How are future cell phones being designed?

Zatni Arbi , Contributor , Jakarta Post | Mon, 05/26/2008 10:19 AM | Sci-Tech

What will cell phones look like in three to fifteen years from now?

Before we take a peep into how the future of cell phones is being shaped, here are some interesting statistics: Out of 6.6 billion people living in the world today, 3.3 billion already have cell phone connectivity. Every second, sixteen cell phones are sold by Nokia alone.

The cell phone market worldwide exceeds one billion units per year. Not surprisingly, we have a rapidly increasing number of cell phone vendors, especially from Asia.

As reported by Wall Street Journal, even the fiercely competing Samsung and LG Electronics have decided to cooperate instead of continuing their fight against each other so they can quickly capture the growing U.S. market for mobile digital televisions, among other things.

It is only natural that Nokia, being the unshaken market leader up to now, is working at full throttle to maintain its position. A visit to Nokia's Design Center in London provides a glimpse of what the company is doing to capture growth in the emerging market.

April was one of my luckiest months. Together with journalists from all over the world, I was invited to London to attend a one-day visit to the Nokia Design Center in Soho. It was the first time the center was opened to the press.

"It's scary, as this is the closest that outsiders ever get to our design environment," said Alastair Curtis, Nokia's Chief Designer, in his opening speech.

Nokia's design team is made up of around 300 people with diverse backgrounds and expertise. Design is a multidisciplinary endeavor, so it involves design engineers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and specialists from other disciplines.

However, at a given day, you won't see crowds of people coming in and out of the highly secured workplace. Most of them are out in the field doing field research.

From the outside, the center looks like any other store in London. "Being right here in the center of London allows us to go out and check the latest fashion trends," said Alastair.

Nokia has other design centers in Tokyo and Bangalore.

However, the designers' field research is not limited to the branded stores on Oxford Street, where the world's most fashionable shoppers flash their new handbags. In fact, the researchers travel to places around the globe to see how people use cell phones in their daily lives.

"We are Nokia's global design center, we design products for the world," said Alastair.

There are reasons for going to places like the shanty towns of Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and Accra to conduct research. This year, according to the United Nations, the number of people living in urban areas will exceed the number of those living in the rural areas. In other words, urbanization will have drawn people from the villages to the cities. They will form their own community, and many of them will be the future cell phone users - and buyers.

Researchers work with local aides to engage with the public. They conduct interviews, ask permission from the respondents to follow them around as they go about their daily activities, and take photos and videos along the way.

This process helps Nokia, for example, design cell phones for those who cannot read nor write. Today, one in five people around the world is illiterate, and India alone is said to have around 260 million. The best way to know what people want in a cell phone is to watch closely; this requires direct interaction with people.

"Meanwhile, if we want to know how people use their mobile TVs, the best place to do research is South Korea," said Jan Chipchase, a human behavioral researcher on Nokia's Design Team.

And go to South Korea they do; to engage with early adopters of mobile TVs and take their findings back with them to the center.

A lot of interesting facts are uncovered during field research. For example, more than 50 percent of male users keep their cell phone in the front-right pocket of their pants, and as a result they miss 30 percent of their incoming calls.

Sixty percent of women prefer to keep their cell phones in their handbag or purse. This may influence the design: Female users hate it when their cell phone rings loudly and they have to frantically open their bag, grab the device and press the button while all eyes are on them. It would be nicer, researchers have learned, if the phone discretely rang and flashed a light to tell the owner where it is located in their bag.

The design center also decides, based on research findings, what services should go into which products. Not everyone needs Internet access on their cell phone, for instance. Therefore, up to a certain point in the product development, the designers work with the company's software engineers in Finland.

Open studios are sometimes held at the local level, where young aspiring designers can create their own designs. In one such studio, for example, a teenager created a star-shaped design with slots for up to five different SIM cards. Why so many? Because nowadays operators offer close to free-of-charge phone calls, as long as they are made within the same network. These people want to get the cheapest rate when making calls.

In many places, Nokia's researchers also uncovered interesting ways of doing things with the cell phone. In Uganda, for example, there is a word;sente, which can mean money or sending and receiving money. How? By buying airtime in one village and topping it up to a trusted kiosk operator in the recipient's village. The operator takes some commission, gives the rest in cash to the recipient and sells the airtime for a profit to his other customers.

So, what can we expect in future cell phones? As they are designed on the basis of usability and aesthetic consideration, and as the design process itself starts with the people, they will at least be, as Nokia puts it, "beautiful to use".

Comments (0) | Post comment

A | A | A |