An important fact in the constant struggle against surveillance tech:
Fox4: An eastern district court near St. Louis has denied a motion for the most recent red light cameras case to be sent to the Missouri Supreme Court, which could affect drivers here in the metro.
Meanwhile, we'll hear more about City Hall desperately urging politicos to turn the cameras back on given that the City Hall budget is busted and desperately needs the cash . . .
But imagine setting up three video cameras in 1,000 kitchens for a week. Or two days a month in different households for a tracking study. Quant sample size. Multiple cameras to capture different angles. The client could be a CPG company, a grocery store, a cookware company—you name it. Sophisticated visual analytics could potentially tell you:
ReplyDeleteWhat’s your morning coffee routine?
How much time do the kids spend in the kitchen?
How many of those fancy knives do you actually use?
Are you drinking wine while cooking dinner?
Are Ziploc bags a replacement for Saran Wrap or Tupperware?
How many trips to the pantry are required for each meal?
Yes, you can ask things like “Do you clean as you go or wait until the meal is finished?” on a survey, but that sort of misses the point of ethnography. You don’t always know the right question to ask. It’s less about testing hypotheses than uncovering latent needs and motivations. Pervasive video makes observation of people in their natural environments possible in a way that it has never been before.