#dynamic display

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Great lead from @gquaggiotto to a project in China where Chengdu has installed ambient noise level displays to help outdoor choirs of eager seniors keep the noise level of their performances down. An example of sonic ambient accountability if you will. And triggering two associations:

First, this is very much along the lines of the real-time speed displays to slow down drivers or air quality displays installed in many cities. 

Second, I once witnessed a very different type of ambient noise control intervention a few years back in Barcelona, where noisy late night diners and drinkers in public squares had long enraged local residents. So what to do? Instead of setting noise level limits and displaying actual levels here is how the city went about this: one balmy evening a bunch of people appeared out of the blue to set up a nice dining table, rolled out the table cloth, brought silverware etc. in a particularly noisy square, in front of all the alfresco diners and drinkers. They they sat down quietly to share some tapas and wine, chatting calmly,  then packed up and left, while everyone else watched this, puzzled and curious what this was all about. Finally the diners re-appeared and walked from table to table leaving a little leaflet with the message that it is possible to have fun without being to noisy and a polite ask to keep the noise down a bit. I looked around and everyone around me seemed to read and think a bit about the note. And the role-modeled behaviour seemed to work its magic: I really think the conversations around me continued in a more hushed way. At least that is what I imagined. There were no Chengdu noise monitors around to prove it....

Unfortunately, I have not seen any work that would systematically evaluate, if any such interventions work, except for some studies on the traffic speed display that suggest that these devices are  indeed quite effective.  So any leads to empirical studies in this area on other dynamic displays are most welcome! And I cannot even remember the name of the urban intervention group in Barcelona, perhaps anyone can help out with that one? 

Ref.  Gehlert, T., Schulze, C., & Schlag, B. (2012). Evaluation of different types of dynamic speed display signs. Transportation research part F: traffic psychology and behaviour, 15(6), 667-675.

Update: here a paper just published that has sought to gauge the impact of noise level displays in libraries - and found no effect

(image c localcontext)

Long overdue, some more reflections on a 2015 holiday trip with the family to India. Not being able any more to take off my ambient accountability lens here some entirely random observations: 

ambient accountability - dimension 1:  giving you your rights and entitlements right when and where you need them

taxi fares and taxi passenger rights: as captured previously, for example in Italy or Colombia, this is a global movement under way and here a particularly charming and somewhat improvised example from Goa: the applicable rates lovingly handwritten onto the glove compartment for the passenger to be aware of

and even on the windows, gently providing subtitles to the scenery passing by and making sure that you really cannot fail to spot the price that’s right.

ambient accountability - dimension 2: making government performance and outcomes easier to monitor right where it takes place

Air pollution in Beijing might get most of the disturbing global headlines, but air quality in Indian cities is believed to be even worse. So kudos to the government for its idea to set up big electronic displays that show real-time readings for some of the most important air quality parameters and also offer a pretty intuitive traffic light color-coding scheme for a quick grasp of how bad things are at the moment. 

And in true ambient accountability spirit the display pictured here (one in a network of several across Delhi), is actually placed where lots of pretty important government officials and city elites tread. 

So this looks like a pretty good way to hold up the mirror to these people and confront them with the fruits of their environmental stewardship. 

And then the big moment:

Well, not, really. This board outside Lodi Gardens seemed to have a bad hair day and marked all relevant indicators (at the bottom) as not available. 

ambient accountability dimension 3 : make it easy to complain where things go wrong

Providing information and channels to complain right where citizens might fall prey to corruption can plausibly be expected to deter bad behaviour. 

And Delhi certainly had its share of efforts to create such feedback and complaints interfaces and integrate them into public spaces right where they matter most. 

Here a note on a pillar in the arrival hall of the airport:

And here a policy information point right in the middle of a busy neighborhood, encouraging people to report to the police.

Both efforts look well-intentioned but it is doubtful how effective they can actually be: the half-torn of note at the airport arrival was difficult to spot, the referenced complaints box was nowhere to be seen, not exactly instilling great trust in the workings of this system. And both the airport feedback and police reporting notifications have two fatal flaws in common: they provide way too many options and do not explain at all what will happen with complaints and who will read them, follow up how and when. thus confusing, rather than encouraging citizens looking for orientation and a trustworthy point to complain.

So the overall verdict of this shockingly unscientific exploration into Indian ambient accountability?

Many interesting splinters and good intentions. Yet much appears more like an afterthought, a careless box-ticking exercise  rather than a truly committed, sufficiently resourced and carefully designed feature or intervention. Now this is not an Indian problem. It very much puts ambient accountability in India in line with its current state in most other countries: overlooked, under-hyped, insufficiently researched and poorly though-out - despite its great potential to empower and hold to account. 

A CEO of a large multinational company keynoting at our recent International Anti-Corruption Conference called for a big-push change on corporate integrity and awareness about corruption akin to the big revolution in workplace safety awareness and improvements that has taken place a few decades back.

I find this a really interesting analogy on many levels, since it illustrates nicely the interlocking dynamics of norms, regulations, bottom-up and top-down initiatives that are found to pave the way for systemic change on the anti-corruption front as well. But what particularly stands out is the role of ambient interventions. As it turns out , workplace safety awareness and accident prevention has innovated with and invested in a lot of performance displays that populate high-risk workplaces, from chemical plants to manufacturing shop-floors. Here some examples:

What a great idea, what a great location: put up a ticker that shows where Germany’s net household wealth, the wealth of the richest 0.1 percent and public debt stand and how they grow over time. And put this ticker on a big billboard right across from Germany’s main public and private TV stations and the national parliament in Berlin. A great ambient accountability idea - show parliamentarians the ultimate distributional effects of their policy-making every morning on the way to work...

Only that the idea is so badly implemented. It is really hard to get a sense of the proportions and the relative growth rates: who gains and looses at what speed over time? This would make a really nice info graphic challenge. Right now it feels just like a heap of fast moving numbers, a bit of a digital storm that overwhelms, rather than enlightens when glimpsing at it on the way past.

If you are in Berlin, go take a look. And here you can see how it ticks

A sneak peek at NDP 2014

I got an opportunity to have a sneak peek at what this year’s National Day Parade (NDP) had to offer at a rehearsal held on Saturday, taking a few photographs that accompany this post. The rehearsal was held a week before the series of rehearsals that Primary 5 students will attend as part of the National Education (NE) Show programme  starting on 12 July 2014, in the lead-up to the actual…

This is brilliant!