i sent my passport to chinese embassy to get a visa – knowing that there are only 4 clean pages left, i am trying to push for multiple entry visa.

frequent travelers may understand very well the stressful moment when you find out your passport is expiring in less than 6 months or there’re not enough pages left for visa shortly before your trip. luckily korean government allows adding new pages to the passport once – my 3.5-yo passport got one extension already so running out of pages now means a new passport. and getting a new passport means carrying two passports or going through several embassies to transfer your valid visas to a new passport, not to mention being grounded in the country you live in without being able to travel for a while.

it is natural that i get quite picky at the passport control as to which page the entry stamp should be on. i try to instruct the inspector not to use a new page but try to find a used page to fit the stamp in. but considering that in many countries the border control inspectors seem to demand the ultimate respect from travelers, it does not always work to advise them on how to do their job. considering that some countries require looking up the last entry/departure stamps from that country, it is not a trivial matter to arrange a good spot for the entry stamp.

the design of the entry stamps vary a lot: my favorite ones are from south korea and japan. obviously these two countries not only have smallest stamps of all, but also clearly differentiate the color and the shape stamps between the entry and the departure.



european union countries have very clear design based on pictograms, probably because they had to be used by many countries. a page of the tidy array of stamps like this makes me smile.



the worst design for me is UK’s simply because it is so big with the bit that does not give any useful information to the traveler: it is impossible for the inspector to fit two stamps in a row. i hope there will be an opportunity for the talented designers to work on this soon. and if you ever wondered where these stamps are used anyway: i was asked to submit photocopies of all the entry stamps to UK from my passport to apply for tax payer identification number in UK.



will international mobility increase in the future? certainly people who recently have taken advantage in using services like dopplr probably started to think about it. traveling overseas has become easier in terms of getting to know the destinations beforehand and making reservations in advance, but very little progress has been made over past decades in the area where governments are involved. of course new technologies like retina scan are employed in making the in-out procedure easier but mostly for the country’s own citizens only. visa procedures and passport controls as foreigner are still slow – or have become more difficult since 2001. the more entry stamps my passport accumulates, the longer it takes for me to go through the passport control desk as the inspector flips through pages in search for suspicious traces, the last entry stamp, or purely out of his/her curiosity amongst the randomly placed stamps from around the world. missing flight connections because of long passport control queues happened twice in airports in USA last year, a queue that most people become equal with no privilege unless you are james bond from 007 movies or a diplomat. my colleague experienced a lost/damaged/stolen passport disaster which happened right before his joining our field research in ghana – it took him a travel to finland and france to get his passport and US visa back at least.

passport becomes such an important piece of document for anyone travel internationally. but changing the interaction design around it is so deeply tied to the complex forest of politics and international governments that do not work together that it seems almost a mission impossible. what technological solutions and design thinking could support people who are global trotters, or nomads?

to lighten up my sunday mood – i dug up photos of my favorite passport graphics design from iceland. it has a bright blue cover and all pages feature different patterns each incorporating a story.

being in a country where i am sufficiently fluent with the local language, i get to overhear conversations regardless of my intention. my everyday 30-min bus ride in london always bring such an opportunity: unfortunately it is not possible to drop out of it. some people do force others to get to know bits of their daily life details whether they want it or not. the benefit of anonymity in a big city? perhaps. i wonder how they perceive privacy in the internet.

one useful tactic to talk on the phone in public is to use your free hand to cover your mouth and possibly the microphone on the mobile phone. benefits are clear for those who consider them as benefits:

- reducing the noise from your surroundings thus more pleasant for your calling partner and clearer hearing for you
- preventing others from overhearing your conversation

it is quite common to spot people doing this in japan and south korea but less as you move to west from there. one speculation is that certain cultures enforce the notion of desirable behaviors more clearly than others.

an indonesian-german girl living in tokyo who quickly adopted the locals’ norm to take a call at a dinner table so that her call does not disturb others.



a korean girl blocking the noise from the street for a conference call



an argentinian gentleman who believes that he can hear the voice from the caller better by blocking the microphone on the mobile phone

i have two – probably three – reasons to visit amsterdam in september this year.
one is mobile hci 2008 where i will be presenting my last project done while i was in helsinki back in 2005 in the industrial case study track: the evolution of mobile phonebook design. the study was not just creating a design concept, but building a prototype for a month-long field trial and generating further insights for design direction and details. the final version of the super-short paper is posted here which is a truly condensed version of the whole study. i hope i can make time to write up a full paper later as i still strongly believe in the importance of contacts/ points of contacts/ interface to communication. akseli, rob, jan, and panu were all part of the project team.



on thursday, september 4th – i will be also joining the crowd at social strategy talk event organized by creative crowds.

hope to see some of you in amsterdam!

happen to watch a movie soylent green (1973). its based on harry harrison’s novel. an interesting & grim depiction of the future urban living, but quite accurately pointing out many of the problems that are becoming increasingly substantial – overpopulation, food shortage, and environmental devastation. stop reading my post here if you plan to watch the movie yourself as it is a spoiler.



a couple of intriguing concepts were:

- a woman offered as ‘furniture’ with every house / flat: it is obviously an idea you’d call sexist’s, but nevertheless i fully enjoyed the social ripple effect that this proposition triggered me to imagine – like longevity of a property and a human? inheritance?

- imaginary home service: it is a place where people can go to when they want to die. for the final ceremony (of the death), the person gets to choose the ambient lighting color and music. the space design and other people’s involvement leaves a very interesting design challenge – though the movie’s focus shifts to a spam factory from here on.

as we all know – some messages are delivered much more efficiently by the accompanying visual examples, though they may not be an exhaustive set.

a restaurant/bar in rio putting up a sign saying that they have the right to reject those with inappropriate or ‘minimal’ clothes.



at the domestic airport in osaka, this post gives a pre-warning that certain types of shoes will be subjected to security inspection before passengers are entering the security check area.

my first days in london were hosted by a hotel in a bustling city center. the close-to minimalist interior of the hotel was compensated by the very mixed set of interface designs – mainly door knobs and light switches, which may be seen as annoying at a first glance or confusing, but which i came to enjoy as an experience of pondering on my temporary living space.

the room key literally looks like a mechanical key – but it was just an electromagnetic stick. so i could not put the key in and turn it. but then i tried to push the door in without turning the handle. the handle, in a smooth sphere shape, was quite difficult to turn to open the door.




was it just my good mood that i took the counter-intuitive interface as an amusing opportunity to take a break from the routine of unconscious actions? without causing any harms to the user, i think it is important not falling too much into ‘annoyance upon the first time use’ in designing things and ideas. design that gets better over time – a dimension that is increasingly important for me in design – does not always cater well for the strangers.

its always hard to leave. that’s perhaps a reason why i never want to have a farewell party. time to change the home city in dopplr – something appropriate to be done in the airport.

at an indian wedding, one of many activities that kept the bride busy was answering mobile phone calls from those who could not attend the wedding. several mobile phones were passed onto her ears from others as well as her own since some remote callers were considerate enough to call other relatives attending the ceremony that they knew, sparing the bride from dealing with constantly ringing phones and carrying the phone without any pockets on the traditional wedding costume.



from mumbai, india, 2007.

i came across several people who grew one or two nails very long for a specific purpose – and mostly they were men. its a good contrast to those who grow long fingernails, or extend their fingernails in a way that they are banned for utilitarian purposes.

he was a tailor living in dharavi/mumbai/india and he uses his long finger nail to make the crease on clothes.



david who works at a mobile phone repair shop in accra/ghana had a long finger nail to handle small mobile phone parts and circuits.



a student studying computer science in accra, he likes to have long finger nails because he likes the way he looks. there should be more than one so that he can use them to keep his finger nails clean on both hands.



i usually keep my nails long enough to protect my fingertips. i had two broken nails this week packing boxes, and its unbelievably bothersome. nails are a usefully embedded tool enhancing the performance of the most dexterous part of my body except: using touch screen devices. i had the strange feeling of rejection – almost temporary resentment – when i couldn’t type on iphone as it didnt acknowledge my touch as a touch.