I spent a week in February in Sunningdale near London for a training course. My mates were 23 people from all over the world and from various professions. We were asked to work in teams for many games that may be seen as children’s – like moving blocks, building a water fountain out of logs and ropes, or a bridge out of lego blocks and pieces of thin wood. Our MBTI and Belbin types were on our name tags (I am ENTJ, Planter, Monitor-evaluator, Resource Investigator, and Shaper – if you can make out what that means: I can only say that this seems to contradict my image of a meek Asian woman in the eyes of strangers). It is easy to fear the abuse of psychology, but I really enjoyed having the time to keenly observe how I behave, and put myself into a perspective in comparison with others.



I don’t think I could become a better person after this, but am definitely more self-aware and ready to experiment to become a more adaptable person for others when the next opportunity arises.

I had a chance to fly to London city airport from Geneva on a sunny afternoon. Here are a few shots from the airplane. London is indeed a very green city. The city center is densely packed, incredibly sustaining its diverse mixture of architectural styles. You can also compare these views with those shot on the way to Seoul’s city airport.

Over St. Paul’s and City of London. Barbican is partially shown (on the right with two tall towers) – an area that I am considering to get a flat in.









Impressive arrays of houses, which are all identical.

I am grateful for the opportunity to attend LIFT conference this year (thanks to organizers).
What left me thinking after the conference was the access to information, both in terms of breadth and speed. Within minutes, video recordings of talks became available online. The army of healthily pulsating Apple logos seen from the speaker’s stage was daunting, tappitytaptaptap, opinions and snippets of the talks being available and marked online as soon as they came to existence, in people’s ears and eyes. You are there, but at the same time you can potentially be anywhere.



LIFT was a big contrast to the academic conferences I am more used to, such as CHI, DIS, DUX, Ubicomp, and Mobile HCI. What you see in these conferences as audience is guaranteed to be old, usually at least 1 year. You as a shy speaker have little to worry about the presentation because your paper is your real glory. Having been published in these conferences can be considered that you earned a little stamp of quality for your work, at least in the eyes of your professors at your graduate school. Your paper might end up being read by less than a handful of people, but that’s ok – because you registered your name in the ACM digital library. Who knows, perhaps in 10 years there will be some other graduate students who will cite your publication? OK, I am overly negative now. Being a Korean and because of my personal upbringing, I am and will be perpetually chased by the favoritism to meritocracy – subsequently I still respect the academic institutions and their authorities.

But the world has changed. It’s about the influence. Information not found through google may have less value to humanity in general; outdated information goes through devaluation not necessarily because of the content but because of streams of other information we have to digest everyday.

Information is power. In many countries in Asia – knowledge and information has been used as a weapon to keep the general public out of power. The infrastructure will soon be there for any willing individuals to have access to the gigantic information pool created in the online universe. But there, we are defining a new type of meritocracy: Ability to search, ability to filter, ability to ignore, and ability to build and control online identity and reputation.

It is uplifting to hear the story of an undercover video clip made online by Humane Society, prompting USDA investigation which lead to recalling of millions of kilograms of beef; it is scary to watch the interview of a Korean celebrity against all the malignant gossips created around him, amplified and spread by the Internet. We are marching towards creating human societies in the subjective online universe – comprised of smaller bubbles of entities with their existence endowed by the attention and interests they manage to evoke; others wither into ether, or in memory and emotion of their creators.

I have no showmanship when it comes to speak in front of hundreds of pulsating Apple logos or unfamiliar people. I felt standing on a street on stage in front of LIFT audience and camera crews, a street that I cannot perceive how it is shaped, where it was, or how crowded it will be. I felt I was leaving a piece of me in a space that is not governed by the natural law of time. There was no protection of the wall that academic conferences provided, making the information not so accessible. Would I be able to get used to being on such spaces? It’s a question mark. After all – so long as I don’t google myself, those spaces minimizes their existence for me to a certain extent.

There is always a battle in preparing my talk to cut the material short to fit 20-min stage time I am usually given. 20 minutes is still way too short for me as I usually work with 1 hour or longer slots of time at my work place. But I do understand very well my value as a speaker is up to my ability to condense whatever material I got into the given time slot. After all, many professions depend on how well we tell the story, not on how well you do your job in your own world. My LIFT talk was mainly about the process of setting up a design competition in communities we went to for quick yet much focused ethnographic research, as a complementary method to understand the communities we knew almost nothing about. I didn’t go about its value and validity much, which probably disappointed some people but probably would have bored lots of people who do not work in the related professions if I did.





A few remarkable things for me about LIFT: I had the honor of being in the same session with the reverend Genevieve and Paul – which will be very memorable for a long time to come. I met a few brilliant minds that I never knew before, through the smartly arranged social breaks. I enjoyed experiencing the little Swiss moments, like the cheese fondue dinner, slices of cheese at lunch time, crisp air and Geneva’s efficiency. If you are around and available – come join next year! Or you can always watch videos online, without the extras.

Continued from my previous post, here are a few snapshots of Geneva, Switzerland, from a few hours of my stroll in the city.

Trams are one of the common public transports in the city.





Plenty of space – Not only the big roads, which often seemed far broader than the amount of traffic, but also lots of open spaces in the middle of the city that seemed left for ambiguous purposes, ranging from hosting weekend markets to music festivals. A place for a huge red crocodile? No problem.



A strange fountain (Jet d’Eau) that shoots the water really high up – in the lake Geneva.



The central area with the view of alps in the back.



Oversized chess pins and boards in a public park, attracting the local male population.



An oversized chair with three legs in front of UN.



Systematic cheese slicing machine.



The city’s love for the right angle: Many boxy buildings, no jokes.



Almost could-be manifesto of Geneva as a city.

I had a chance to visit Geneva, Switzerland for a few days to attend LIFT08 conference. I only had a few hours of sightseeing, but it came across to me as very pragmatic in a way that people have optimized the design of the city for living over time. Here are a few things I noticed from its public space. I didn’t have the luxury of the local’s commentary on my observation, so I would welcome any other thoughts.

The trash collection bin was all metallic and left in the middle of the road, which I found unusual. Cornavin is the area where the central train station is, so this may be an exception.



The newspaper dispenser accompanied by a recycling bin.



An oversized road sign for the school area. This supports our experience in crossing streets. It seemed that pedestrians had the right of way wherever there was a mark for crossing without a traffic light. My colleague and I were honked at because we were waiting for the car to pass us. Having such an overt sign for the school area makes sense if this rule is in any way legalized – in giving the car driver the responsibility for protecting the pedestrians at crossings. This habit was not easy to adopt as it is counter-intuitive in any other countries I have been to. I wondered how residents here coped with this when they went abroad. As a german friend of mine nicely puts it: “I don’t know how many Germans and Swiss people have died because they thought they had right of way in other countries”.



Another rare sight was the trash bin combined with the traffic light post – a benefit of being the neutral country.



The typical park signs – dogs and plants.



I liked the intuitive flushing buttons at the toilet in a restaurant somewhere in the old part of the town – removing the questionable moment of wondering which one to press for number 1 or 2.



A sign that seems to go well with the city.

A couple of weeks ago, I had luck in flying to Seoul’s Kimpo city airport under a great afternoon light. These photos are not of the central Seoul but the neighboring areas around the airport, but show the representative forms of housing in Korea: The giant apartment building blocks.



Seoul is the 6th most densely populated city in the world with 16,700 people living per square kilometer, after Mumbai, Kolkata (India), Karachi (Pakistan), Lagos (Nigeria), and Shenzhen (China). Considering Tokyo is ranked at 50th and Helsinki 111th, it is the busiest city I ever lived in as well. The housing is probably the most distinctive problem in these densely populated cities with the limited space.

Many first time visitors will be probably very curious about these gigantic apartment blocks, as for some they may be reminiscent of several European communist housing projects. I am no expert in urban planning and history of Korean society, but I understand that these massive residential building blocks have been the main body of urban development and the driving force behind the adoption of broadband internet in Korea.






Over the past decades most of residential neighborhoods in Seoul have been or are waiting to be put under the ‘redevelopment’ scheme, which means demolishing the old houses in the area and building these apartment blocks instead.



The size of each building varies greatly, but it seems there is no limit to how high they can go – partly thanks to the fact that Korea is not considered as earthquake-prone country, unlike its neighboring country, Japan. My parents live on the 12th floor in a 25-story building, which was built 15 years ago. If your dream is to live in a house with a garden in nature, these apartments in the super artificially built environment may seem like a living in a chicken cage. But many Koreans I know who are born in the city do consider living in a modern apartment to be the best form of housing. There are several benefits – to name a few:

Shared cost of living and delegation
A group of apartment buildings usually form a community of their own, which could be equivalent of a villiage. Such a community usually hires a management team to delegate tasks that are of shared nature for the whole community, including security, garbage disposal, and maintenance of shared facilities like car parking and boilers for central heating. Shown in the picture is the monthly maintenance cost bill of an apartment. It details all the expenditure of the shared maintenance cost. This bill combines electricity, gas, water, central heating, insurance, sewage and garbage disposal cost and the likes shared by the community. Terrestrial and cable TV subscription fee are part of it as well, since most people sign up for these services.



Magnetic power of the mass
Because of the large number of residents moving to the area, it can attract many service businesses and even governmental infrastructure such as public transportation network at the same time. This way, these communities can get equipped with all the practical conveniences at hand. This high density of residents also enables for some businesses to provide exceptionally personal services with low cost, especially making the home delivery and pick up service a norm.

Peace of mind being surrounded by people
Urbanites that grew up in these buildings can grow the tendency to feel insecure in areas with low density of people. I have no scientific reference to my point here – it’s all based on my personal experience (with my acquaintances) and observations (of the real estate investment boom in Korea). I have talked to several from the elderly generation of over 60yo who wish to stay in the city despite the lack of nature because they want to “stay close to other people”. I do observe Korean people enjoying all the bustles of living closely together with others – including all the conflicts, gossips, jokes, encouragements, and competitions alike. It’s not surprising to read a news article about a number of Koreans who had immigrated to New Zealand returned to Korea because they were too peaceful, and too bored.

Dissemination of new infrastructure
The density and the power of the mass together enable easy and fast dissemination of the new infrastructure. This gives Korean companies and government the extra acceleration to implement something new very fast once they are determined to do so. This is the secret behind the fast dissemination of broadband internet in Korea: You install one base station, and the whole building-full of houses get to use it. Aside from the benefits of physical density, the real power of this close-knit communities is probably the ability to share and teach each other the new and the useful. The trend rises and spreads (or die) at a formidable speed in korean society – be it adopting a new internet service or a new tupperware-like container.

I see the popularity of mega residential buildings as a unique by-product of Korea’s fast economic development, urban expansion, and pragmatism. Personally I have been always saddened by the disappearing “natural” landscape, replaced and redefined by squads of residential buildings. The practical necessity at hand is too demanding for the community members to reflect upon what these developments will really mean in the future, but it certainly leaves me wondering: How will urban Koreans perceive nature in the future? How about happiness?

Below are photos of Favela Jacarezinho (Rio, Brazil) and Nima market in Accra (Ghana). How will the industrialization and economic development change their preferred forms of living in these communities? Will the urban changes of a big scale be possible without the government’s or big corporations’ push? How will their unique cultural characteristics be reflected to their urban landscape?





I remember an interview with a Chinese labor worker: For him, the biggest charm of urban living was easy access to food all year around, despite the harsy living condition. For future urbanites – what would be the charm of leaving the urban living? Would there be necessities strong enough like hunger and employment to drive the phenomenon of mass moves, to reverse the expansion of urban developments?

I rarely have a chance to travel with Korean Air except when I visit my family in Korea. However – whenever I travel with them, I can’t help smiling at their one unique service:
Stickers for the passenger sleeping or away from the seat during the inflight service.

If you had experienced waking up in the middle of the flight hungry, or even worse – woken up by a persistent flight attendant who wants to fulfill his/her duty by distributing the goods to you, you will appreciate this little attention to detail. There were two different kinds of stickers I have seen in Korean Air flights.

This simple sticker was used during the domestic flight from Busan to Seoul, of which the flight time is just 45 minutes. It was put on by the flight attendant during the complimentary drink service.





This set of stickers were in the seat on the 2-hour flight from Seoul to Tokyo, so that the passenger can choose appropriate ones to put on the seat before going to sleep or any type of ‘rest’ mode. A suitable variation of the same service intent when there were more types of services offered.



The definition of a good service may be inherently subjective. We probably all have our own opinions on it, as we surely know the feeling of being served properly. Restaurants are probably a good place to discover the meaning of a good service mindset that suits you. Personally, I started to distinguish services in general in two criteria:

1. Ones that are motivated by the server wanting to be recognized
e.g., In a very posh Indian hotel restaurant, the waiters came to our table every other minute to ask “Is everything alright?” interrupting our conversation every time.
e.g., In a busy restaurant in Tokyo, the waiter cleared the plates away from the table immediately when I was eyeing on my last bit of the remaining sauce.

2. Ones that are motivated by the server’s empathy to the served
e.g., In a restaurant in California, the waitress brought a new fork as soon as she noticed me dropping mine on the floor.
e.g., In a restaurant in Seoul, the waitresses roams around the restaurant and refills the kimchi plate constantly till your meal is almost over – which allows adjusting the amount of kimchi served to each customer, without the customers always having to ask for more portions.
e.g., On a rainy day in Osaka, a café owner offered me an umbrella as I was paying the bill. She must have noticed that I didn’t bring one despite the weather, and discreetly offered it to me at the right time.

I draw a parallel between the real world services and the interaction design solutions in computer software or mobile phone service. Both take a great deal of understanding of the individual clienteles’ preferences and recognizing the intentions of the situations that are not explicitly communicated. And it is becoming more and more complex to do this as many design solutions are done to serve a large group of individuals with extremely diverse cultural backgrounds. Given the complexity I find my two simple criteria for distinguishing the restaurant services helpful in deciding features in service design that should be done invisibly – or automatically, from the ones that you should prompt for the user’s decision based on contextual observations. Something that our old friendly office clip understood well – but executed rather poorly.

Most my references come from my restaurant experiences, but increasingly from inflight services. So far, my worst bit of inflight service experiences was the BA flight attendant refusing to help me with loading my luggage because “she was not insured to the injury incurred by helping me”. Services are a tight interaction between the server and the served. Sometimes external constraints like BA’s policy on its employees prevent the server from providing a good service. It was nice of her to explain the reason for not helping me at least – as I could use some sympathy towards her rather than feeling angry. A nice gentleman helped me with the luggage anyway.