. Convergence therefore refers to a trend wherein devices and functions take on commonly shared traits, but this doesn’t mean that this trend ultimately ends with a single multifunctional mega-device, no matter how cool and ‘mad scientist’ that might sound.

The article goes on to describe "7 considerations for convergence". An excellent read.

Although I have visited Hong Kong, this was my first trip to mainland China. My first impressions of Beijing was one of scale: We entered through the new Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital International Airport, designed by Foster + Partners and ARUP. The building is said to represent a dragon in motion, with its undulating roofline. Stepping through the passport control, you see the building on axis for the first time and the way the columns extend out reminded me of drawings of the Italian Futurist Antonio Sant'Elia at the turn of the century, in the way it celebrates modern transportation infrastructure. According to Sir Norman Foster in a presentation at the DLD Conference, Munich in 2007:

[The new Terminal 3] is physically the largest building on the planet at the moment... larger by 17% than every terminal put together at Heathrow [London].

The scale of the building is also reinforced on the exterior, by using an optical illusion to make the building seem stretch out into the vanishing point.

As we were landing at the airport the pilot informed us that there was about a 3 mile visibility. I thought it rather odd that he was disclosing this information, the first time I'd ever heard it being mentioned inflight. Driving from the airport to downtown, I realized why this information was relevant. Although it was a clear day, there was a haze all around. "Yellow dust" or "hwang-sa" is what they call it in Korea. It's the dust being blown across East Asia from China's Gobi desert (See NOAA satellite photo).

Although the trip was primarily business-related, I did get a chance to visit a few local attractions. The Grand National Theatre of China in Beijing, was designed by French architect Paul Andreu, and completed in Dec 2007 after 6 years of construction.

It's huge - the dome houses 3 freestanding building inside it: the opera, theatre and concert hall. They didn't allow any cameras through security (but they did allow cellphones with cameras) so I wasn't able to take any interior photos.

The entrance goes under the moat surrounding the building and you can look up through glass at the water as you enter the building. The dome surrounded by a moat make the building an easy target to be called a "egg" - a fried egg in this case.

798 Art District in Northeast Beijing is a thriving artist community, studios and galleries housed in former weapons factory. The "798" comes from the factory number.

The Chinese government seems to give artist a lot of breathing space these days, allowing open criticism of the government, its open market policies and the negative effects of capitalism on their society. In a way, Chinese artists have it easy, since they have an easy focal point upon which they can base their creative energy, unlike art in the west, which has lost its ideological focus and now can only resort to critiquing itself. My friend put it nicely: it seemed like the Chinese artists were like students in art school, trying to find their voice, uninhibited and full of raw energy.

When we visited it was under heavy construction and renovation in preparation for the tourists that are going to flood Beijing around the Olympic Games this summer. It a shame that the artistic character of area will soon be gentrified beyond all recognition. It will be yet another Soho, Greenwich Village or Williamsburg in New York, now full of galleries and shops with few traces of the artists who pioneered the neighborhood and made it possible.

One thing I found missing from Beijing that I expected was the presence of bicycles. I always remember photos of large cities in China full of masses of people riding bicycles. My friend told me when he first visited Beijing 10 years ago, there were thousands of bicycles on the streets, but now it's hard to see any due to the ban on bicycles that has gradually been enforced since 1998. They say that China is the faster growing market in automobile sales, and public transportation infrastructure is growing. However I can't imagine the effects of all those people switching to carbon producing cars will benefit the already fragile state of China's environment.

Mobile phones and most personal electronics devices have been made for durability. My Samsung phone is finished in stainless steel, plastic and glass. It is black and shiny. My iPod Nano is aluminum.

My wallet is made of leather. When I first bought by wallet, it was stiff, and uncomfortable. But at some point in time, it yielded and started to conform to the curve of my posterior. Same thing happened to my watch strap, also made of leather. It is has morphed to the size of my wrist. Shoes, jackets, baseball caps.. I can name numerous examples.

In the flood of hyper-niched marketing world, I am still surprised that very little effort is made in the personal electronics space to take advantage of this property of personal artifacts: that it registers the physical interaction between the artifact and user. Guitar frets have show well-worn usage by its owner. Yet phones resist this natural aging process.

Most aspects of our environment can be better personalized than our electronics. We can choose wallpaper or paint color for our apartments, adorn it with our personality over time. Personalization to mobile users usually means changing the background or ringtone or those little dangley phone accessories that you see all over Korea and Japan. Nothing that registers gradually over time. Why not a mobile phone made with leather or wood. Why not a iPod where a friend can scratch their message into the surface instead of having it laser engraved.

It was refreshing to see a couple of example recently. Here are two examples of phones made from bamboo (concepts) and handcrafted iPhone case made from high quality wood (commercially available).

Yet another argument for the use of natural materials in personal electronics is environmental. Massive amounts of mobile phones are consumed each year. The rates of mobile phone penetration is close to saturation in the US, Korea and in most developed countries. It's rare that we find any recycling of mobile phones. Most people just throw away their phones when it is broken or when they switch carriers. Here's where the mobile telecom industry can learn from the automotive industry. There is a whole secondary industry build around reclaiming, reusing, and recycling used car parts on one front, on another front there are movements to make more efficient cars. Why are there so few examples of environmental friendliness in the mobile phone industry? I think this is a marketing opportunity that begs to be tapped for both the consumer's and industry's benefit.

As the elections in US heats up, I checked back on one of my last projects at Forum One, Ask Your Lawmaker (I was the lead information architect). It went live last November and it's good to see it is finally gathering some steam.

Ask Your Lawmaker is a site created by Capitol News Connection (CNCNews) which supplies news of the goings-on in the US Congress to NPR news stations. As the instructions for the site suggests, the idea for the site is simple:

• You Ask. (Users submit questions to ask congresspersons and senators)
  
• You Vote. (Users collectively vote of which questions are worthy)
  
• We Get Answers. (CNCNews reporters track down the lawmakers and record answers, then post to the site)
  

It uses a Digg-like interface to encourage visitors to vote and filter which questions submitted by users, effectively using the wisdom of crowds to be the arbiter of quality.

What differentiates this site from the Digg's of the online world is that this site has a physical component. The CNCNews reporters actually go out and accost lawmakers in the corridors of the US Capitol, waiting for them in various strategic locations, where they know they will be passing through. Armed with intimate knowledge of the architecture and how the lawmakers must be present in certain locations at certain times or events, the reporters are supreme hackers the Capitol for their single-minded purpose.

During a guided tour of the Capitol by one of CNCNews veteran reporters, I saw him spring into action interviewing a senator during a trip on the underground monorail that connects the Capitol with the adjacent administration buildings.

Ask Your Lawmaker supplies a valuable service that empowers the users (citizens of a democratic society) to supply the questions / question authority. We have seen citizens use YouTube to provide questions to presidential candidates. But what is often overlooked is that gathering quality information often takes a lot of effort.

Even in a digital world, we are still very much at the mercy of the physical world.

The news we read on BBC News or The New York Times are supplied by reporters who must go out and gather the information often risking their lives in the process.

We place orders on flower delivery sites, scanning numerous arrangements, comparing pricing and quality, finding that perfect bouquet of flowers for that special occasion and sweating over how to edit the delicate message down to the 200 letter limit as required by the site. But at the end of the day we still have to depend of underpaid part-timers for the final-yard delivery of our most intimate expressions of love.

The American Institute of Architects (aka the AIA), celebrating its 150th Anniversary, put together a website of America's favorite architecture. The list was compiled by polling its members. The result is a collection of 150 buildings, bridges, monuments and memorials which users can vote on.

What's nice is that they have added models to Google Earth, so user can see the location, and see the landmarks in 3D

My personal favorites? (from the list provided by the site)

1. Grand Central Terminal, New York
2. The Vietnam War Memorial, Washington DC
3. Brooklyn Bridge, New York
4. The Getty Center, Los Angeles
5. Seattle Public Library, Seattle

Of course, my selections are skewed towards building in New York that have personal significance and buildings I have actually visited.

One glaring omission in my opinion: National Gallery of Art's East Building, Washington DC, by I.M. Pei. This building is by far my favorite in Washington DC.

Go and vote!

I've been systematically going through the TED video podcasts ever since I got my iPod Nano in late October, 2007. I've finally achieved my goal of being up-to-date with the podcast, sitting through some 180 episodes.

TED for those who are unfamiliar, is handful of annual events, the heart of which is a conference hosted in Monterey, California. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and the events brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

The next TED conference is Feb 27 - March 1, 2008 and is completely sold out, except for a few tickets that show up on eBay for $33,000

Most of the presentation are amazing, but a couple really stand out for me. Here's my personal top 10 list and my reasons why. They are listed in order of ones that have inspired me and I find myself recalling most often.

1. Ken Robinson Humor aside (this is one of the funniest presentations), Ken Robinson makes a compelling case for creativity in education. He makes the point that current education has a strong bias towards the languages and math (which is good for training college professors) whereas in order to tackle the complexity of the problems facing us today and in the future, we'll need to educate the next generation to be more creative than we've ever been.
2. Evelyn Glennie is world-renowed, and incidentally, the first ever professional percussion soloist. She is also deaf. This provides her with a whole new perspective that most of us miss: Music as experience, and not just a series of notes to be played.
3. Cameron Sinclair is one of the founders of Architecture for Humanity, which explores sustainable housing solutions for impoverished nations. It's action-oriented mottos is "Design like you give a damn". In his talk, he advocates an open-sourcing of design ideas where local solutions can be shared and refined globally, while being protected through a Creative Commons Developing Nations License.
4. Malcolm Gladwell is just an amazing storyteller. He takes the example of the common pasta sauce to illustrate that often in marketing there is no platonic idea of perfection, but many points of perfection. "There is no perfect Pepsi; There are only perfect Pepsis." Different people will be drawn to different ideas of perfection, though the may never admit it overtly. Hence the creation of the "Extra Chunky" pasta sauce. A perfect example of uncommon wisdom.
5. Barry Schwartz is the author of "The Paradox of Choice" and explains that we often confuse freedom with limitless choices. More choice can often be paralyzing and leads to misery.
6. Vilayanur Ramachandran's presentation show how parts of the brain are linked and function in a integrated manner, and how emotion plays an important part of how we process information.
7. Hans Rosling analyzes global health data, but uses a tool to adds the dimension of time which illuminates trends and relationships that are harder to grasp as static charts. He takes what seems to be boring statistics and animates them not only through software but through his humorous commentary. He goes even a step further by swallowing a sword in his sequel presentation.
8. Charles Leadbeater advocates an approach to design that takes it outside corpoarte walls and start harnassing and incorporating the power of passionate non-professionals and communities into the design process.
9. Janine Benyus Biomimicry is something we all need to know more about. Period.
10. Thomas Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military. Dead serious pill, dispensed with a healthy dose of humor.

There were also some close runners-up:

• John Meada talks about, you guessed it, Simplicity
• William Macdonough is working with cities in China to create sustainable urban planning solutions. He explains his philosophy of "cradle to cradle" design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics.
• Jimmy Wales is the founder and the philopher king of Wikipedia. He explains how Wikipedia is not an idealized democratic society where everyone contributes anything but one that has formed an aristocracy out of social necessity for maintaining quality of content.
• Chris Bangle provides a rare inside look at how BMW designs its cars.
• Stefan Sagmeister talks about what makes for happy design :-)
• Jonathan Harris is the creator of the We Feel Fine project, the epitome of Web 2.0 atomization and regrouping of information.
• Stephen Petranek talks about 10 way the world could end and what we can do about it. Amusing in a morbid kind of way.
• Larry Lessig is the founder of Creative Commons and a board memeber of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He makes us think about digital rights in an age where lines are increasingly being blurred.
• Vik Muniz How can you resist an artist that makes art from spaghetti on a plate?

After all those podcasts, I've found that the teeny screen Nano isn't really sufficient or satisfying, user experience-wise. The iPod Touch looks so much more appealing now.