Lift 2010 in Geneva

We've just launched the new website of the upcoming Lift 2010 edition in Geneva. The event will revisit the myths about connected people:

"Lift10 will explore the most overlooked aspect of innovation: people. Known in the techno-parlance as users, consumers, clients, participants, prosumers, citizens or activists, people ultimately define the success of all technological and entrepreneurial projects. They adopt or refute, promote or demote; embrace, reject, or re-purpose. Their approaches are unique, influenced by cultural and generational diversity. A decade after the rebirth of user-centered design and innovation, it's time to explore the myths and uncover the reality behind the "connected people"."

Also check the current speakers roster and the program format/sessions:

"Generations and technologies How to go beyond the usual clichés on generations, with Seniors unable to benefit from technology and Millenials ruining their future careers on social networks?

The redefinition of Privacy What is privacy in the 21st Century? Is personal security threatened by the massive collection of personal data?

Communities Since 2006 Web 2.0 has celebrated the so-called "amateur revolution". What did we learn in the past 5 years? Are we reaching the limits of Web 2.0?

Politics Beyond the much talked-about political campaigns on Facebook, how to turn users into engaged citizens in public action?

The old new media Newspapers are struggling, TV is not sure of what the future holds. What is at stake nowadays when informing, reaching and involving people?"

For this edition, our friends from Bread and Butter did a great job to instantiate our theme in a proper and original graphic identity. As they explained on their weblog:

"We tried to find a new way to represent the fragile balance between connected groups of people. We are all sometimes influencers, sometimes pirates and sometimes just an audience. Therefore the concept of a "mobile" seemed just the right transcription. Without saying that it also fits the Conference's spirit and is easy to apply on all applications from website to stickers and from Marseille themes to korean's alphabet."

Let's observe the different steps from their generative metaphor:

Phone-clock mix

My interest in old phones as well as interface that tells you time has been attracted to this utterly weird telephone found at a flea market in Paris. What's curious here is that the device itself is a mix of a phone and a clock but, as we can see, it doesn't go fairly well:

• The numbers are set in a way that do not correspond to neither the clock arrangement nor a standard phone keypad.
• To some extent, there is a mismatch between the mapping of the phone numbers (from 0 to 9 with a Bis and I do not know what P stands for) and clock numbers (from 1 to 12).

Down the road, this interface is not very meaningful to the user. The design decision to use the clock analogy as a phone keypad (arranging the number all around the circle) is simply wrong. Even tough it looks curious, you should definitely not look at the numbers if you want to read time.

Why do I blog this? rationalizing the discussion I had with Julian while visiting the flea market. A great place to collect insights about design decisions.

Moreover, this is an interesting example for Basile's research about cultural elements circulation that you can find in the following poster and a forthcoming article entitled "Redesigning Culture: Chinese Characters in Alphabet-Encoded Networks" at Design and Culture from Berg Publishers.

Co-presence in the 21st century

Two persons in the same place, as represented on the Foursquare interface. A depiction of co-presence mediated by technology.

Co-presence, as described by Zhao can refer to the sense of being together with other people in a remote or a shared virtual environment. To refer back to Goffman, it's a form of human co-location in which individuals become "accessible, available, and subject to one another".

The advent of location-based services lead to a new class of situation where people can b both physically copresent (what Zhao calls "Corporeal Copresence") and located in electronic proximity (what Zhao calls "Corporeal Telecopresence"). Which is what happens with the Foursquare interface. The categories are then not mutually exclusive.

Why do I blog this? curiosity about what this kind of constraints can lead to, in terms of location-based services in a physically co-present context.

You are here / We are there

Why do I blog this? An interesting add-on to a previous discussion about "you are here" signage: the inclusion of the destination next to the "you are here" sign, as well as the use of speech bubbles.

Autopsies: The Afterlife of Dead Objects

(A Panasonic 8-tracks music player found last week at trashed next to the flea market in Geneva)

Morning read on "Material World" (found via):

"Autopsies: The Afterlife of Dead Objects

This project explores how objects die. Just as the twentieth century was transformed by the advent of new forms of media--the typewriter, gramophone, and film, for example--the arrival of the twenty-first century has brought the phasing out of many public and private objects that only recently seemed essential to "modern life." What is the modern, then, without film projectors, typewriters, and turntables? How has the modern changed as trolley cars disappeared and hot air balloons were converted into high-risk sport rather than the demonstration of national pride in science and a crucial tactical mechanism of wartime? But what will our twenty-first century entail without mixmasters, VCRs, or petrol-driven automobiles? Does the "modern" in fact program the death of objects? What is the significance of death for things that live only through such a paradoxical program of planned obsolescence? How can cultural historians and theorists participate in the reflection on the ends of objects, from their physical finitude to the very projects for their disposal, the latter increasingly of concern with the multiplication of things that do not gently decompose into their own night."

Why do I blog this? Great questions asked in the project, lots to digest from the website and the weblog

Besides, this excerpt reminded of a discussion with Basile about his gf's interest in how objects die/vanish. The first picture above depicts this topic at the general level (a now defunct technical-object lineage) but the place I found it (next to a trash) exemplifies the death of a particular object (that I actually saved). There are ten two levels for objects death: as the "lineage" level and the instantiation level.

The picture below shows the traces of a dying object (and not necessarily the whole lineage though) in Montreal:

"The tube map as a graphical user interface to the city"

Read in "Mind the Gap: The London Underground Map and Users’ Representations of Urban Space" by Janet Vertesi (Social Studies of Science 38, 2008). Hacker Mullins Prize, American Sociological Association: Science, Knowledge and Technology Section, 2006.):

"A stable, iconic representation such as the Tube Map may convey a general sense of structure, establish points of interaction, and enable further representations and narratives about the object. It can act as a reference point for practices of navigation and wayfinding, affording judgments of normalcy and degrees of expertise or resistance. It may also, through its mapping of topological connections, be read not only as a subway map but as a useful way of representing the city in general: an object it does not pretend to represent. The Tube Map thus becomes something of a graphical user interface to the city, presenting and concealing opportunities for engagement, and making sense of the city to its users. (...) we are challenged to examine the representation as distinct from a discussion of ontology, topology, utility, or mimetic fidelity – against which the Tube Map would surely fail as an ‘accurate’ representation of London above-ground – to analyze the concrete ways in which representational organization enables narratives of movement and manipulation and, most important, to locate the boundaries and points of interaction for particular communities of users."

Why do I blog this? I simply loved this excerpt when reading the paper, wondering about its implications in map design. Regardless of the media employed (physical versus digital), there are some important decisions to be taken when designing such maps and the paper pinpoints relevant issues regarding this topic.

Besides, the quote "The tube map as a graphical user interface to the city" could also be interesting for class discussion about technical objects acting as metaphors.

Lamp evolution

Evolution of the electronic tube from 1924 to 1952 quoted by Gilbert Simondon’s Genetic “Mecanology” and the understanding of laws of technical evolution by Vincent Bontems and found in "On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects" by Gilbert Simondon. As the author mentions:

"The ebonite base became smaller and smaller until it eventually vanished; the functional parts grew larger and larger and, at the end, fill the total volume of the glass light bulb. Functional convergences also imply the differentiation of functions. Specialization is accomplished synergy by synergy."

Why do I blog this? interesting example that I keep up my sleeve about an interesting claim of Simondon: the immanent order of concretization (i.e. the complex processes through which technology as sets of relations form and are vitalized) is the same as that of the historically observed order.

Testing Sony Eyepet Augmented Reality

Into testing Eyepet, a game for the PlayStation 3 that is based on Augmented Reality. It basically uses the PlayStation Eye camera to allow you to interact with a virtual pet and objects in the real world. The process is very straight-forward. You have this black plastic placard shown on the picture above with a white square and a paw-print on it that you carefully place on your floor next to your TV set. The PS3 Eye recognizes it (as well as the environment): your surroundings then appear on your TV. You can start fooling around with an egg that soon becomes a gremlin-like pet. The game mechanic is progressive and based on interacting with the virtual animal either by touching (I mean, moving around in front of your TV that see on the screen what you're touching) OR by using virtual objects by holding the card (which has a symbol that is recognized by the system and make the digital item appear on the screen). See for example the following case:

Here I am, trying to activate a heater to warm-up an egg. The point is to push the lever below the pink arrow.

Pushed, now I can warm the egg.

The gesture-based interaction works pretty well, especially when using virtual items. However, what is definitely tough here is that you have to act in front of your TV in a mirror-way: moving an object on the right (on the screen) requires that you move your hand on the left. This reversed-then-flipped mirror image of your room is a bit disorientating for me; i guess it may be difficult for kids as well. In the preliminary gameplays you need to make your pet jump several on a trampoline, so you really need to be accurate when you move it around so that the pet doesn't fell down on your floor. That being said, I found intriguing to have this sort of setting where you make gestures in the physical world and you access some sort of mirror-world on the TV. I do think however that game designers could play more on that trick.

There is also an impressive feature that enables you to draw things on a sketchbook... which are then translated into virtual items in the game. You draw a picture, hold it up in front of the camera and the system will try to copy it (it only works with good lighting conditions).

Why do I blog this? My interest in this sort of things is connected to by my research about interaction design and my interrogations about the role of uselessness in robots/networked objects.

Of course it's a bit frustrating (game mechanics are quite basic, loading times are long) but there are really some interesting interaction ideas in there. I am personally not sure about the virtual pet thing (why does those thing ALWAYS have to look like boring gremlins?) but this is an interesting step in the evolution of virtual/digital interlinkages.

Sidewalk expansion

An interesting depiction of a recent phenomenon: the expansion of sidewalk in occidental cities. In this example, it used to be very tiny and the new version will make it wider.

The design of the urban environment is strongly modified according to recent concerns about global warming (less room for cars, more for bikes and pedestrians) and social trends (encourage physical exercise).

Mushroom meme circulation: physical digital physical

The real-world, a classic mushroom encountered in the mountains in the French Alps.

A digital representation in Super Mario Bros by Nintendo.

Back to the physical world with mario-like mushrooms spotted in San Francisco, next to Union Square.

Why do I blog this? sorting out some pictures of Flickr lead me to wonder about how meme circulate from the physical to the digital and the return to the physical.

Video Games and possibilities

Two quick Unified Resource Locator that caught my eyes yesterday evening during my commute:

• Sometips by Jordan Mechner about game design principles for narrative games. The second hand "List the actions the player actually performs in the game and take a cold hard look at it. Does it sound like fun?" is an interesting filter to prioritize the interactions you want your users to be engaged in. A sort of follow-up to Crawford's list of verbs I mentioned the other day
• Choose Your Own Adventure (thanks Carly for this), a visualization of interactive books

Why do I blog this? both are about games/entertainment but these principles/viz can be applied to other domains. I see them as important interaction design heuristics.

Lift seminar @ lift offices

Last monday, at the Lift seminar at our offices, we organized a set of talks about urban informatics. We discussed the large variety of data that are generated on top of the physical environment and their opportunities in terms of representations, analyses and services. When it comes to digital data, one can talk about "traces" but I will left the term "urban traces" out of the discussion because this discussion can applied to situations that go beyond the city context (suburbs, countryside...). This event was part of the urban informatics workshop series Fabien and have been running.

(Fixed sensor to measure bike usage in Marseilles)

My introduction to the seminar was about the types data that are available. I presented first the usual kind of data (cadastral, road/railroads/water/electricity/cable/telephone networks infrastructures and usage), talked about the open data initiative. However, our interest was really about "traces" of people's activity in space, for which one can discriminate:

1. Activity-generated data: fixed sensors that can detect bike usage, moving sensors (pedometers, mobile phone, use of Velo'v bikes (unlike Velib bikes, Velo'v seemed to have GPS sensors, is that correct?), automatic location-declaration (on location-based services such as Aka Aki which automatically tells you who is in the vicinity)
2. Volunteer-based data: that is... user-generated content, which can be technology-based (pictures uploaded on sharing platforms such as Flickr, or self-declared positioning as people report their location on Foursquare). It can also be non-technology-based: see for example Respiralyon a french initiative that enable people to report on smells and odors in their own city.

Then Fabien described different projects he carried out, which aims at engaging the audience on the potentials benefits of exploiting the logs of digital activities in our contemporary cities.

(Measuring the pedestrian flows in Barcelona using Bluetooth sensors, a project carried out by Fabien for a spanish client)

To put it shortly, all of these data form a sort of informational membrane that surrounds the spatial environment. We have already dealt here with the possibilities afforded by these data that I described my french book about locative media:

• Visualize the data to describe the urban activity, reveal the invisible, make explicit the implicit (you can see Real Time Rome as a paragon for this use). This first step generally helps bringing new perspective for decision making and policies building or raising awareness and effect the discussion making of individuals or of a crowd.
• Use the data as a model for spatial activities that can enable what i would call "urban stakeholders" to act upon them. A good example for this is to provide urban planners, transportation authorities or traffic engineers with data to refine their models of citizens spatio-temporal behaviors... and eventually help the decision-making process: where to install certain services (or how can we craft certain incentives so that we make specific shops/services to be located in a designated areas). As Fabien mentioned, these data can help to complement existing models (it's not a substitution) drawn out of surveys or qualitative analyses.
• Use the data as a model to build applications on top of them. This is what Citysense aims at: building a tool to help people taking certain spatial decisions based on others' behavior. It shows the overall activity level of the city and hostpots as well as also links to Yelp or Google to show what venues are operating at those places. In addition, combined with other sources of information (such as Yelp), it allows to filter out places in the vicinity.

This part was followed by a presentation by Boris Beaude (EPFL) who is an insightful geographer and a talk by Pascal Wattiaux who discussed the role of technologies in the production of the olympic games. My role as a moderator did not allow me to take notes but Fabien did. Both of them gave some perspective to the "urban informatics" trend by showing a large set of constraints (geographical issues, event-related problems, marketing troubles), critiques (data reductionism) and of course opportunities for the near future.

Thanks Fabien, Boris and Pascal for their participation!

When your walkman asks you to do something...

The use of RJDJ applications such as Trippy and Shake is fascinating. These are basically two "reactive music" applications that use the iPhone's built-in microphone (Trippy) or accelerometer (Shake) to adjust/modify/transform the soundtrack you're listening to:

"RjDj uses the power of the new generation personal music players like iPhone and iPod Touch to create mind blowing hearing sensations. The RjDj app makes a number of downloadable scenes from different artists available. The Trippy app is a compilation of seven scenes bundled which are all using microphone input to manipulate or create music. The Shake app comes bundled with seven scenes which are all about moving, shaking and dancing with your device."

Of course this is not very different than past generative/ambient music but what I find really intriguing is this tune:

What I find important here is that the system explicitly asks you - the user - to go to a certain place to create a certain experience. And it's not just a place, it's a context that you're required to find. Luckily construction workers are everywhere in Geneva, digging up and down the city for a new tram thing, I had plenty of opportunity to play with this application and I liked it a lot.

Why do I blog this? observing the interesting interaction design pattern that is at stake here. What is this? First it's a "walkman that asks you to do something", which is clearly intriguing. Second, it's a sort of game mechanic that requires you to change your activity to create an original experience. Sort of "game design" meets "mobile music".

The "find some place" recommendation here is highly interesting. It extends the range of verbs proposed in specific applications (a music player generally only ask you to play/rewind/pause/fast forward or change tune/shuffle). In this case, there is a new possibility that reminds us of Chris Crawford's approach to interaction design: "Interactivity requires verb thinking" proposed in his book entitled "The Art of Interactive Design". "Finding a place" is, above all, a new verb choice for music play.

It makes me wonder about two possibilities: (1) Playing with this trick and finding other verbs that could expand music player?, (2) Thinking about this "find a place" addition as an interesting possibility for location-based applications.

Akrich about scripts

An interesting quote from Akrich, M. (1992). The De-Scription of Technical Objects. In W. Bijker and J. Law (Eds.) Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press: 205-224.

Why do I blog this? The paper describes how users' attributes are inscribed into technical objects in a study of third world electrification, and which, as a result, stabilize a sociotechnical network. The notion of script is described, something quite relevant for a current research project.

Evolution charts

Various charts by Raymond Loewy, "Evolution Chart of the Desk Telephone,""Evolution Chart of the Railcar," and "Evolution Chart of Female Dress and the Female Figure." 1934

Why do I blog this? currently working on gamepad evolution for a book project, I am always curious about such charts, especially when made by designers. The emphasis on shape and the different steps makes it interesting to draw some comparisons.

Individual blame

Attributing one's failure to use (or problematic use) of a certain technical object is often refered to in the literature as the "Individual Blame Bias". In his book "Diffusion of Innovation", Rogers gave the following example:

"Posters were captioned: «LEAD PAINT CAN KILL!» Such posters placed the blame on low- income parents for allowing their children to eat paint peeling off the walls of older housing. The posters blamed the parents, not the pain manufacturers or the landlords. In the mid-1990s, federal legislation was enacted to require homeowners to disclose that a residence is lead-free when a housing unit is rented or sold."

Why do I blog this? Always been intrigued by the tendency to hold individual responsible for his/her problems rather than system. It's definitely a recurring topic when you run field studies, it's as if people wanted to take responsibility for causes that are beyond their scope (bad manual, missing information, etc.).

Of course, this issue has some consequences in terms of the diffusion of innovations and Rogers proposed to overcome this bias when studying the diffusion of innovation by refraining from using individuals as the units of analysis for diffusion (it then remove the possibility of blame on particular individuals).

Redundancy

Street participation

Seen in London last week, a classical form of citizen participation in occidental cities. Why do I blog this? It's interestingly ubiquitous (at least in the Camden neighborhood I was in) and situated. I like the way it frames the question in context. However, although the question seems relevant, the vocabulary is highly administrative and not very people-centric.

Playulf09 write-up

Went to Playful last week in London. A one-day event about games and play, this conference struck me as fascinating because the organizers went beyond the classical lists of speakers from the video game industry. People on stage came from various background: web developers, hackers, geeks, bloggers, interaction designers, art directors, etc... It seems that this was done on purpose as the first editions of Playful were a bit closer to the video game industry. As of last year, the organizers seemed to be willing to go beyond this and bring together a more diverse roster. In the introduction, it was said that "playful was about video-game design but we felt that something was missing... it was actually 'everything else' so we opened it to other fields". I couldn't agree more on that since i think the game designers and interaction design are part of the same practice (which does not imply there aren't any singularities and idiosyncrasies). I tried to list the sort of insights I collected below, for each speaker in a very unstructured way (forgive also the broken English of my notes).

Roo Reynolds (slidecast here)talked about films and games, and how films adapted after games generally suck (based on various examples: . His conjecture was that making a film out of a game is harder than the other way around. Especially because films revolve around a plot. The only film that portrays a game correctly might be TRON. Roo also wondered whether it is possible to create a film based on game mechanics.

Kareem Ettouney from Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet gave an interesting description of what happens "behind the scenes". He addressed the notion of large-team collaboration in game design. To him, the biggest challenge was the amount of talent to try to create one thing: "Even 4-persons bands have issue so it's more troublesome for game companies... you start being hierarchical, conservative, hold all the strings... as in the old school movie models. Then we started hiring exceptional talents and we remembered what it was like to work at other places, where we did not want to listen to directions". One of his point was that "ownership = responsibility + accountability" as they realized they couldn't do the "old school direction"... so they figure out their new model. Ettouney contrasted the "review approach" (more like a critique about what people did after you asked them to "do the work") and the "input perspective" (sit down and talk about what people bring to the table as solution to problems).

Daniel Soltis from tinker.it then dealt with his interest in hardware hacking and games. I like the way he stated how "we don't make games but we design playful experiences", which is a bit different (especially from the video game industry's viewpoint). What was interesting too was how he showed the opportunities to go beyond the screen and keyboard model. The challenges to do so are quite tough but they could lead to compelling solutions: asynchronous play, geographically-distant play or a changing pool of players (or combination of these variables). Some examples already exist: giant score board, chessboard with giant pieces, Foursquare. However, the mobile phone is perhaps not the best platform... eyes on a small screen... still a device used in one way... and no tactile pleasure of game pieces.

The last bit of the matrix above (drawn from my notes of Soltis' slides) was filled with interrogation marks and he showed few possibilities that I liked a lot:

• The Reverse Geocache Puzzle by Mikal Hart which is a puzzle box that only opens up at specific locations
• Oyster card snowflake: an RFID-enabled snowflake generator which uses the London Oystar card: placedalongside a busy corridor, passers-by are invited to use their Oystercard to discover what kind of snowflake they are.
• iphonehangtime a fun application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that uses the internal accelerometers to measure how long the device is in free fall, from the time it leaves your hand, to the time you catch it again.

Lucy Wurstlin from 4ip presented a set of projects after this nice quote by David Lloyd George: "Play is nature’s training for life. No community can infringe that right without doing deep and enduring harm to the minds and bodies of its citizens". The two projects I liked were audioboo (a sound-sharing website that aims at "becoming the YouTube of the spoken word") and mapumental: an interesting application that help to visualise any neighbourhood in the UK by transit times:

Robin Burkinshaw interviewed by Matt Locke: the discussion was about the Alice and Kev project, an interesting crossmedia approach built in a very grassroots way:

" This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any of the game’s unrealistically easy cash routes. It was inspired by the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from players of The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s new living neighborhood features.

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over."

The humble approach of Robin combined with the reading was very special and pertinent. And I like how he said "virtual photography is a hobby of mine, i have a whole flickr stream".

James Bridle was introduced as the "most analogue digital person I know" by the conference organizer. In his presentation that you browse over there, he exemplified to what extent "awesomeness is more important than innovation". Starting from a critique of commercial definitions of innovation, he showed what is awesome to him making connections with Douglas Adams or Thomas Pynchon. Two instances particularly echoed with my interests. First, the work of Zak Smith who created an illustration for every single page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel “Gravity’s Rainbow":

And Tom Phillips, an artist who painted over every page of a Victorian novel to create a new narrative:

The presentation was even more curious when Bridle started to discuss Babbage's machine, Naughts and Crosses engine, the absence of Deep Blue for Go and a MatchBox Go engine.

Katy Lindemann gave a talk about behavior change through games (which some people refer to as "persuasive gaming"): ChoreWars (allows you to get experience points the more housework you do), Fiat EcoDrive (Nike+ for cars), Glucometers for Nintendo DS, a piano staircase, a weird writing robot at the Houses of Parliament to communicate with representatives.

Russell Davies was perhaps the highlight of the day as his talk revolved around the contrast between "world-building" versus "bubble-building". Based on the model railways metaphor, he described these two approaches: "world-building" corresponds to mimicking reality while "bubble-building" consists in putting the railway in your garden where you cannot try to replicate anything (it allows building a "bubble of suspense"). To him, world building is more difficult and he is more interested in "barely games": collecting, negotiating, pretending and inattention.

Collecting is cool and important in gaming (Pokemon: the actual play is less important than the collecting... and you then invent games with objects you collect. noticin.gs is a good example about this approach. Pretending is even more important and collecting things is great for pretending. You can turn Mario into a pistol or use luxury products (he showed how watch are the ultimate pretending items).

Davies then demonstrated various "pretending" metaphors: Tactile 3D (a 3D interface to navigate your files), 3D mailbox... which do not "work", people simply do not use them because they are not subtle and demand total attention, there's a need to bury pretending details.

[at which point Davies showed fake emails from people pretending to work in huge companies, which I always find hilarious]

So what would a "barely game" feel like, according to him?

1. design for walking around (the time I have to play game)
2. not looking at a scree (worried with AR which is too demanding)
3. uncertain/socially-decided rules
4. useful OR stupid
5. high pretending value

Good candidates for this: iPhone app to record noise samples, Situated audio platform (SAP: use your device to browse geotagged world sounds, wikipedia audio entries, noises of bombs you can throw), personal informatics devices (nike+, nintendo's walk with me) hooked to something more complex, RJDJ for iPhone (music that changes depending on the noise captured by your microphone or the accelerometer), etc.

And then I had to leave to catch my flight :( More write-ups on the playful website, as well as at Roo Reynolds, Suw Charman-Anderson and more.

Why do I blog this? Messy notes to structure a little bit what I gathered from this conference. It was typically the sort of conference from which you come back with plenty of little insights and nuggets that fuel your mind. Besides, a great game-related event with a low number of CGI and not many WoW screenshots that generally bore me. I wish I could have stayed in the afternoon.

How to use a swiss power plug in the UK

It's not possible to insert this in the power plug/socket, if you try there's something that block the insertion. The trick consists in inserting something (like a key... which is super bad if you remember what you're parents/teachers told you not to do) in the ground/earth connection: