The Japan Railways (JR) has a ticket reservation website at jreast.eki-net.com. Just like any other web services, they require users to register an account to make train reservations, check information and so on. A nice touch on the account sign-up form though, is the choices for the secret questions. Here’s the translation of the list:

• 好きな電車 (Your favorite train)
• 好きな乗り物 (Your favorite way of transportation)
• 思い出の駅 (A memorable station)
• 思い出の観光地 (A memorable sightseeing location)
• 好きな食べ物 (Food that you like)
• 嫌いな食べ物 (Food that you hate)
• 卒業した学校 (The school that you graduated from)
• 好きなチーム (You favorite team)
• ペットの名前 (Pet’s name)
• 親の旧姓 (Mom’s maiden name)

What I like about this list is that it is relevant to the training experience. When filling in this sign-up form, this little part reminds me of why I want to open an account in this web site – I want to book a trip to travel. Small detail, but makes the sign-up progress a little more present and personal.

Korean grocery store uses QR-code and mobile phone to create a unique, convenient grocery shopping experience in subway station.

Instead of going to the actual store, customers can find huge posters in subway stations with picture of the grocery items and their corresponding QR-code. Customer can use their mobile phone to snap the code and place the order, which will be delivered to their doorstep as soon as they arrive home.

Human Factor International periodically prepare online video on topics focusing on usability and human-centered design. I came across to this video from Apala Lahiri Chavan — “Cross Cultural Design“.

The topic feels very close to me, as I am currently working in Japan and experiencing similar cross-cultural issues in my design projects as well as daily life experience. But more interestingly, I’m mesmerized by the presentation of the video. It uses comic sketching that synchronizes with the voice over to deliver a smooth flow of information. I find it very easy to visualize and organize the concepts in my head.

Good Points:

• Use comics and graphics to present conceptual information
• Reveal part of the big picture with smooth, continuous flow through out the presentation
• Let user download the finished big picture/poster as a takeaway note

More animation videos from HFI:

• UX Enterprise: the Future of UX Work
• Building Industrial Strength User Experience (UX) with Dr. Eric Schaffer
• All videos

In a recent marketing campaign, the company is promoting it’s Rakuraku Phone Basic 3. On top of the usual features such as i-Channel internet portal and DECO ME-RU (picture email), one of the major selling point of this product is the “One-push Help Button“. According to the description page:

ワンプッシュ（長押し）でらくらくホンセンターの専門アドバイザーに無料でつながる「使い方」ボタン搭載で、使い方がわからなくても安心！

Translation: long-push the “Help” button and you’ll be connected to the “Rakuraku-Phone” Help Centre, where our advisor will kindly offer you assistance on how to use the phone. No more worries even if you don’t know how to use your phone!

Furthermore, I saw this advertisement poster on a train promoting this service:

ケータイの使い方に不安がある方に、
いちばん頼りになる機能は、
きっと「人」です。

Translation: for those people who are nervous about the how to use a mobile phone, “Human” is certainly the most dependable feature.

Technology is Confusing, How to Fix It?

Development of sophisticated technology is absolutely changing our way of living and give us more power to do more, but it also requires much technical knowledge and emotional commitment to use it. luckily, I am pretty comfortable with using complicated devices, as well as equipped with enough technical knowledge to understand how most of these things work. furthermore, if I don’t know how to use something, I’ll go online and search for tutorials and related articles. I am good at self-helping.

But as a designer, this is crucial to realized that, most of the average users see such device as just a magic black box, and when the user interface cannot communicate and deliver the functions that it promises to offer, users will feel nervous, frustrated, or even hate your products and company. To avoid such negative result, designer such consider the following approaches:

1. Reduce and simplify features
2. Design a simple and easy to understand user interface
3. Make it easy to fix the device when it’s broken
4. Provide easy assistance, or encourage community to help each other

When it comes to providing assistance, the ideal way is to have a professional, knowledgable human to help. However, it is not always a viable option for companies due to tight budget and reduced profitability.

Most of us should have experience calling a customer support hotline expecting to quickly resolve issues with a human representative immediately, only to be greeted by a robotic voice menu, which you must spend at least 10 mins to dig down and wait a queue for another 30 mins until some human can actually response to your call.

Even worse, some clever companies would implement voice recognition software to the voice menu system, and pretend to interact with you by “natural speaking interaction”. Instead of asking you to “push ONE for account status”, “push TWO for payment”…etc, you need to speak out “I want to check my account balance please” and pray that the software won’t mistaken your intention for the 4th time.

Some Examples of Human Assistance for Better User Experience

Rakuraku Phone — the senior-targeted phone is designed with a quick “Help Button” to offer human assistance as described above.

On-Star Navigation System — http://www.onstar.com/ with the buit-in OnStar button that comes with specific car models, drivers can get easy access to navigation, security and emergency supports by speaking to human representative.

Customer Support using Social Network — it’s becoming common for big companies to provide quick support to customers’ feedback, comment and complain on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It is said that some times it’s easier to get attention from a company via social networks rather than actually calling the customer service hotline or visiting retail stores for assistance.

Apple Genius in Apple Store — the Apple Store is commonly praised for it’s superb retail experience, and the Apple Genius is one of the major contributions to it. There specialists are knowledgable to the company’s products, so they can provide useful advises and helps.

According to the news, the company came up with this idea during a staff meeting, and started to install such the special strap since December 2010.

Adding Gaming Elements into Daily Life

Commuting by train is one of the most mundane experiences, so it’s interesting to add some gaming elements into the experience. This reminds me of location-based check-in services like Foursquare and Facebook Check-in, which transform daily activities into a game; you can earn points, share tips about places, even get special deals by becoming a mayor of a store.

Source:

• 「ハートのつり革」が話題に　伊豆箱根鉄道駿豆線 – 毎日新聞
• 伊豆箱根 Staff Blog

Speaking of the heart shape, there is a related article on Mainichi Shimbun about some sight-seeing locations that feature the heart shape in various forms. The following is a list of the suggested locations:

1. 屋久島のウィルソン株：鹿児島県・屋久島の屋久杉の切り株
2. 長崎市のグラバー園：園内のハート形の敷石
3. 北海道函館市の函館山の夜景：イルミネーションの中に「ハート」の文字が見える
4. 香川県小豆島オリーブ公園：先が二またに分かれたオリーブの葉が見つかる
5. 奈良県・春日大社末社の夫婦大国社：境内にハート形の絵馬が並ぶ
6. 島根県海土町の明屋海岸：沖の屏風（びょうぶ）岩に、角度によってハート形に見える穴があいている
7. 長崎市の眼鏡橋：周辺の石垣に約２０個のハート形の石がある

Source: ハート形観光スポット：日本の７選

This blog is supported by the official JNTO Hong Kong Campaign 日本新発売
Website: www.enjoyjapan.jp

Another example of NFC application with Docomo Osaifu Keitai (Wallet Mobile) that allows you to easily join a membership club of a chain restaurant by tapping your phone to the sensor, and then earn points every time you visit the store and tap your phone again.

The character in the picture has a name called タッチワワ “TACHIWAWA” which sounds like TOUCH+CHIWAWA. This is a campaign from Hottomotto, a chain fast food store in Japan.

Traditional airline ticket with a touching twist: ANA’s marketing campaign “SASOU Drama” (誘うドラマ/Invitation Drama) ask you to invite your long-distance lover to get away with you for a trip, by sending him/her a flight ticket printed with your customized, unique invitation message.

The cinematic TV commercials (CM) is pretty touching. Instead of hard selling the ANA airline brand, they use a story to illustrate a scenario where you can project yourself into and hope to take a get away trip. One of the CM goes like this:

Late in the evening, after a long day of work, she finally left her office, walking home quietly and exhausted. She arrived home and entered the dark, empty apartment with a pile of letters on her hand. The sound the keys hitting the table is the only noise that echoed in this cold room, in which nobody is waiting for her. Seemed that the pile of letters were just all bills and advertisements. Are those the only thing left in this world that care to send her mails?

Wait, something’s different. “Your name is in this letter”, one envelope read. Curious what it was, she immediately opened the envelope and pulled out a letter.

“From a person who wants to invite you.”

“Sorry for not being able to meet you for a long time.”

“I would like to bring you to somewhere during the next vacation.”

She paused. The picture of her boyfriend immediately rushed into her mind. They couldn’t meet each other for quite a while due to their own busy job with long hours. She missed him very much.

“I have always been hard working.”

Tears of love and joy escaped from her eyes. She was always on his mind. In the envelope, there was a flight ticket for a vacation trip for two. Couldn’t hold her emotional any longer, she jumped out of the chair and ran to her boyfriend.

Here is another version:

My thoughts

Background music on website to create mood — In both the CM and website, the song 春夏秋冬 by NIKIIE creates an emotional atmosphere. In the campaign website, the piano solo keeps looping in the background while you navigate through the pages.

Music is a powerful medium to convey emotions, and has long been used in movie, radio, etc. It is ideal for rich web browsing experience. However, background music was not very common nor practical in web design due to technical limitations. It is especially problematic to keep the same music playing while loading different pages in the browser. Some designs, like this ANA campaign site, take a workaround approach by using a big Flash animation to build the whole site. But with modern HTML5 and AJAX, it is possible to achieve the same goal with better cross-browser / backward compatibility and mobile device supports. For instance:

• HTML5 <audio> tag to embed background music.
• AJAX to load and inject different pages without reloading, hence keeping the current page runtime and music to play without interruption.
• Javascript to overload browser’s native Back/Next buttons behavior. It’s not ideal but it gets the job done.
• Javascript to control music transition. For example, when you enter a page that displays important information, the background music would cross-fade from a calm music to a more exciting, upbeat tune.

Use stories to tie your brand with emotions, not specifications — Apple’s ad campaign for FaceTime uses a series of stories and scenarios to illustrate the joy of sharing the moments with video. It doesn’t tell you the technical specification, data plan or screen resolution, nor is video call a new technology, but most people would immediately visualise themselves in these situations, and crave to buy the iPhone 4 as a consequence.

image from Fast Company

Comparing with the previous TEAMLAB Interactive Hanger, I believe this Adidas system is more a 3D touchy gimmick than an actually sustainable and user-friendly retail system. My thought is that, when people go to a retail store instead of online store, they would want to hold and feel the real product in their hand, or randomly pick up stuff on the shelf to try them on. Going to a retail store for flat interactions from in to out (touch to browse + see product detail + checkout) just doesn’t make sense to me.

Suggestion: instead of focusing on total touch interface and virtual models, I think it’s more relevant to put the focus back to the tangible physical shoes on the rack. With simple RFID, proximity sensors and 3D motion capture like Kinect, it’s possible to create many intriguing interactions that crossover the physical and virtual world.

For example, when you pick up a F50 soccer shoe and rolling it in your hand, a dissected 3D model will move, roll, or zoom in/out actually the same way on the screen.

Another idea is that, you can put on the soccer shoes and stand in front of a Kinect, then the system will cast you to a 3D soccer field in which you can match with famous stars or overlay onto important goal moments. How about if you actually purchase the shoes, Adidas will upload the video to Youtube tagged with your name as a courtesy?

video from lenseffect

Read more: http://www.fastcompany.com/1715933/intel-adidas-virtual-footwear-wall

Adidas adiVERSE is a joint project of Adidas and Intel.

Related: Acure Touchscreen Drink Vending Machine

A while ago I also blogged about the Acure touchscreen drink vending machine in Japan, which displays attractive and customizable visuals, mounted with a camera to detect customer’s age and gender, and offers dynamic drink suggestions. See the blog post here: Acure Touchscreen Vending Machine.

When a customer picks up a clothes from the boutique rack, the RFID equipped TEAMLAB HANGER will notify the boutique computer to immediately shows a video of the corresponding clothes on a screen that is closest to the customer.

The idea of TEAMLAB Hanger is to use common customer behavior as an interface. Not only the TEAMLAB hanger doesn’t obstruct with the normal shopping experience, but make it informative by providing relevant information on screen. The system aims to eliminate boring static mannequins, and create an interactive experience such as combination of light, ambient music, video. The system works equally well in small space.

From the store’s perspective, the hanger can collect valuable customer behavioral information, such as number of pick-up per item, duration, location, etc.

original video from calvin-c.com

video from TEAMLAB

• Design: TEAMLAB
• Product Info: http://www.team-lab.net/portfolio/teamlabhanger/hanger.html

暗闇食堂 (クラヤミ食堂/KURAYAMI SHOKUDO) 是間給你不一樣體驗的餐廳，客人會被安排和陌生人一起，以視覺以外的感官用餐，讓你重新用心認識食物和身邊的人。

客人一到餐廳外門，便會被要求蒙着雙眼，職員會小心亦亦領客人到餐桌旁，和互不相識的人坐在一起用餐。當所有客人就坐後，職員便端上食物到客人面前，不告訢你菜名，不管你用嗅覺、聽覺、觸覺和味覺去欣賞美食，偏偏就是不准用視覺。你可以和旁人討論到底現在大家在吃甚麼，又或者聊聊天，互相認識一下，試着不以外表去感覺他人。

暗闇食堂網頁
職員網誌和最新消息

由於暗闇食堂並不是經常舉辦，如果大家有興趣参加的話便需留意網誌、Twitter (@kodomogokoro)或加入Mailing List。

當被蒙着雙眼時，可能我們能見到更多色彩呢！

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