It’s the first day of Av. I’m seeing a lot of Facebook status messages and Twitter tweets griping about the Nine Days.*

I’m thinking (…can’t stop thinking…) about the bereaved young family not far from here who lost their 3-year old darling daughter in a sudden, tragic accident. Thinking about their loss, their pain. How the preschool-teacher mommy will be able to bear teaching her students again. How the babysitter will face herself, her friends, her future children… and on and on….

No meat. No music. No luxuriating in the shower. No swimming. No fun… Why not? “To remember the destruction of the House of G-d.” What does that mean? Why do we mourn now, today, this year?

Others have taught about learning the lesson from the past to the present; to repair the sins rampant then and now. “If the Temple is not rebuilt in our time, it is as if we destroyed it.”

Others have taught that the Destruction goes on until Redemption. We live in a world where humanity, the Jewish Nation, and the Expression of G-d’s Presence are in constant suffering. “One who mourns the destruction of Jerusalem shall merit to witness its rebuilding.”

I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking about “nosei be’ol im chaveiro”. Shouldering the burden with your friend. How putting yourself truly into the experience of another person makes you both stronger.

I’m thinking that the Nine Days is also about keeping in touch with the global, historical Nation of Israel. Feeling a part of it, being a part of it. Maybe feeling a part of it IS being a part of it. In good times and in hard times.

“Getting through” the Nine Days misses the point entirely. Will that family whose daughter died be thinking about “getting through” the Nine Days; “getting through” their shiva? They’ll be the week in the deepest form of grief, finding expression in rituals of mourning that the Nine Days only shadows dimly. Will they be griping about the lack of chicken? About sitting on the floor in torn shirts and unpressed trousers? About not listening to music? About not having fun?

And why not? [I don’t mean: “Because the minor inconveniences are overshadowed by the enormity of grief.”] And why not? Because the actions suit the emotional state. They won’t be wanting to take a vacation this week. Or shop for new clothes. Or eat a steak… or much else. They won’t want to listen to a capella singing groups. They won’t want to be drawn out of their grief; they will want to experience and share and touch and reach and be drawn close. They will want to feel held by G-d and know He is carrying them to somewhere good.

Their pain, as almost-impossible as it is for me — a stranger — to bear, is right now. It is only my own pain for as long as I am willing, capable of sharing their burden.

Holocaust survivors know that the world is forgetting their pain. It isn’t gone. But we aren’t always willing to shoulder the emotional burden with them. We want to have fun. We want our meat and music. Despite an individual and human burden of pain that is so vast compared with that of a single family. (”Compared with…” is unfair. There is no “compared with”. What I mean is the vastness of numbers of individual sufferings, each unique and whole.)

The Churban Bayis. The destruction of the Holy Temple. It wasn’t just a demolition, a political or military casualty. It was a whole, long, agonizing war. A siege and famine. A Holocaust, if you will. The nearly complete destruction of the Old Country, the cities, towns, villages, educational system, government. A whole country, a whole people, a whole way of life. A thousand — nay, a million and another million individual sufferings, each unique and whole.

Experiencing the Nine Days is not about “getting through it” until the melave malka on motzaei Shabbos Nachamu. If you feel the pain, you aren’t trying to have fun. You are seeking meaning in the tragedy. You are seeking to experience, to share and touch and reach and be drawn close. To feel held by G-d and to know that He is taking you somewhere good.

You aren’t yet feeling the pain yourself?

It’s about shouldering the burden with your friend. Which friend? Your grandparents. And their grandparents. And theirs. Which friend? G-d, your Father. He does not experience time; it is all fresh, new, raw to His Shechina, ke’v'yachol.

“Kol rodfeha hisiguha bein hametzarim. All who pursue her [the Shechina] shall grab hold of her during the Straightened Times [of Mourning].”

Can you stop thinking about your meat and music long enough to sit down in the house of mourning? To shoulder the burden with your friends? To honor the freshness of pain by taking it into yourself, by acting as one with the body nation of Israel? To become the realization, the actualization, the embodiment of Jew, of Human, of Tzelem Elokim (image of God)?

“G-d is your Guardian, G-d is your Shadow at your right hand.” 

*The “Nine Days” count from the 1st to the 9th day of the Jewish lunar month of Av — this year, beginning Wednesday, July 23. They are part of a three-week process of increasing mourning, culminating in the Fast of the Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av). During the Nine Days (or the week of Tisha B’Av for Sephardic Jews), the Torah teaches to avoid eating meat; enjoying significant new acquisitions such as clothing, houses, cars; restricting bathing to cleanliness (as opposed to pleasure); and listening to music. A summary of the Laws of the Three Weeks, Nine Days and Tisha B’Av may be found here: Halacha For Today.

Mishpacha’s Family First has made their article about me available, with free registration. Enjoy!

Mishpacha’s Family First magazine hit the stands today (Jan 7, 2009 edition, volume 123), including a four-page article about Yours Truly (click here to download a PDF version).

Mishpacha is the leading weekly magazine for the global haredi (or chareidi, for Chareidio junkies) Orthodox/Yeshiva Jewish community. I’m honored and humbled to be featured… and anxiously dread the feedback.

The best part was being introduced to the writer, Bassi Gruen. I sense a friendship in the making.

User Experience designers talk about mobility meaning independence, individuality, and personal freedom. Or mobility meaning communication, income, and literacy.

What if mobility means you might be blown up by a terrorist? If mobility means vulnerability and insecurity? What happens when you combine a culture that glorifies charity with an environment of mortal vulnerability?

Israel is a country brimming with charitable acts. The phone book has 50 pages of free loan society (”gemach“) listings, offering interest- and payment-free loans of money, cell phones, baby strollers, pacifiers, Sabbath meals, medicines, photocopies, fax machines, tools… you name it.

The 600-pound gorilla of free loan societies is, of course, Yad Sarah, founded by Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky, currently mayor of Jerusalem. But gemachs are a common family activity.

It’s normal for Jewish homes worldwide to have one or more charity boxes, into which small change (usually) is collected over months or years, then picked up by the organization who owns the box. Our home currently has about five of them, including one shaped like a tractor to help support farmers during the sabbatical shemitta year.

A field between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, left fallow for the Sabbatical (Shemitta) year. 

A typically Israeli sight is that of charity boxes in public places — available should a sudden philanthropic urge strike, or you just have some spare change in your hand. Or you get nervous about taking public transportation.

Here’s a common one (affixed to a pole near a bus stop):

Here’s a collection box outside the counter of a downtown bakery (note that the money collected isn’t for the shop owner):

The translated sign reads: Hidden Charity — i.e., the donor and recipient don’t know one another, which is a more sensitive form of charity — for Sabbath charity and kindness to families blessed with many children (may they live long) in honor of the holy Sabbath and the holidays. [The money will be donated to] the charity [in honor of] Rabbi Meir Baal haNes and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, may their memories protect us. May you be blessed from on high with good fortune, blessing, and success.

Here’s one I saw just down the block from my home, also next to a bus stop, but somehow it has been grown right into the knot of a tree:

Part I

I’m from Los Angeles. In L.A., we say “You are what you drive.” Sad, but true.

In a sprawling city with inadequate public transportation and a high average income, people go everywhere in their cars.

When I was a child, the car was a vehicle. My grandparents had cars (one per family, not one per grandparent) with bench seats front and rear. I climbed in and sat between Grandma and Grandpa, and we talked while we drove. If it got hot, there were these neat triangular vent windows that popped open in back, and roll-down windows that took about five minutes to roll back up (and an equal amount of time to recover from). Maps went in the glove compartment. Eating and drinking in the car were not conceivable.

When I was a teenager, the car had evolved to become a second home. My parents’ cars (one per parent) each had air conditioning, radio with five station memory buttons, power windows, console storage and a cupholder. The map was a fat Thomas Guide stuffed in the seat pocket behind the front passenger seat. That was new, too: the front passengers each had their own adjustable bucket seat (slide forward/backward and recline). We didn’t talk as much together in the car; we listened together to the radio. Usually the driver chose the station, so it was either news radio (both parents), sports, pop psychology, country music, golden oldies (dad), or classical music (mom).

By the time I finished school, the car had become an extension of self, part of a person’s identity. When you got your first drivers’ license, you started thinking about getting your own car. When my dad handed down his (totally cool) car to me, the first thing I did was earn the money to install a cassette player. I didn’t talk to anybody (car phones were so new that I only knew three people who had them, all in their forties), except sometimes my little brother, when I took him to school. When my first children were born, we drove and sang along to tapes and CDs.

Today, car interior design has gone farther than ever in cocooning the individual rather than the group: DVD players front and back, separate headphone jacks, individual climate control (front and back; driver and passenger). Second- and third-row captain’s seats. Cup holders in every door, seatback, and floor panel. iPod and mobile phone jacks. Memory storage of your seat’s height, location, and degree of lumbar support.

“You are what you drive.”

Step back for a moment, and you’ll see that these design trends paint a larger cultural picture. The car has moved from a shared space (bench seats, no entertainment, little customization) to a highly personal space that is unlikely to be shared. When it is shared (for example, in a family mini-van), every effort is made to create as much private space as possible (individual seats, individual climate control, individual cupholders, individual entertainment and entertainment controls).

It’s a very different attitude about the car and how you spend time in it.

To me, it’s speaks of a very Western interpretation of mobility: Freedom, Entertainment, Movement, Privacy, Independence. Mobility = Individuality.

Part II

This attitude and the design ethic it inspired isn’t limited to cars. It has been the driving force (sorry) in mobile phone design for years.

Listen to the usability experts up until about a year ago. Everything was about how “personal” the mobile phone is. Studies showing that a high percentage of people don’t feel comfortable sharing their phone, or letting someone even use their phone briefly. The personal messages, notes, contacts, call history, browser history, photos.

Even more, there’s a sort of personal identification and relationship with the phone itself. Going further, your mobile phone number is more meaningful that your social security number — it’s one of your names. Your mobile number represents you, unlike a landline number which represents a location, and doesn’t follow you around.

I have a book here on mobile phones in Japanese life called Personal, Portable, Pedestrian. That pretty much sums up what UI thinkers saw as being important to users.

It’s all true, but there’s a big problem with all this: it’s all based on “Western” cultures. Cultures in which individuality, freedom and personal space are high on the list of life’s priorities.

Paul Adams (User Experience Researcher, Google) at the MEX conference pointed out in his presentation that if you look at countries like India and China, there are people everywhere.

Americans look at these teeming masses and say, “chaos”. But it’s not chaotic to non-Western eyes. What we perceive as “chaos” may be perceived locally as “shared space”. Paul gave the example of Southwest Airlines’ seating system, which for years was a “first come-first served” arrangement, proven to be faster than assigned seating. For Americans, this was perceived as chaotic. We prefer assigned seats because we place so high a value on our unique, personal, private space. It defines us. (Southwest has since changed over to a numbered boarding order — with it’s own adorable website to explain it. Which already tells you something.)

But that isn’t necessarily true of people in other countries, other cultures. What is valuable to one person may be undesirable to another.

Even in our “own” Western culture, feelings about personal space are changing. Definitions of privacy (personal secrets that you share with 800 blog readers…), of space (virtual, real, contained within a particular device or account) are changing.

Spaces that were once shared (eg., living room, public bus) are now personal (iPod as a “sphere of isolation”, killing time with mobile broadband). Spaces that were once personal (eg., Walkman music player, internet browser) are now shared (sharing headphones, Zune WiFi, Facebook Wall, IM, location based services).

Part III

I just got a Nokia 1208 as a gift; an upgrade to my Kosher Phone account. (We’ll talk about kosher phones another time. Suffice it to say for now that a kosher phone is a phone with no data capabilities.)

If you’re reading this blog, a dual-band Series 30 phone [bet you thought S30 was extinct in the wild] probably isn’t on your mobile tech wish list. It’s three main selling points are:

* Get instant access to phone features [one programmable softkey]
* Add a little color to your life [lo-res color display and exchangeable color faceplates]
* Monitor and manage your costs [calling card tracking and call timers]

Notable features on the 1208 are an integrated LED flashlight on top (where some phones have the power button or IR window), speakerphone, support for multiple user contact lists, pre-loaded polyphonic ringtones, dust-resistant keypad, durable materials construction with non-slip backing, and a very long battery life (7 hours talk time / 15 days standby).

You may have noticed that the feature set doesn’t exactly match your checklist of phone features. That’s because the 1208 was designed for… well… less-developed countries. Despite the fact that its being sold everywhere (which is pretty interesting), priorities in the design were cost reduction, durability (many users, dusty climates) and sharability (if you can only afford to have one phone per household — or even per neighborhood — then making sharing easier becomes very important).

Which is exactly why the 1208 was on my Wish List; it’s a great example of the new attention being paid to read people, real cultures, real usage needs in the design of products and services. It has taken a long time to recognize that overall, we have enough feature. It’s about delivering them in a meaningful way, and hearing what people truly need.

It’s also about respecting other people enough to accept their own mobile identity definitions and priorities (family, community, participation, responsibility, communication), without trying to impose our “better” systems on them. In doing so, we honor others, while creating new design and product possibilities that benefit everyone.

You don’t need to hear me rant on again about uncontrolled Google Ads.

Yesterday, I moved the homepage of the Haredi Women Professionals (aka Supermom) Network to a new hosting site that plants automatic Google ads along one side of the page. In the ten minutes between my setting up the page and paying for a premium service entitling me to remove the Google Ads, the homepage was advertising links to pornography (how obvious, given the word “Women” in the title, right?).

Here’s another example (from a search results page). Not a mis-match of interests, this time, as much as poorly-chosen ad copy:

Need I point out that Orthodox Jewish Women are not for sale?! :.D

Some people are in a race to “keep up with the Joneses”. Some people are in a race to “keep down with the Cohens“. As for hats…

[today’s offering from xkcd]

Seen in Shaare Tzedek Hospital, Jerusalem:

The white outlets are part of the ordinary hospital circuitry.

The brown outlets lead to the grama circuit, an electrical system designed to indirectly close circuits on the Jewish Sabbath — not something you’ll find in common home use, but perfectly acceptable for use for the sick. Also on the grama circuit is the call button, so that patients will feel free to call for a nurse even if they don’t have an emergency (for an emergency, anything will do, of course).

Not shown are the red outlets, on the emergency generator circuit, and often designed to accept hospital equipment only.

How do you use waiting time? Many people “kill time” while in line: watching mobile TV, checking email, sending an SMS message, playing a game. What if you believe that “killing time” is bad?

Seen in a neighborhood branch of the Israel Post Office:

A shelf of Biblical and Talmudic study books for customers to read while waiting to mail a letter, deposit money, or pick up a package.

It’s a small gesture, but one that respects the immediate culture and values of the environment.

Seen today in Jerusalem:

Haredi snowman (note the hat). How we design something relates to how we anticipate and perceive the norm. Creating a truly new or revolutionary design that breaks from prior references is incredibly difficult (and rare).