New levels of Experience Design

12 May 2006 Category: Features, Products, Technology, Worldwide

I’m not sure about you, but I don’t know too many people who started university studying to be a doctor, but eventually graduated with a degree in fashion design. But then Liisa Puolakka isn’t one to worry about convention as her new job title - Head of Brand Visual and Sensorial Experiences - for Nokia implies. I met Liisa at Nokia’s head office just outside Helsinki to talk about fashion, trends, and why experience design is currently such a hot topic.

Written by Matt Sinclair

Liisa - I guess a good place to start is to tell us what experience design actually is…

You can see it used everywhere nowadays, but I think the main thing is that rather than just designing an object you take a more holistic approach. That means the design language and how it relates to other products; how does it feel to use, both rationally and emotionally; how it’s packaged; what accessories are available; the kind of environment it may be sold in; what services should be targeted to the consumer of that product. And when you start with that kind of approach you end up with something much more purposeful for the user, but not just purposeful, also more pleasurable, so the consumer is surprised, in a positive way, when they use the product. That’s perhaps why experience design is so talked about right now, because those things relate back to the brand, to the way that consumers think about a company’s image. Experience design is about the way a person experiences a brand.

So experience design is actually experience marketing?

In some ways yes, except experience design includes the marketing, so it’s a bigger subject. Of course if you asked someone from marketing they would say that experience marketing includes the design!

If you search for “experience design” on Google, most of the results relate to web design and ease of use. That doesn’t sound like the same thing you’re talking about.

No, they’re not the same. But I think that’s the way that an interest in ‘designed experiences’ started. The internet was originally developed as pure technology - interactions and navigations were very complex, so there were huge opportunities for anyone who could make the user experience easier, more intuitive, more compelling. But now experience design isn’t just about the usage of a device, but all the other aspects as well.

If we jump back in time a bit, why would a company like Nokia hire a fashion designer in the first place?

Actually, my being a fashion designer wasn’t really the reason I was hired. As part of my Masters degree I did a design/business/management program, a joint course with the Helsinki Business School and the University of Technology. As part of that I worked on a year-long research project looking at the mobile phone market in Japan. That led me to continue working with Nokia on my Masters thesis, which researched how to design specifically for Japanese lifestyles. We identified certain trendsetting groups, then designed a number of concept phones targeted at those groups. And then we interviewed consumers from those groups to ask which of the concepts they preferred - the idea being they should have chosen the concept aimed directly at them. I guess you could say the results were variable! But it proved a point - that it is possible to target trendsetters quite specifically, and the product will then spread through the wider market. So really I was hired on the strength of that work. Though having said that there are other fashion designers working for Nokia - some as trends researchers and others as colour specialists.

So what projects have you worked on up to now?

When I started at Nokia there wasn’t really a discipline of trends analysis, certainly not lifestyle trends, so I worked with consumer research specialists to establish the process by which these trends could influence the work of designers.

Even today my work is still very much involved in understanding and recognising trends and the way people or societies are changing. One of the important things is to realise the difference between ‘long-term’ societal trends and ‘short-term’ lifestyle trends, but also to understand that some short-term trends have the potential to cross into the mainstream of society, where they become much more influential.

So a lot of my early work involved collaborating with product designers to incorporate that thinking into the starting point of their work, coming up with a design theme based on an understanding of the target consumer and the trends that would be influencing them.

Then about three years ago a new team was set up inside Nokia Design specifically looking at new trends and future concepting - product designers, UI designers, trend researchers - and looking three to five years ahead to develop scenarios and concepts based on those future predictions.

Actually Liisa is being somewhat modest here by not mentioning specifically the Nokia 7600, which she was heavily involved with. The 7600 was perhaps the first product from Nokia to really exhibit evidence of an experience design approach, even though that approach may not have been as fully developed as it is today.

The original inspiration was the idea of a “souvenir from the future,” and this influenced not only the design of the phone, but also the on-screen icons and wallpapers, ringtones, key graphics and accessories, all of which were designed specifically for the product.

The 7600 also experimented with the marketing of a limited edition in white leather, sold only in the hippest European stores such as Colette in Paris, 10 Corso Como in Milan and Vinçon in Barcelona.

What is the experience design process at Nokia? How do you go about designing an experience?

The main thing is to start with an understanding of the user, the consumer, and the life they are living. Of course most designers do that intuitively, even if they don’t realise it, but within Nokia there are specialists who do that research in a more methodical way.

Then when you have those insights it’s usually when you have to bring together a creative team, and I don’t just mean designers but people who can carry the idea through all the areas I mentioned before. They create and develop a theme or story, and then need to communicate that theme to show how it affects the design language, the selection of materials, the colours and graphics, not just of the product but the packaging, advertising etc.

And how does it manifest itself in Nokia products?

I guess the products in the Fashion category display this thinking best, because they most obviously belong to a collection, all based on the same theme. If you look at the L’Amour collection, if there wasn’t a theme or story which tied those products together then it would be impossible to talk of a ‘collection’. They wouldn’t have the cohesiveness of design language, the style of campaign, even the fact that they are launched together.

But also they wouldn’t have the differentiation from other Nokia products, and that’s where designing an experience can help someone choose which product is best for them. A person who buys a Nokia Fashion product is buying very much on an emotional level, even though there will also be rational reasons.

Can you tell us something about your new role at Nokia?

For the last two months I have been working as the Head of Brand Visual and Sensorial Experiences, and basically that means the way the brand is experienced by the consumer, the ‘look and feel’ of Nokia. That can be in any of the situations where a person touches, or comes into contact with, the brand; it could be online or in a Nokia Flagship store, it could be advertising campaigns on TV or in magazines, it could be events which Nokia sponsors or attends. In terms of execution most of the work is done by agencies, so that means we need a clear view of the brand strategy in order to brief and communicate with those agencies. I’m not really involved in the creation of the product any more, though of course there is a strong link, we need to start at the same point and head in the same direction.

But coming back to trends and insights, they not only affect the design of products but also the way the brand moves forward and how its expressiveness changes. The ultimate aim is that a consumer feels the same using a product as they do when they see an advert for it.

In talking about trends you’ve described how Nokia studies them and reacts to them as they emerge. But isn’t there a risk that you end up copying trends rather than setting them yourself?

I think it’s an oxymoron to say any one person actually sets a trend. Everyone is affected by the same things that happen around us, it’s just that some people pick up on those things before others. The trick is to be inspired, rather than to copy, and to know where to look - at the leading edges of art, society, culture. Maybe that’s why a lot of people in this field come from the fashion industry, because fashion has always been very open and accepting of the notion of being inspired by what’s ‘out there’ and then translating it into product ideas. What’s important is a sensitivity to what’s going on, observational skills, and the creativity to distill those observations into stories, themes and product possibilities.

Within the group of people that you work with, what other companies do you hold up as aspirations? Who else is doing experience design really well?

The main thing is to find the right way, the appropriate way, to get across your point of view. A lot of the fashion companies do it very well, especially Prada, or Marc Jacobs. But also Nike - even though they have a huge range of quite different products, the story and the attitude is consistent. Starbucks is another company which understands very well its own point of view, and gets that story across. Apple of course…

But those are all companies with a strong figurehead, one person with a very clear vision. Nokia isn’t like that is it?

No, but it doesn’t mean a company can’t have a vision. If everyone shares that single point of view, if everyone believes in the same idea, it’s possible. It’s the vision that’s important.

Thank you very much for the little insight into experience design!

46 Comments

1. Fashion x Technology = Perfect
   I must agree that Nike is doing a very good job at experience design as well!

   Posted by: Ben Tong on May 13th, 2006 at 3:15 am

2. I want that orange bracelet thing bad. :)

   Posted by: augustus on May 13th, 2006 at 4:46 am

3. I love the “L’amour Collection”. Beautiful. Very interesting interview, too!

   Posted by: Lori on May 13th, 2006 at 8:41 am

4. While the shapes are very sleek and attractive, the phones themselves don’t seem very user-friendly. Esp in the 7600, where all the numbers in a circle around the main screen. And they seem to not have paid much attention to the design of the numbers/buttons area. Even in the L’Amour collection, where the screen frame and the colors are gorgeous, the buttons are squarish and boxy, with the fonts not matching the otherwise smooth and curvy look of the rest of the phone.

   Posted by: kareno on May 13th, 2006 at 11:07 am

5. Thanks for the interview! It gives me hope that Liisa and her department are trying to solve the problem which prevents me from acquiring new phone: each time I see new phone from Nokia Fashion-series advertised, I very much want to get one of the phones. Sadly, the actual phones fail to meet the excellence evident in advertisements. The real products at store are clumsy, cheap-looking, placstic and get easily blotchy. If Liisa manages to direct designing of the phones towards allowing same kind of lovely experience that phones’ brand does, then…what? I can hardly wait.

   Posted by: hg on May 13th, 2006 at 9:43 pm

6. kareno - you raise an interesting point about the “user friendliness” of the products, this is something that Nokia have been criticised for (in Europe at least), and if you look at more recent products you can see they seem to have gone back to more conventional keypads. However you can also question whether a fashion product should be user friendly. Take a pair of stiletto heels - the primary value they have is aesthetic, they are certainly not user friendly in terms of comfort or how far you can walk in them! This isn’t the right approach for every product, but perhaps it’s possible to argue that a fashion phone’s most important attribute is how it looks, and how it works is secondary.

   Posted by: matt sinclair on May 13th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

7. I find the devices particularly attractive and can appreciate Puolakka’s work. However, I worry about how this promotes technology as disposable trends more than it already is. Ready to be garbaged or switched up seasonally, it okays the notion that it’s all so disposable when so many designers are pushing to create lasting and environmentally friendly designs. Especially with the problem society currently faces with the high amount of computer gargabe already trying to be dealt with.

   Is this not, perhaps, aesthetics for aesthetics sake, promoting the gluttonous appetites of those that would demand it and their poseur followers? Just seems a bit hypocritical to promote such things in light of the ethics being lauded by the design community on any other given day.

   Posted by: Fell on May 14th, 2006 at 1:31 am

8. Matt - True, I see how these products are more luxury products instead of product for daily use. Still, there are ways to strike a balance between design and functionality, and I think in an electronic gadget the usability factor should be weighed more heavily than if the product were just a shoe or a handbag. The iPod probably achieves that balance the best.

   Posted by: kareno on May 14th, 2006 at 8:35 am

9. well well - throw away stuff is always a hard topic and especially living in Tokyo could probably not demonstrate this clearer to you. mobile phone market here is crazy too (and if you look at what people do to their phones, stickers all over the keys so you can’t even see them anymore and just have to KNOW which key is which etc…) - but I simply believe that the users are the ones who have to change over all. better, of couse when there are things like this : http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=9259 people researching hard, to come up with solutions for another pile of garbage! if mobile phone companies would put some money into those things - that would be awesome! not sure….. does Nokia?

   Posted by: ill p.e. on May 14th, 2006 at 12:10 pm

10. so - if their phones would all compost at the end, then I see no danger in creating fashionable products, which only last for one season.

    Posted by: ill p.e. on May 14th, 2006 at 12:13 pm

11. who cares about Nokia? seriously. true they have a few stylish phones (not including the 7600 - plz, don’t tell me you think that’s well designed?!? you think this looks futuristic?!? o_O), but those usually don’t make it to the ‘normal’ consumer market. why spend several hundred Euro on a phone I probably won’t be using after 2-3 years? imo the European cell phone market is lacking big time. unlike in Japan there are hardly any good looking, consumer friendly products out there. just looking at the Foma lineup makes me cry. all I can do is hope for the day, when Japanese phones can easily be adopted for use in Europe.

    Posted by: drone9 on May 14th, 2006 at 8:28 pm

12. Well. From my experience (so it doesn’t address all Nokia’s phone models), Nokia phones look good from visual design perspective, but are less pleasant to hold in hand and less comfortable to use than Sony Ericsson phones. And I’m not talking about the cheap models.

    Posted by: Mindaugas on May 15th, 2006 at 4:11 am

13. just a quick comment on japanese phones - they’re not as great as you think. i oh so miss having a nokia here. jphones are made for very short runs (they’re hand assembled! makes sense if you’re only going to make 20-50k of them) - they’re generally 99% plastic (usually of one cheap type, too - not high quality ones or contrasting finishes and paints). and consumer friendly? are you kidding?

    and, a quick comment on the 7600 - in terms of difficult to use keyboard - has anyone here actually owned one? i had one for about a year - and to be honest, splitting the keyboard into 2 sides made it obvious what key goes with what thumb when texting 2 handed - and that actually made things go a bit fast once you got used to it. you know, typing on a qwerty keyboard is NOT that great, but once you learn it it’s fast. but, learning takes more then 5 seconds. same thing.

    Posted by: ps on May 15th, 2006 at 9:24 am

14. I have to admit I love clamshell phones. and when it comes to sleek looking clamshell phones with a large display Japan is king. imo there simply are no comparable phones in Europe. while it’s true that coating isn’t always that great, after one year of use my DoCoMo (a Panasonic if I recall correctly) still was in very good condition. and after having played around with the phone for a while, I also found it rather intuitive to use. still remember my baffled friends when I wrote them emails from my phone at a time this was still unheard of in Europe. :)

    Posted by: drone9 on May 15th, 2006 at 5:37 pm

15. Nokia phones have a decent exterior design, if a bit cheap and lacking in finish, but the GUIs (outside the imagineered L’Amour) clash hard with the exterior.

    Bright hi-res display with a background image showcasing a dithery gradient from dirty blue-green to dirty blue, no matter the exterior color scheme. Nice icons that hilight with an ugly, severely aliased, low-resolution animated gif. An included set of very uninspired, very badly executed themes, none matching the exterior. UI font that doesn’t match the keypad font. It’s like walking into a glitzy steel-and-glass downtown shop and be greeted with green plastic garden chairs, haphazardly arranged around wooden desk. Mismatch.

    I think that Nokia’s fashion police’s next target should be making the exterior and interior match, along with improving the finish of the designs.

    Now the feeling is that the phones were designed by a team, in a bad way. Clashing elements, lack of responsibility and the desire to “just get the job done already” are shining through.

    Posted by: ilmari on May 16th, 2006 at 8:36 am

16. [...] Read full interview [...]

    Posted by: Putting people first » “Experience design is about the way a person experiences a brand” on May 18th, 2006 at 4:13 am

17. [...] Interview with Liisa Puolakka, Head of Brand Visual and Sensorial Experiences for Nokia — “The main thing is to start with an understanding of the user, the consumer, and the life they are living.” [...]

    Posted by: WebWord » Blog Archive » Usability Tidbits for Friday 19-May-2006 on May 20th, 2006 at 12:21 am

18. [...] New Levels of Experience Design an interview with the Head of Brand Visual and Sensorial Experiences at Nokia (what a great job title!) (tags: experiencedesign nokia) [...]

    Posted by: links for 2006-05-19 at disambiguity on May 20th, 2006 at 8:28 am

19. [...] In New Levels of Experience Design PingMag’s Matt Sinclair interviews Liisa Puolakka, Nokia’s Head of Brand Visual and Sensorial Experiences. [...]

    Posted by: Convivio Network on May 24th, 2006 at 8:29 pm

20. [...] PingMag » New levels of Experience Design Somehow managed to miss this one. Interview with Liisa Puolakka, head of Brand Visual and Sensorial Experinces (talk about advanced economy job title, eh) on experince design at Nokia. Great stuff. (tags: UX experience design nokia fashion branding marketing) [...]

    Posted by: no sense of place :: links for 2006-05-30 on May 30th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

21. [...] Link: New levels of Experience Design (pingmag.jp) [...]

    Posted by: Small Surfaces - Mobile User Interface and Interaction Design Resources. » Archive » Experience design at Nokia on June 8th, 2006 at 6:33 pm

22. that is very interesting

    Posted by: Jake on June 20th, 2006 at 10:40 pm

23. [...] New levels of Experience Design [...]

    Posted by: dave5 » Blog Archive » A ‘Clear My Clippings’ Digest on July 6th, 2006 at 1:29 pm

24. [...] anyway: here is the article [...]

    Posted by: innberg Deli » Better products on July 11th, 2006 at 6:08 am

25. [...] Check out the interview [...]

    Posted by: SymCity » Blog Archive » Nokia’s Experience Design Guru on July 11th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

26. Check out http://www.tejchauhan.com for nokia design stuff

    Posted by: James Stone on July 12th, 2006 at 4:52 pm

27. Having work in the cell phone industry for a number of years, I can attest that despite all the grumbling and talk above about how bad there phones are design and how unusable they often are, I have experienced quite the opposite. From a cell phone perspective, I have always noticed their phones have great battery life (honestly lasting 3-5 days with quite a bit of use per day) and great reception in comparison to any other manufacturer.

    And in terms of overall quality of the phones in construction, Nokia is definitely one of the best overall. And I truly appreciate they courage to push the boundaries of cell phones in terms of design, fashion, camera and video applications, and overall user experience design.

    Should there be someone to design for the sake of pushing boundaries and experimenting freely in hopes of developing better and better phones?

    Posted by: Daniel Scrivner on July 13th, 2006 at 3:44 am

28. All this talk about “design” and “experience” and there still isn’t even one cell phone interface that doesn’t completely suck. Not one. This is not design. This is marketing.

    Posted by: Brian on July 13th, 2006 at 9:07 am

29. [...] of Experience Design No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTMLallowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> [...]

    Posted by: My Blog on July 14th, 2006 at 8:01 am

30. [...] Experience design has become a hot industry theme. Companies are looking to hire experience designers. New consultancies devoted to experience design are being founded nearly every day. Major industry players like Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Philips are increasingly putting the user experience or experience design at the heart of their innovation strategy. And experience design is now also making inroads into other fields such as education, healthcare and tourism, to just name a few. [...]

    Posted by: Putting people first » Where to study experience design? on September 9th, 2006 at 4:52 pm

31. [...] Mark Vanderbeeken makes a good point in his Where to study experience design? at - always excellent - Putting people first blog: Experience design has become a hot industry theme. Companies are looking to hire experience designers. New consultancies devoted to experience design are being founded nearly every day. Major industry players like Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Philips are increasingly putting the user experience or experience design at the heart of their innovation strategy. And experience design is now also making inroads into other fields such as education, healthcare and tourism, to just name a few. [...]

    Posted by: Where to study mobile experience design? at m-trends.org on September 18th, 2006 at 7:40 am

32. [...] Link: New levels of Experience Design (pingmag.jp) [...]

    Posted by: WirelessDuniya » Blog Archive » New levels of User Experience design at Nokia on October 25th, 2006 at 12:57 am

33. Great text !

    Posted by: Mik on November 5th, 2006 at 6:22 am

34. Cool design http://wwwwtahoo.com/cheap-printer-ink-cartridge/

    Posted by: Michael on November 19th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

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36. trish stratus porn

    http://myblog.es/trish-stratus

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37. (Fashion+Technology)xdesign = Perfect

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    Posted by: Gordon on March 7th, 2007 at 7:58 am

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    Posted by: Grace on March 8th, 2007 at 5:55 am

40. bonjour
    je suis un jeune marocain j’aime le design et j’ai des design des portable je veux les envoyé pour votre respectable société

    Posted by: yassine on May 6th, 2007 at 4:48 am

41. [...] of a larger effort to incorporate experience design into every aspect of Nokia as a brand.Check out this interview with Liisa Puolakka, head of the delightfully named Brand Visual and Sensorial Experiences at [...]

    Posted by: Co-render.com We Speak From Experience « on July 14th, 2007 at 2:11 am

42. [...] theme see Pinmag for a flavour of the latest news from Japan, where they have featured several Finnish items. Oh and they like to make films over here to! Finland has established a considerable [...]

    Posted by: lewism | Japan and Finland with a Shared Design Culture on October 30th, 2007 at 6:07 am

43. Companies are looking to hire experience designers. New consultancies devoted to experience design are being founded nearly every day

    Posted by: kurye on February 23rd, 2008 at 7:57 am

44. [...] that Nokia offered, however at that early stage the company hadn’t developed its expertise in spotting and understanding trends, and so colour prediction was largely based on intuition. In the past this had led to certain [...]

    Posted by: we dont do retro » Blog Archive » Mass Customisation and Mobile Phones on April 28th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

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