Do you pay enough attention to the details that surround you?

1. The joy of
window shopping
#NOT
By Claudia Cruz aka @ccruz

2. In the process of
doing this exercise
I realized…
• How confined to my home office I was
• How the violence in my home country
Guatemala has really affected me
• How much I avoid going out and when I
do I only go to heavily secured malls
• How I never think of walking or using
public transportation even when the
closest mall is really close to my home-
office

3. 1322
the registered homicides in Guatemala city from Jan 1st to Oct 10th.

4. 174
Average monthly homicides in the past 9
months.

5. 5
Average daily homicides in
the past 9 months.
4 out of
every 5
are gunfire incidents.

6. How come so many gunfire
incidents?
Many are related to cellphone thefts.
30
Cellphone thefts per hour, in average, ocurred during November-December 2011 and
January 2012 according to the Monitoring and Support Office for Public Safety February
2012.
It can happen while you are in traffic or at a stop light.
All my friends know at least one person
who has lost his/her phone this way.

7. So, what started as a cool
window shopping trip…
became an exercise to
confront fears I didn’t
know I had…

23. Going undercover
Notice something odd about my pictures?

24. Odd facts
Naturally all my selected stores where in a mall.
In almost every Guatemalan mall is prohibited to take
pictures of stores (front, inside, etc.) for safety reasons.
So I had to go “undercover” to take my pictures, that is
why the angles are odd, some are out of focus and in
general are not very good pictures.
I took my son with me so I could pretend I was taking a
picture of him, which is allowed.

25. The findings
Overview of all the stores I visited

26. Open and inviting
Five out of 6 of the places I visited had their doors open and
seemed pretty inviting.

27. All bright, open, tall
In general I tend to look for brighter and open places, with palettes
that always have white and fresh colors.

28. Quiet places
Mostly the places I visited were quiet. In a couple of places fans
caused some noise.

29. Fresh and harmonious
The places I visited were neither cold nor hot, they mostly felt fresh
and the music was pretty harmonious and at an acceptable volume.

30. Crowded merchandise
My stores were packed with products mostly at eye level organized by
function, with easy to find prices. Most didn’t have sales and none
had free samples.

31. Drawn by smells
Most of the stores I visited smelled…like paper, cotton, brand new
things and recently baked bread. And I enjoyed it.

32. A+ customer service
In 4 out of 6 stores it only took 5 minutes to have someone ask me
what I needed or was looking for. They all sounded natural, not as if
following a sales pitch.

33. 24 year old saleswoman
The profile of the average salesperson I encountered would be a
woman around 24 years old who wears uniform and matches the
image of the store.

34. Things I saw first
Paper stacks, Christmas decorations, towels, Halloween pastry, Barbie
dolls and women’s apparel.

35. Least accesible: back and
above
Electronics Jewelry

36. 30 year old shopper
The average customer likes to touch the products and seems to be a woman
around 30 years old. Half of the customers seemed to be browsing and the
other half seemed to have a mission. Hence, the first didn’t really buy anything
and the latter did. Overall, they tended to stay no longer than half an hour in
each store.

37. Sources
Icons, graphics, pictures
Stock.xchng
Flickr/|| UggBoy♥UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL ||
Flickr/ElyceFeliz
Flickr/wajakemek | rashdanothman
Flickr/Alasam
Flickr/Wonderlane
Flickr/Wokka
Flickr/el enawe
Crime data
http://bit.ly/Q5r2nC /Prensa Libre
http://www.unavidaesunavida.org