Photos from Nokia Design Day 2009. The event, held at Nokia's London design studio offers the 'inside story' on some of Nokia's design projects. This year the topics included iconography (a global design language), gestures (future interaction methods), homescreens (empowering users through personalisation), and the Nokia N97 (merging the physical and online world).
We'll have more coverage from the Nokia Design Day on the site next week.
The Gaming Icon On the bottom of the slide are some of the icons that were used previously (or concept ideas). The dice were associated with gambling, not gaming in general, and the o's x's were associated with board games. The joypad was the best universal icon.
The Music Icon It is a musical note, which is near universal, with a hint of a CD underneath. The CD had different meaning in different markets. In Finland it was about buying music, whereas in China it had more of a sharing element. In India cassettes, rather than CD still had some importance. It's a good example of the thought annd focus group testing that goes into the icons.
Nokia's Global Icon Set This is the icon set which is being used through out Nokia's product portfolio. You'll see them on the phones and the online services. The first phone to get the complete set, at launch, was the Nokia 5800.
Homescreen research Example of homescreen produced during one user testing session. The homescreen are made up of cut out pieces of paper. The aim is for Nokia to understand how and why people want to customise their homescreen.
Homescreen on products As seen on the E71, 5800 and N97. Nokia has done more than 2 years of research and it is still continuing.
Some example gestures in sketch form Gestures are limited at the moment (top for clock, flip to silence), but could play a much bigger role in the future.
Testing gestures with plastic blocks Plastic blocks are used so than testers focus on the gestures and the thinking behind them.
Whirly bird and kissing gesture? What could these be used for?
Testing gestures in the lab After establishing some design principals Nokia then look to design some prototypes for testing specific gestures.
Bank magentic N97
Customsing magents
20,000,000 Nseries uploads to Flickr
Axel Meyer on the N97 There was a presentation by Axel Meyer on the N97. I'm not sure I can accurately summarise this into a few sentences...so watch the site for extended coverage.
Essentially though it was that the N97 helps marry the real and digital worlds into a single contextual hyper-layer.
N97 keyboard When I first saw the N97 6 months ago the keyboard had me concerned - the keys were spongy. However they've been greatly improved - they feel very nice, although I do still think the space bar placement is a bit strange.
In general the N97 has come on leaps and bounds. I'd particularly highlight the sensitivity of the screen and haptic feedback, the improved keyboard, the improved speed of the software and (not suprisingly0 massively improved stability.
N97 hinge with descriptive text I rather like this touch... its hidden when the device is closed, but there's a subtle reminder of the power inside when you open up the keyboard...
N97 drawing application Here's an N97 drawing application that maybe included on the phone (or maybe an Ovi Store download).
It was basic, but would be ideal for making very quick notes, especially if you set is as an icon on the homescreen.
N97 boldly going The video performance, in terms of fine control, has been greatly improved. It was possibly to drag the time-line-status bar back and forth to move back and through the current video very quickly.
Maps running on the Nokia N97 Impressively quick too.
Ovi Store on N97
Ovi Store running on the N97 The N97 was running very quickly on the N97 - certainly more impressive than on launch day. Since WRT inherits web's capabilities it has kinetic scrolling - this make it a lot easier to look through the content lists quickly... It still has the issue of 'hard to find categories' though.
Lots of widgets to choose from
My N97 is bigger than yours... As well as the magnetic clipboards there was a giant (well three feet across) N97 which could be customised. In this vase the widgets were the 'right' size, so it was possible to mock up real N97 homescreen arrangements.
N97 magentic widgets From news to music and football scores. One finding of the homescreen research is that people want context aware widgets: 'I want the football scores to be as big as possible while the game is on' or 'I want the tube widget bigger when I'm in London'. Something to watch out for in the future perhaps?
Weather Weather widgets and information are always a popular choice. The N97 includes one which changes based on your current location.
Build your own homescreen - the result The homescreen customised with magnetic icons and widgets. Nokia have used similar tools, in testing sessions, to explore the ways in which users customise homescreens. They found that there is an enormous variety. All kinds of reasons (e.g. I don't want to cover my daughter's face [wallpaper] with email). I want a clear screen (this one is the reason the N97's homescreen can be wiped clean).
