Posts tagged “TSA”

George’s War Story: Skyfall (or A View to A Kill)

Design researcher George Ressler navigates gravity and the TSA in order to collect user data in an innovative way.

Recently I was on a project that focused on observing customer’s shopping behaviors at a retail space in Philadelphia. This was not the typical shop along project because I was asked to observe customers without altering or impacting their shopping behavior. I believe that if the customer is aware of our presence as researchers, it alters their shopping behavior, creating noise in the data. For this project the research team really needed to become an invisible fly on the wall. To do this we built a rig that consisted of several cameras that pushed a video feed to our research station in the back of the store. At our research station we tracked the customers’ path and tagged shopping events as they happened. In simple terms, we created a high-tech mobile solution for capturing a customer’s journey that resembled something you might see James Bond using.

When the time came for the first of many fielding trips we packed all the technology into three custom black hard shell cases that collectively weighed 228 pounds. We arrived at the Columbus airport extra early because we anticipated a lot of hassle from TSA for trying to fly with such “unique” equipment. While at the ticket desk our luggage was immediately flagged and a TSA agent asked me to follow him into a backroom to hand-inspect every item in the cases. As I watched from behind a yellow line of the floor, the agent tore apart my neatly packed electronics, swabbing everything for traces of explosives. All the while he asked detailed questions about everything; “What is this? What does it do? Why do you have this?” After at least thirty minutes of explaining everything to this agent he said that it all checked out and I could re-pack the cases and head to the departure gate.

When we arrived that afternoon in Philly we were relieved to see our three cases thump down the baggage carousel. From the airport we headed directly to the store to begin our set up process. Upon arriving at the store we encountered our first real problem. Each store was supposed to have a 24-foot ladder, which would allow us to reach the ceiling to install our cameras, however this store only had an 18-foot ladder. Being the most agile of the research team I volunteered to climb on shelves, support beams, anything to get me up into the ceiling to install our cameras. At one point, I climbed a store shelf, holding on for dear life while clutching a 25-pound camera unit, thinking to myself that I would be so mad at myself if I died by falling off the shelf.

Once all the cameras were installed throughout the store I began to set up the network that would pull all the video to our research station in the back room. Then problem number two arose: everything was set up perfectly but I could not connect to the cameras from our research station. After an hour of troubleshooting, I finally realized that because our research station was behind a cement wall the wireless signal was not reaching the cameras out in the store. In all my preparations for this trip I never thought to account for being behind a cement wall! The only solution was to move our router onto the store floor in front of the wall and then run an Ethernet cable to our back room research station. This meant I again climbed up to the ceiling and suspended the cable from the middle of the store to the back room. After almost an hour of monkey-climbing around the store we had our cameras connected to the network and were ready to start collecting data.

The following two days were packed full of documenting customer’s journeys. It was fascinating to observe customers’ shopping while slowly seeing patterns in behavior emerge. After our time in the store collecting data was over I repeated my climb up the shelves to the ceiling to retrieve our cameras and packed up our three black cases.

We made it through TSA at the Philly airport smoother than in Columbus and got to the gate early, leaving ample time to relax. After landing in Columbus we waited at baggage claim for our cases and in no time the first case clunked down the carousel. However the other two cases never appeared. We checked their status at the baggage claim office where they informed us that our other two cases were held back for further screening because they contained “suspicious materials.” We assumed they would eventually clear and indeed they arrived in Columbus on the next flight from Philly.

Before this all gets blamed on the TSA, those two cases did look very suspicious. I was amazed that we got them to Philly with such little problems. Each one of those cases contained a couple of huge batteries, lots of wires, and electrical boxes. Without a close inspection the cases did look like very large, heavy bombs. So as much as I was upset at TSA for holding our cases back, I was relieved to know that they are actually catching bomb-like packages at airports and taking the time to inspect them properly.

Whenever I tell this story I will always remember the problems we overcame with transporting and installing the technology. I can still picture myself jumping from store shelf to store shelf trying to reach the ceiling to install the cameras. But above all I vividly remember how much I felt like James Bond when we arrived at the store with three heavy cases full of complex “spy” technology. Next time we do this kind of project I will be bringing my tuxedo, so I could really bring the Bond persona to life.

Adventures in Consumption

Here’s a bunch of examples of surprise, delight, dismay and beyond from my recent interactions in the consumo-sphere.


From the travel section at The Container Store. Lots of fun little bottles for packing your unguents and potions for travel. Nalgene bottles are guaranteed not to leak, even in the unpressurized airplane cargo hold. Given that the most you can carry onto a plane under TSA regulations is 3 oz., that seems like a likely size. Nalgene doesn’t make that size, despite sufficient demand that The Container Store has printed up a special sign to try and deflect the inevitable inquiries. What are those conversations like between the Nalgene sales rep and the buyer from The Container Store?




Paying online for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to the cost of the paper, I can also add a tip for the carrier, or donate some money to NIE. Not a misspelled Monty Python reference, it’s Newspapers in Education (I Googled). You’d imagine they’d get more uptake if they told us what it was they are asking for money for.




From the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “No peeking” (and “come back”) is so much nicer than “keep out.” And so knowing; of course when you see an installation-in-progress you are curious! The SFMOMA acknowledges that curiosity and harnesses the energy behind it to encourage you, rather than discourage you.



The menu at Oyaji in San Francisco. We see the risk of software that uses default form entries when you end up with Spider Roll that consists of “Give a brief description of the dish.”



At Crate and Barrel, shoppers can send a text to the manager to give feedback about their shopping experience. I hadn’t heard of this service (from recent Google acquisition TalkBin) before.



A travel poster advertising Alaska. And bears. Funny, friendly bears. Who, if you read the news, keep eating people.




A poster from a local cafe advertising Elizabeth’s range of services. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more tangible demonstration of the importance of specializing in your positioning. While I’m sure Elizabeth is wonderful and if I got to know her I’d trust with everything including yard maintenance and meal preparation, but to a new customer, someone who is qualified to look after precious offspring isn’t therefore qualified to look after precious animals (and in fact my be less qualified…do you want your toddler in a house full of someone else’s dogs?). Pick what you are good at and sell the one thing. If you need to diversity, create a range of separate messages.



Rooms at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle have lovely specialized bottles of hair care products that reflect their brand and overall attitude. Unlike most hotels with their tiny (3 oz.) sample bottles, these are big, easy-to-handle bottles like you might have at home. A sign warns you that it’ll cost you $25 to take them home, so you know it’s good stuff. Mind you, on the housekeeping cart are these ketchup-and-mustard-evoking-bottles with stick-on labels that are used to refill those lovely bottles. Delightfulness denied.



Pike’s Place Market in Seattle. Past the faulty grammar (How the elephant got in my pajamas, I’ll never know!) the motivation for this extreme warning is clear enough.



The ice cream menu at Cold Stone Creamery. Random, unfunny, unintegrated product name puns. One evokes James Bond, but why? None of the others do. Other names are silly but decidedly not clever. My favorite is Cookie Minster, made with mint, so you’d think it’d be Cookie Mintster but no. Not that.

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from steve_portigal] On the Road – Complaints of Poor Attitude in Airport Body Scans [NYTimes.com] – [Why does a change in process and design generate such a dramatic change in behavior?] By far, most readers wrote to complain about screeners who were rude. Helaine Fendelman said she felt as if she were in a cage as a screener “yelled at me about why I wasn’t paying attention to those who had proceeded me” through the machine. Elizabeth Wiley wrote of the “generally bullying air of the experience.” Melissa Hickey said a screener “barked orders at me as if I were a common criminal.” Bob Michelet agreed with my view that being ordered around was a “boot camp-like experience,” as he put it. Mary P. Koss said she didn’t like being “yelled at” after a screener decided her fingers were not forming a triangle as instructed while she held her hands over her head. “When I exited the machine, I was yelled at again to stand in place,” she said.
  • [from steve_portigal] Starbucks "Olive Way" test store aggregates Starbucks concepts [The Associated Press] – [While I applaud Starbucks for focusing on the quality of their core product – the coffee – I'm not sure that their secondary product – the experience- will benefit from closeness to the baristas. They need to makeover the staff brand before customers will seek them out] What succeeds at Olive Way will most likely be spread to other Starbucks stores around the country. With muted, earthy colors, an indoor-outdoor fireplace, cushy chairs, and a menu with wine from the Pacific Northwest's vineyards and beer from local craft brewers, this 2,500-square-foot shop in the Capitol Hill neighborhood will reopen in the fall with espresso machines in the middle. The machines at Olive Way will be part of what executives call a coffee theater. Counters will be narrower — a slim as a foot in some places — to bring customers closer to baristas; the machines will brew one cup at a time to extract deeper flavor from beans. The store will be the chain's only location that sells beer and wine in the U.S
  • [from steve_portigal] Introducing New Core77 Columnist Steve Portigal! [Core77] – [I'll be writing something monthly for our friends at Core77]

The casual expert

tsa_diamond_2.jpg
The NYT has a story about self-selecting airport security lines.

…a black diamond line for expert travelers, defined as those who fly more than twice a month and are skilled at security procedures, always ready with items removed; a blue square for casual travelers, who are familiar with the screening process; and a green circle for families and those needing assistance or more time.

I think this is an exciting idea, although it doesn’t appear to be working perfectly. It seems that people are overestimating their own expert-ness (or perhaps fudging their self-analysis in favor of a perceived “express line”) although families feel relief from the pressure of other travelers.

This seems like a classic web design problem, with different types of users (who have very different abilities, needs, and expectations) coming in the same front door. And when there’s a choice, people will obviously act in their own perceived self-interest.

I think separating “normal” from “expert” is going to be a tough thing to figure out in any situation; unless “expert” carries with it an intimidation factor, I suspect most people will escalate their capability. Otherwise “normal” starts shifting to “stupid.”

Again, an interesting approach to a problem, and as with most prototyping efforts, lots of learning about how the proposed solution is and isn’t working, yet.

Series

About Steve