Queueing and Civilization

In a very competitive environment like Singapore, queueing is a custom, rather than a guarantee. As a part of the society, I also have to bear with this custom. Queueing for trains, tickets, dining, groceries, taxis and even for newspapers.

Sometimes, the time spent for queueing is even longer than the time for acquiring the actual goods and services.

A correspondent sent a letter to TODAY newspaper sharing her experience of queueing for the newspaper at Toa Payoh MRT station. She observed that the people behaved so ungraciously and inconsiderate to others when they queued up.

I was also once queueing for newspaper in the station. I came early in the morning around 7.a.m. before the TODAY's newspaper distributor came. The queue was already long when I arrived. Luckily, I still got the paper for that day. The distribution of the papers lasted less than 15 minutes and so did the queue.


Instead of coming to the station early in the morning without a guarantee to get a newspaper, now I go to the TODAY's website and read the paper online. The paper is already published online at 6.a.m. There is no need for me to rush and waste my time in queue without any guarantee to get the paper. By reading the paper online, I can also know the news, special offers and events earlier than the people who queue.

I wonder if those people queueing at the stations know about the possibilities of reading Today online. It would have saved them a lot of time and energy.

In the Singapore information society, the telecommunication infrastructure is good. The cost of having an Internet connection is quite low. However, the gap of Internet literacy is still wide. In addition, the custom of reading is also difficult to be changed. Reading a newspaper on "paper" is still preferable than reading the electronic version.

People in Singapore still prefer to queue for newspaper rather than accessing it from the Internet. After all, queueing is a part of Singapore civilization. Yet, I am still waiting for the time when TODAY is available on my mobile phone.

Video Conference with Taganrog State University

On 24th April 2006, I participated as an observant in a video conference course conducted at Media Lab, UIAH.
The course is a joint project among Taganrog State University of Radio Engineering in Rusia, University of Tampere, University of Art and Design Helsinki and University of Helsinki in Finland. This course is coordinated by Professor Tapio Varis, Gavan Titley, Peter McGrory and Ksenia Avetisova. The main target audience of the course are students from the Linguistic Department of Taganrog State University. Most of the tutors come from several Finnish universities mentioned above.

Today, we had Heikki Maenpaa and Professor Tapio Varis shared their experience how ICT could be used to build communication and facilitate the sharing knowledge and learning process at an international level. They gave an example, how they had used Skype, a real-time web-based ICT application, to introduce Finnish music and songs to Japanese national television audience.

Nowadays, there are many alternatives how teacher can easily pick any tools or use any services available from Internet and use them right away to enhance their teaching activities. However, a common understanding among stakeholders about the goals, philosophy, understanding, literacy about the new tools is necessary before starting to use them, especially in facilitating international collaborative learning process. Teachers and students need to have same passion and speak same language are a couple of important things to be considered in a multicultural distance learning. In addition to that, Heikki emphasized that teachers needed to have creativity to carry out this kind of learning process. Creativity should come from the heart, not a money-oriented matter.

During the lecture, I observed that awareness of using ICT to enhance learning and cultural sharing is different from each country and each person. For example: during the question and answer session, only one out of thirteen student in Taganrog University knows about Skype and other Instant Messaging services. Surprisingly, in Japan, the audience in the television station, were amazed when Tapio in Finland and Heikki in Japan conducted Skype video conference, played music and sang a song together.

The lecture was very interesting. The students in Taganrog University seemed to have a lot of fun, although there were some technical problems there. The electricity was dead and they could not connect the computer to LCD projector and beam the lecture on the wall. With a very small computer in the middle, the students carefully listened to the lecture in a half-circle sitting position. They followed the lecture very seriously. In most of the time, they did not spontaneously ask any questions except they were given a chance by the moderators or speakers. The quality of sound was quite good, but there were difficulties in seeing the faces of the students during the lecture.

Relate this experience to my own research work in ICT for developing countries, such as Indonesia, international collaborative video-conferencing lecture seems to be an good alternative for the teachers and students to expand the horizon and experience new ways of learning. Currently, there are a lot of Indonesians, who wants to pursue their further study abroad, however only few get the opportunity to to time and financial restrictions. Similar video conference technique may be not affordable for most educational institutions, yet using current web-based application, such as Skype and Instant Messaginging, can be more cost-effective and efficient. We only need to know and decide wisely, which tools are appropriate, effective and efficient in facilitating different ways of learning. Teachers and students need to grow their awareness the potentials of the tools and services for learning as well as their literacy in operating them.

Habbohotel, behind the scene

We had the opportunity to meet Sampo Karjalainen, the Chief Creative Officer of Sulake Oy and the original finder of Habbohotel, who visited UIAH on the 7 March 2006 to give an interesting presentation about Habbo Hotel, one of the most popular Internet virtual game in the world.

He explained that Habbohotel.com” was originally a Finnish online game, but it had been developing into a well-known online international hotel chains game. The game is the main product of Sulake Oy (Finland), which has been used by over 200.000 users in 17 countries in the world and translated into several languages. In his talk, Sampo shared to the audience the history, business strategy, design and development process of Habbo Hotel.

The original main target audience of the Habbo Hotel was Nordic youngsters from 13 to 16 years old, but their research indicated that the game is currently played by anyone from various ages and background both on computer-based as well as on mobile media.

Habbo Hotel game was designed to be different from any other online games. The game was designed as a social and casual game, which could easily be accessed and played by any ordinary people. It was expected that the game could be a means for self-expression and social orientation. Habbohotel is an open-ended game where each user can create and have their own goals. To play Habbo Hotel, each user need to have a user account, which one can get it easily for free from the Habbo Hotel website. Unless they want to buy something, such as rooms, furnitures, drinks or join any hotel clubs, this game is free. The players do not need to pay for anything. There are a lot of possibilities how users can interact with others by sending messages, chatting, treating others as well as building a personal relationship with anyone within the hotel spaces privately or publicly. As he said, the game emphasized on the self-expression, creativity and participation of the users.

Even though, playing Habbo Hotel on the mobile device is is getting popular, the common problems especially faced by youngsters are the cost of the fancy multimedia mobile telecommunication devices, data traffic cost, and Internet availability on the mobile devices.

Several issues that I have been thinking during the presentations are:

Habbo Hotel was originally developed based only game designers' ideas, based on some assumption on what it would be good for young people in Nordic countries. I was wondering if the company has done any specific user studies, testings and evaluation in different countries. They only mentioned that they conducted several playability testings. What about the interfaces or interactions in each hotel in each countries? I hope they have made some ethnographic studies in each country before they build their hotels there.

For Habbo mobile, Sampo said that the company has actually started exploring their innovative and creative mobile game concepts since 2000 before the technology was ready in the market. There have been a lot of challenges that the company has faced during the time until it launched its mobile product recently. I guess one of the success and sustainability factors of Sulake, more or less, were influenced by a supportive business environment in Finland, where small business can created, nurtured and developed with support from research, government institutions and bigger industrial organisations; by the maturity of the technology and by the willingness of the company to look at their competitors and change their own strategy to follow what their competitors do in order to survive.

Play acting: the role of the player-storyteller in game narratives

Tracy Fullerton in her talk about "Play acting: The Role Of The Player-Storyteller In Game Narratives" during the Game and Storytelling series discussed the system, elements and narrative aspects of computer games, including the process of designing a computer games. She said that designing a computer game was a part of formal design process.

She explained that it was important for players co-authoring the game. It means that the players should have an opportunity to create their own personal stories or experience by playing the game. Some factors that influence personal experience include level of tasks, thinking and negotiation process, personal feeling, imagination, communication with the characters, real-world like experience, and a moment.

She also shared her personal experience in playing a computer game, where she had to negotiate and do some tasks that are against her moral beliefs. In the game world, she did those tasks in order to win the game, but she still felt guilty in the real world. She liked and played the game a lot because she could have some personal learning experience.

However, she did not mention that the usability and accessibility of the game shaped the experience of the players as well. If normal player experienced difficulties in dealing with the interface of the games, how could they go to the next step of narrative and role-playing experience? This issue would have been interesting and useful to be discussed further.