Oct
11
Milkshake.
Denmark #7: China#1
china number one.
Note to travelers: pay attention because not a lot makes sense and your probably going to get hit by a car.
Perhaps I was expecting more of a change but Shanghai, at first glance, reminds me of latin america… crossed with what I imagine dallas texas to be like. Yes, everything is written and hollered in chinese, but wandering around I could not help but drift into the comfort of thinking I was in colombia or mexico. The second/ third world countries share a similar vibe. The weather is warm, which leaves people the freedom to live outdoors; drying clothes hang from clothes lines, shops have open fronts and sprawl into the streets. Walls topped with a broken glass “frosting” line the sidewalk dividing private housing areas from the city at large. Street vendors cook cheap food, fruit shops sell a tropical assortment, and small convenience shops comprise 1 out of every 3 store. Everything from steamed rolls, to flat pancakes, to soup is served in small clear plastic bags (like miniature grocery bags without holes in them). Peoples lives spill from their homes to their stores to the streets: the family cigarette shop becomes a place to eat dinner, the barber shop a place to hang out and chat, a fruit market a place to resolve conflicts. A string of palm trees runs along the edge of the sidewalk and large splashes of wet sidewalk mark the place where some store owner tossed out a bucket of soup, oil, grease, or whatever other substance a general lack of concern for “dumping” practices allows them to dispose of so conveniently. More than anything else, however, what reminds me of latin america is the fact that it doesn’t matter “what” people are doing, so much as “that” they are doing it. Although a bit more active and hard working than in latin america the workers of Shanghai similarly pick whatever trade, service, item they can sell and they do it from morning to night in order to get by. Whether it be vending food, pumping air into bike tires, or selling sim cards from a 4 ft wide store front, the shanghainese do whatever they need to.
Much like Latin america, driving is done based on a precarious dance of weaving through traffic and honking. Red lights are optional at best and drivers take right hand turns at full speed narrowly missing… or hitting… pedestrians moving with the crossing signals ( i’ve seen at lease one bike get clipped in the 2 days and 3 blocks of shanghai I have explored). Mopeds and powered bikes/trikes are the way to travel.
But that is street life, 30 ft away from the street are fancy restaurants, huge campus buildings, and our design innovation space. Much like Latin America the immediate proximity of the impecunious street to the prosperous office is always a bit jarring. Although, again like latin america, “nice” spaces are not as nice as they at first seem. If the air outside is clogged with smog and car exhaust, the air inside is full of the remnants of plaster dust and dry wall. The slight cough I developed before traveling is not going away. In the case of The Finnish Institute (a classic example of a modular Scandinavian creative design lab) it is not unheard of to see a a mouse scamped across the ikea kitchen countertop. Located of the 6th floor of a school building, floors 1-5 of the are both blocked off and bombed out. The stairwells have no light.
Earlier I said China seemed a mix between Latin America and Dallas. I said Dallas (although admittedly I have never been) because Shanghai is BIG. The taxi ride from the airport is in fact an hour long drive on an elevated multi-lane highway through sprawling and DENSELY PACKED suburbs. Most noticeable is that these endless suburbs are filled not with houses or culdesacs but high rise apartments and multiple building housing complexes equal in size and much more dense than what you would find in the outer burrows of New York. Adding to the effect is the fact that you cannot see more than 500 yards in front of you. The housing units you see at any given time comprise your whole world at that moment, everything else drifts into oblivion beyond the clouds (actually its smog).
Even with a population of 19 million (officially), a towering Pudong skyline, and bustling streets I feel I am missing the heart and feeling of the city. At least that’s what I thought at first; in reality, what was, and still is, bothering me is a lack of culture, or more specifically, youth culture. Where are the kids with cool haircuts? Where is the popular music, the teen rebellion? What is the music scene? Where is the city’s culture? The young chinese that I have seen look, in fact, just like younger copies of the older chinese I see. There is nothing to be caught up in beyond the manufacturing capitalism and watered down confusion philosophy. But I am not dismayed, China has so far been a blast. I am simply surprised by the lack of bullish creativity, but that, as I am learning through our current project, is part of Chinese culture… Or perhaps people are simply to busy trying to avoid being hit by cars.
Sep
29
Denmark #6
first all-nighter of the year… and by all nighter I mean there are 7 people in studio past 10 O’clock… because nobody actually works here.
Sep
25
Denmark #6
Shots from the BMW museum in Munich.
The museum was incredibly well done. Like a futuristic church for cars.
Denmark #5
*As an update about the drinking, it takes its tole. I think I’ve been dehydrated for like 3-weeks running. Time to buy a water bottle.
Danish society works like this: beautiful supermodel women, marry well-educated danish men, they marry, pay a ton in taxes (40% or more) have have beautiful blond children. Everyone is happy, and no-one seems to be poor (at least my group members could not think of anyone poor that they knew). I have heard rumors of an occasional drug addict existing somewhere in the country. (I was also told that once upon a time a laptop was stolen from the school, probably by a drug addict, the police found him and made him give it back. Kolding is a small place). The government takes care of a lot and the system seems to work well, at least once your in it. I have been waiting for my CPR number to come in the mail: it is essentially a social security number that dictates everything you do. Without it, you are not a real person. You cannot sign a phone contract, buy a train discount card, or open a bank account without it. I have, however, been assigned/ chosen (they all seemed the same to me) my local doctor. hooray.
As an example of the difference between the US and Denmark:
… That is one snazzy F’in truck, and I’m pretty sure it’s job is to clean up sewage.
As I was telling some danish (don’t call them dutch btw) friends last night that americans are brought up to be cowboys - which is true, and I’m willing to argue over it- they told me that the danish are brought up “to carry their buddy on their back if they need help”. There is also an unwritten rule that no-one should say or think (they for sure think it, even if they don’t say it) that they are better than anyone else. And so, life goes on as a harmonious community, IT ACTUALLY DOES.
Another example of this is the fact that you cannot own a knife longer than 7cm and you cannot defend yourself if you are robbed (a law which keeps fights from escalating), and it decently hard to get yourself sent to jail- they just don’t have the room (not that we in the US do either). Theft, in fact, does not seem to be that big of an offense. It is somewhat of a systemic-non-issue because everything people own is insured and poverty is not widespread- even if you are poor, or a drug addict, the commune will give you a place to stay and pay for your rehabilitation. Threaten someone’s life with an **insert object here** on the other hand, and you are in deep shit.
I don’t think I have ever felt more safe somewhere.
And of course: you can’t own a gun.. or a tazer for that matter, or even a pepper spray- I think.
Here are some pictures of the design girls at Oktoberfest (they took them, not me). But more on that later.
oh, and Jon:
Denmark #4
People here like drinking. Its like their thing (I think, because it is cold outside and they don’t really have that much work to do). Indeed, when asked to bring in images of their favorite foods, many answers went like this: “this is my favorite food before drinking, this is my favorite food while drinking, and this is my favorite food after drinking”. Beer is cheaper than water. Thursday through saturday are party nights (even though class presentations are held every friday…). There is a bar open for (and possibly run by) student that sells cheap beer on thursdays. It is not so much a bar as a repurposed room in a brick community center building were they buy beer in bulk and sell it for a small mark up, but it is a decently good time. On Fridays, there is Friday-bar. It is a lounge inside the school where they serve beer every friday from 7-2 (they start early here but people don’t even begin to arrive until 10 or 11) and students throw themed parties. The first Friday bar theme was “food in your refrigerator,” it was put on by the first year students. It reminded me of a high school prom and everyone got dressed up. There are some pictures below.
Friday and saturday night are part of the “party-life-cycle” (thats what I call it in my head). Basically, people get wasted and downtown is trashed with bottles and cigarette butts. It is legal to drink in public here so everyone just has a grand old time roaming the streets (more-so in Copenhagen bc Kolding is a small town). In the morning, crews come around and clean up, at night everyone goes out again the next night. Its a beautiful ecosystem.
My drink of choice is apple cider (although they also have pear, kiwi, and some strange flower I can’t pronounce, but those flavors are not very good- and considered girl drinks).
I think this is Cobe… there were around 50 of these at Thursday bar, which is actually called “the cloister”. 
This is a randomly lit up building in a student housing area of town.
Sep
13
Denmark #3
Politicians here belong in transitions lenses commercials.
Denmark #2
The design school
I have so far had a week of class. I have been told that the semester starts easy and gets harder, but I am for sure not feeling the pressure. We work leisurely from 9-2 (with a lunch break) while the teacher walks around to see if anyone needs help. also the teacher is only there for 3 or 4 days a week. At 2, all the local kids go home, many of them live an hour away or more. While I say kids, everyone is much older probably 25-30 +some older peeps. 6 out of 20 or so kids in ID (which is currently a service deign class) are from abroad (there are around 20 international students art the school total) so everything is done in english. Most of the students speak english very well; older people in Denmark have a harder time of it.
Each project we do is a self contained class, and we only have one class at a time. I will do 3 different projects this semester, so I will only have 3 different classes. We will also have to complete a drawing project outside of class. When a project ends the teacher changes and sometimes the students too. For example when we do a project with ecco shoes at the end of the semester, the fashion students will be in the same class as the industrial designers. When I go to china, Interaction and Graphic Design students will also come. The project were working on right now is a service design project working with a company that delivers food to the elderly. The company is a non-profit that works for the commune (the government); to be honest, I’m still not sure whether they do work FOR the commune or are PART of it. Either way, they offer cheap food service delivery to elderly who can’t cook for themselves (the elderly are screened to make sure they need the service). Elderly say they are happy with the food but many do not eat enough. That puts pressure on the health care service, because eating well can increase the health of an elder person a great deal. So our job, is to get them eatin!
We are working in groups of 3 with one foreign student in each group. This come in handy when, for example, we go to visit the food plant/ kitchen/ packing place and get a tour.. in Danish. The Danish students seem pretty capable, I’m not sure how good they are at drawing/sketching (from what I can tell so far, students at CMU are better) but I think those types of skills (similar to CMU) are left up to students to develop. Nothing is taught here, it is more that the students learn things, work on projects, and the teachers are here to advise if they are needed. A quote tossed around by the school (as one of the students told me) was that “students are here to TAKE an education, not RECEIVE one”.
The students here do, perhaps because of this mentality, have a reverence for methods and book-learning that I find a bit odd. For this project I find my team mates wanting to do certain ideation methods that they learned about last semester, but in my mind, without knowing exactly why they are using them. They use sticky notes and print out photos but a lot of them are meaningless. For example, we have a wall full of images of random old-people-eating as “inspiration.” That makes no sense. Inspiration, should be products, forms, interactions, etc. that we want to emulate; a user profile, should be a specific profile of the out target user and images of how he eats (actions, habits, etc.). Either way, whenever we got down to generating ideas for out project we were all on the same page and coming up with similar ideas. So assuming all of us don’t have it completely wrong, the Danish students know what their doing.
The lack of truly meaningful problem solving and research analysis is largely in fact due to the fact that we still have not been able to talk to the elderly who receive the service. As one teammate put it, “we are essentially running in place”. And we have been doing it for a while, its been a full week and 2 days since we got our prompt (or maybe I’m just conditioned to work at a frenzied pace). I think my teammates, however, are a bit frustrated too (to the degree that anyone gets frustrated here, which doesn’t seem to be that much): while we COULD make assumptions about the user and how they feel, we would much rather hear it from the horses mouth.
Back to design methods, when a teammate did an interview with his grandparents (since we did not yet have access to the elderly) his documentation of the experience was great! When applied of the correct reasons the tools the students here use (a lot is based off of IDEO method cards) are incredibly useful and very professional. While I’m sure he talked through eating a frozen meal with this grandparents in Danish, his english write up of the process was an apt description and gave me a strong impression of what we could get out of the walk through. It is something we, or perhaps maybe just I, could do a better job of at CMU.
For anyone interested in designing for LG this year:
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