Hey Team,

This week:

1. A viral adventure video
2. How wayfinding affects your journey
3. Songs for navigation
4. Lost in Tokyo

A viral adventure video

A video ripped across social media this week.

It’s a 4-year-old mic’d up in a dinosaur suit on a snowboard.

E! News @enews Is there a gold medal for most adorable video on the Internet? "I’m a stuck-asaurus." 🥺 (📷: IG/TT/chasing.sage) pic.twitter.com/XNa4TqQeFZ February 9th 2022 215 Retweets 937 Likes

We hear her talking to herself:

Be sure to listen to hear the final bit of magic.

Why did it go viral?

It’s more than a cute kid in a dinosaur suit. The video footage, editing, and subtitles are high quality. The father is an amateur documenter.

It introduces something novel: we rarely see videos of kids with a remote microphone. We get to eavesdrop and listen to the private world of a 4-year-old. I predict an increase in videos of young kids mic’d up.

What ultimately makes it viral are the words spoken and sung. We hear the magical attitude we all aspire to hold.

I suspect she sounds the same way on a few trips to the grocery store.

I should have watched the video before my recent adventure.

How wayfinding impacts your journey

I recently visited one of the largest hospital complexes in the largest medical center in the world.

The hospital building is an unfamiliar maze of buildings bolted together over decades. You have multiple options to arrive to the same place via crosswalks and windowless hallways.

Within minutes, I’m mildly annoyed.

I score pretty high on spatial reasoning and navigation, but I was struggling. I had to stop every 100 feet to read a sign or ask someone at a helpdesk for the fastest route.

This navigational friction made me grumpy.

I was not saying, “Let’s go on our secret path. Weewoo!”

On a hike, I want the fewest signs possible. A sign every 100 feet would make it feel like Disneyworld.

But at a hospital or large indoor shopping mall, I want the navigational clarity and simplicity of an airport: Terminals 1, 2, 3. Concourse A, B, C. Gates 1, 2, 3.

The goal is to get in and out as fast as possible.

Songs for navigation

Did you notice how the snowboarding dinosaur’s songs contain navigational aids?

She describes specific locations like the secret path and the big old hill. She also changes her tone and word spacing when she sings “big…old…hill.” By doing this, it sounds large.

This reminded my of Australian Aboriginal songlines.

In pre-colonial Australia, the hunter-gatherers navigated across the continent using invisible pathways knows as Songlines or Dreaming Tracks. They memorized songs that contained descriptions of landmarks or stars in the sky.

The songs are mnemonic oral maps.

I read about them in Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines: “ Sing the right song, and it can guide you across the desert. Lose the words, and you will die.”

Sometimes it’s more fun to get lost

Several years ago a sports injury forced my wife and I to come up with new Spring Break plans in 36 hours.

Thanks to frequent flier miles, we made a last-minute trip to Tokyo.

We didn’t have time to buy a guide book. All I had was my phone, an extra battery, and trust in Google maps.

Tokyo may be the most difficult city in the world to navigate. It’s not built on a grid, by design. Instead, it’s a maze of streets to slow down an invading force. There are few signs anywhere using roman characters.

On the second day, a little dopey from jet-lagged, I was having trouble finding our Airbnb in the neighborhood.

I saw a little girl walking to school. I remembered we were staying across the street from an elementary school. I put away my phone and decided we’d follow her.

Within a few minutes she was joined by another girl.

Five minutes later we were mixed in with dozens of kids.

I wish they had been mic’d up. And I understood Japanese.

They entered the school. We entered our building. A few minutes later we were on balcony looking down at the school courtyard. All the kids were assembled and started singing a song.

Some of our best memories from that trip were walks with Google Maps in my pocket. We traded directional efficiency for discovery and serendipity.

Google Live

Google Maps has evolved since I was in Tokyo.

Since 2019, you can follow a path on your phone. When you arrive at an intersection, you can hold up your phone, and it will tell you which way to go.

You can even use it inside most airports.

When the user is the problem

McDonald's is optimized for easy navigation and fast service.

The drive through is clearly marked. The menu is clear.

The employee who made the sign is giving you a subtle hint that sometimes you're the bottleneck.

I hope everyone finds time to explore and have at least one “WeeWhoo” moment this weekend.

If you think someone else would enjoy The Whole Elephant, feel free to share.

Thanks for reading.

-Michael

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