The Making Of A View of the Future
Since Nokia Design – A View of the Future was presented a year ago at Nokia World 2006, there hasn’t been much discussion about the intent and purpose, the design process and challenges, the successes and failures, and the concepts. This first installment is describing the “making of” with a focus on the purpose and the process.
Late-February 2006, Nokia Design management asked our team in L.A. to make the Nokia Category Vision tangible and meaningful with design & experience concepts for Nokia Strategy Forum – an internal event for Nokia top 100 managers held on May 9th in Helsinki.
At the time, the London team in charge of developing the Category Vision was still in the definition phase, which meant that we had to collaborate very closely with them in order to deliver a shared message. Roughly a dozen people with expertise in trends, industrial design, colours & materials design, graphic design, interaction design, motion graphics, photography, model making and exhibition design set to work with four words: Explore, Achieve, Connect and Live.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
We started to observe people, not objects or technology. We observed and documented needs & wants, moods & modes, behaviors, social ties, lifestyles. We then spent hours distilling internal and external trend forecast reports, digging and hand-picking ideas from past vision projects, gathering inspiration, and interviewing experts and stakeholders company-wide.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Then we discussed. A lot. The often small, and sometimes big moments of everyday life. We built and illustrated moments we believed were the essence of connecting, showing off, working, and exploring. All these moments were consolidated into structured scenarios and storyboards. We were building the foundations. Everything had to move very fast, moments had to be consolidated or discarded in minutes, the writing had to be compelling, concise and communicable over teleconference for the steering group, stories had to be implementable within the schedule and production capabilities, etc.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Then we designed in parallel products, colours & materials, and UIs while continuing scripting and storyboarding the four stories. It is hard to capture all the steps and breakthroughs of the design process, but working in the same space, at voice length, with formal daily reviews was essential. We were all aware what the others were doing – ideas and designs were shared, evolved and incorporated instantly.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Then we went into an iteration and assessment cycle while keeping an eye on the looming deadline. What are we trying to communicate again!? Are the designs telling the right stories? How can we sharpen the message? It was a gratifying and frustrating part of the process. The stories started to animate, the props were modeled and took form on the 3D printer, colours and materials samples got pinned on the wall, etc. The vision came to life. It was also a time where decisions became irreversible, uncorrectable mistakes were made, and production limitations became apparent predicaments.
On May 6th, time was up. The model makers and motion graphic designers could finally get some sleep after working more than 20 hours a day for 2 weeks straight while a few others had to fly to Helsinki from Los Angeles to set-up the space with eleven props and four 2-minutes video clips.
Explore
North/South: A light multimedia companion, featuring a see-through screen allowing the user to interactively hide/reveal both physical & digital world views.
East/West: An active multimedia tool, featuring a wide-screen flexible-folding display & clutch-control interface.The adventurous two-handed usage is tailored for horizontal scanning/navigation and allows the overlay of digital & physical infrastructure for new perspectives. A separate kick-stand charger supports the device for comfortable tabletop viewing & extreme bandwidth multi/media transfers.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Achieve
MED: A “medium” folding mobile-workspace, featuring dual hinged touch-screens & an adaptive control-spine. Tailored for compact two-handed messaging on-the-go and sturdy tabletop input. Features an external camera, ticker-tape display, and gestural “strip” interface.
LRG: A “large” mobile workspace, featuring generous dual folding touch-screens with an adaptive control-spine. Tailored for sturdy two-handed tabletop multi-tasking and pen input. An intelligent charging slot supports a suite of performance Bluetooth accessories affording strong and clear communication.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Live
Le Fold: The familiar form of a compact fold made out of wood, a renewable resource, contrasting with the copper trim.
Le Block: A robust backed rich full window front active lifestyle product. A single metal band unites the dedicated function key, camera and volume control. Fit for purpose, both in terms of strength and agility.
L’Assembleur: A well-made mobile platform designed to encourage both formal & informal personalization potential; from point-of-sale to 1st, 2nd, 3rd life & beyond. A series of exchangeable solid-state puzzle blocks slip-lock onto the interconnect chassis/display, with power & data-signals routed via both magnetic & optical couplings. A patchwork motif crafted of pieces-of-me, pieces-of-you. The deceptively simple solid-state blocks encompass the functionality of primary interface, public/private audio-speakers, in-line camera/flash module, micro music-player, additional memory storage etc.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Connect
Hei: A simple and personable tool for maintaining close relationships, Hei takes full advantage of it’s fold configuration by maximizing its UI space. Using a transparent OLED display, it is visible whether opened or closed.
Hola: A simple and personable tool for maintaining close relationships, Hola takes the form of a monoblock for optimum performance, efficiency, and robustness.
Hi: A simple a personable tool for maintaining close relationships, Hi slides open to expand its UI when more complex interaction is required. A high-res camera with high quality optics provides enhanced imaging capabilities in the open position, but are hidden and well-protected when closed.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Showtime. The Nokia Strategy Forum attendance were divided into two groups, and both sessions went fantastically well – people were looking and handling the props with child-like eyes, the video clips and props sparked conversations, people were genuinely excited and inspired. It was extremely gratifying for the team.
Copyright ©2007 Nokia. All rights reserved.
Back in Los Angeles, we celebrated what we thought was the end of this project. If only. At the end of May, Alastair Curtis, Head of Nokia Design, informed us he will present the four video clips at Nokia World 2006 on November 30th, 2006 in Amsterdam.
“Keep Achieve, redo everything else! And each video clip must be under a minute.”
We followed a similar process, but with less people and a new set of challenges. Namely.
1. Telling eloquent and vivid stories in half the time.
The main effort was to rewrite the stories with less narrative and more experience moments without compromising the clarity of the message.
2. Producing a gnarly original soundtrack.
Adding music to anything that might be presented or distributed publicly is a nightmare. Securing all possible rights (one-time event, internet, TV, all countries, etc) for a recording from a known artist is tedious and seriously expensive, so it was out of the question. Our only option was to commission four tracks, and it’s quite a challenge too.
3. Protecting concepts and potential new ideas that may or may not be produced.
The clips and props were initially designed to be shown only internally – we had no creative limitations; and it turned out to be an problem for this phase. Some digital and physical interaction moments had to be edited out and a couple of props had to be left out altogether.
4. And of course, striving for the best quality possible within our constraints.
Not only Nokia has historically been very secretive with upcoming products and visions, these clips were set to introduce to the world Nokia Design interpretation of the new Categories. Quite an ambition considering the initial purpose and production style. Ultimately, the public clips are of much higher quality both in storytelling and production than the original ones. They are far from being perfect, but they do convey the categories key experiences quite clearly without explicitly revealing upcoming Nokia products and features.
Finally, it is not the view of the future, it is a view of the future. The video clips are designed to stimulate debate and discussion around how the mobile device of the future might look and function in our lives.
Explore: Sharing Discoveries
Achieve: Achieving Together
Live: Inspiring Senses
Connect: Connecting Simply