Nokia’s design ethos lies far deeper than aesthetics and practicality. Fashion, religion and even weblogs are providing the human inspiration behind its mobile phones.
THE worldwide explosion of the mobile phone industry has prompted communication companies to stay ahead of the competition, both in terms of design and new technology.
The world's largest manufacturer of mobile telephones, Finland-based Nokia, is taking an innovative approach in the design of its products. Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia Design’s strategy head, is now looking to society and its population for inspiration. Street anthropology, which explores the rich tapestry of people’s everyday lives, has been paramount to the company’s design strategy.
To increase its depth of consumer understanding, Nokia’s design experts recently came together as a single team with a broad understanding of what people want from their mobile devices. All of its 250 designers, psychologists, researchers, anthropologists and technology have formed the newly named Nokia Design organization.
It is now responsible for the entire design process from strategy and conceptualization to product development for the company's complete portfolio of devices. Social media, and the way in which people interact in groups through wikis and weblogs, are now key factors in the design of the Nokia Nseries.
At Nokia, the blueprints for a new mobile device are sketched out on the streets of cities as different as New York and New Delhi. The company’s social anthropologists study how people’s lifestyles and attitudes influence their choice of phone.
Alongside them, armies of trend spotters hunt out the latest in-thing, taking their inspiration from what's going to be hot in the worlds of fashion, art, architecture and other creative industries. This is the wellspring of Nokia's human approach to design-understanding consumers and key trends, then interpreting these into products that look and work the way people want them to.
Marko explains:
“We're interested in finding out what people want from the look, taste and feel of the final product, as well as what features they are interested in. To get this information our consumer insight team goes out onto the streets around the world to create deeply textured descriptions of people's daily lives. Inspiration can come from anywhere. But Nokia is ahead in taking human inspiration for design.”
The best ideas, according to Marko, are best generated through group interaction.
He said:
“At Nokia Design a single person could come with a brilliant idea, but the richest ideas often originate in groups. We find out things by being sensitive to people and listening to them.”
The increase in demand for consumers personalizing their mobile phones in truly original ways, is an important emerging trend. This is the next step on from a trend Nokia set a number of years ago when it introduced changeable colour covers and other mobile accessories:
“One of the most important trends is the big human fundamental to make something your own over time. People definitely have a role to play in completing the design. We see both physical adaptation, such as the way people in India use light emitting diodes to enhance religious iconography, and software adaptation, which has been made easier through straightforward scripting languages like Python,” said Marko.
Wherever Nokia’s design team are in the world, they are driven by three core values: simplicity, relevance and experience. Simplicity is about combining sleek design with Nokia's trademark ease of use, while relevance is all about recognizing that there is space in the market for more than just one style of phone, and that designs must cater to specific tastes and personalization preferences.
Experience is about opening up a richer communication landscape by bringing the mobile internet and multimedia content to a wider group of people.
Alastair Curtis, named as the new head of Nokia Design last April, cites design at very the heart of Nokia's business. He said:
“It is a very important asset. Our designers work closely with the business groups, technology groups, and marketing organization to design and develop the Nokia portfolio. This kind of collaboration is essential to good design and ensures we stay connected to consumers and the experience they are looking for.
“This is also why our design team not only includes industrial designers, but many different specialists in colours, trends, materials and interactions. Our entire design process is influenced by people and their behaviour. How they want a mobile device to look, function and fit into their lifestyle. One size or style definitely doesn't fit all.
“For some, the mobile phone is primarily a business tool for email and calls, while for others it's an important fashion statement and all about look. For some it could be that having the very latest technology is most important, whereas for others they want a simple but good looking phone for calls. Understanding and designing around these different segments of the market is crucial to creating the right products.”
The message from Nokia’s new design team is to expect something new. According to Marko, while people will continue to seek visual simplicity and care about their basic ease of interaction with a device, new ways of using mobile phones will emerge:
“Nokia is continuously working on new forms of interaction with devices. In so doing we keep asking questions about how people are using and adapting our products so that we can find the next path forward.”
The team is experimenting with a range of innovative new ideas, including new and different shapes such as the twisting and transforming mechanisms used in Nokia Nseries devices that make video and photography features more compelling to use.
They are also working on new materials such as woods and ceramics, as well as innovations in colours and finishes.
By watching how consumers use and respond to these developments, the team will keep pushing the boundaries of what we expect from our phones, leading people forward on the next wave of mobile design.
With a global market share of approximately 34%, in Q2 of 2006, Nokia produces mobile phones for every major market and protocol, including GSM, CDMA, and W-CDMA (UMTS). The corporation also produces telecommunications network equipment for applications such as mobile and fixed-line voice telephony, ISDN, broadband access, voice over IP, and wireless LAN.
Nokia’s headquarters are in Espoo, a neighbouring city of Helsinki, Finland, but it has research and development, manufacturing, and sales representation sites in many continents throughout the world.