Fumiko: April 2008 Archives

Lismo is an online music service provided by a mobile operator, Au. Using their brand color, and the squirrel with a headset, they created micro SD cards, card adapters.

I had an opportunity to visit Nanjatown thanks to my British friend Chris' recommendation. Nanjatown is in essence an amusement park containing four unique theme parks: Dumpling Stadium, which collects dumplings (gyo-za, or jiao-zi in Chinese) from different parts of Japan, Ice Cream City, with hundreds of different ice creams and jelatos, Relaxation Forest, providing different massages from Thai to UK, and Tokyo Dessert Republic, offering desserts. The facility takes place across two separate floors inside a huge complex called Sunshine City in Ikebukuro.

The photo was taken in Dumpling Stadium, where they provided an atmosphere of Japan 50 years ago. People on wheelchairs and families with baby carts are provided with a special ticket which also serves as a key to open doors with limited access. Behind the door lies an elevator, hardly retro. A nice trick.

http://www.namja.jp/ (in Japanese)

One hassle for mom with kids is to go to a toilet while you are out. In facilities like department stores and museums, you are most likely to find multipurpose toilets which allows entry with wheelchairs and baby carts.

The product reminds me of how recent touch technologies are developing to convey emotions online. But this one is much much simpler, you squeeze a silicon tube with a face carved; put some ink on and you'll be able to stamp a smiley with your emotion attached.

Although phones and computers became wireless, they are still pretty much wired as long as it requires electricity.  So while at home or in the office, phones are often placed near the electric sockets, or in their perimeter. Unfortunately, they often get messy. And sockets are hardly positioned ergonomically. Considering how often we need to use chargers, it seems like we could pay a little more attention to this state.

It used to be so that when you buy mobile phones in Japan, you were most likely to get a charger and a matching cradle. The cradle allowed chargers to be plugged in all the time, providing a 'home' position for the phone.

But such thing as a matching accessory is gone. Recent trend of ecology has removed all the redundant accessories to be included in the sales package. Cradles are around 300 to 500 yen.

The company called Driinn in Italy had invented a simple phone holder you can hook when charger is plugged in. The unused cables can also be wrapped around it. Idea is simple but the execution is elegant.

One problem I see is that the solution is quite static. If you are short of electricity sockets and if you need to plug the charger too often, this might only annoy you.

Manufactured by: Driinn, Ltd.
Price: 800 yen

(image from  Plus Stationary)

It was only 2005 when personal information protection act came into full action in Japan. And although people are concerned of their privacy, I find that both the industry and the consumer are relaxed about exchanging the information. From massage salons to fashion boutiques, they ask you to write your home address, name, and occupation in return of point cards and after sales services.

But there is a moment when people get nervous: That is when all those printed matters are thrown away as rubbish. In most communities in Japan, you are supposed to throw away papers as recyclable materials by bundling them with packing strings so the content remains fairly intact. Second, unless you live in a modern apartment buildings, there is no dedicated community bins: you need to place your rubbish in a certified plastic bags or bind in a certain form and put it on the street on the very day the rubbish is collected.

As a result, a product like this is sold in Japan: Keshi-Pon, which means to stamp to erase, basically creates a dense textual pattern as you stamp it over your names and addresses on printed matters.

Whether the solution is perfect or not, I do not know. But certainly, it's a lot easier than cutting the paper into pieces.

Product Name: Keshipon
Manufactured by: Plus Stationary
Price: 980 yen
URL (in Japanese but with descriptive images and movie clips): http://bungu.plus.co.jp/sta/product/office/keshipon/

Recently, Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO) released an interesting survey about Japanese consumers' mindset on design. One of the questions was "Upon purchase, for which product do you consider design as the most important decision factor? Choose three."

Which products do you think ranked high? From top, they were:

1. mobile phones
2. watches
3. bags
4. cars

Enlarge and see details from the charts below:

While bags were skewed to women and cars to men, mobile phones had quite a consistent ratio across gender. As for the age, younger generation considered phone design more important, but still, apart from people over 50s, figures were higher than any other products they surveyed.

This came to our surprise, as we have been thinking how wrist watches lost its original purpose and became a fashion product. Looking at the data, it seems that that is more of the case for mobile, especially for the young. Why is that?

Our assumptions: Subtle design queues? Although many Japanese phones embodies similar spec like fold, large quality displays, and large keypads which make them look alike, perhaps there are design elements that make people choose one phone from the other. Or, perhaps it's a reverse way of saying what products offer do not matter much because operator always drove new services and multiple manufacturers provide phones enabling them at the same time. In addition, many services are provided by provided by third parties via mobile Internet.

In any case, an interesting result from JIPDO.

Source: JIDPO (in Japanese)