By Birger Agergaard

Instead, Nokia will make Telephones more Usable

"Design for All? There is no such thing! Could you imagine a pair of shoes being designed in such way that everybody would want to wear them?"

That is what Christian Lindholm, Nokia’s Director for User Interfaces, answers to Crisp & Clear’s question about what Design for All approaches are used by the big Finnish mobile communications manufacturer. Lindholm, who has a background in economics, completes his comparison with the shoe business by pointing out that shoes are designed "for all who want that particular shoe" and continues: "DfA may well be an excellent "mantra", but it is impossible to design one telephone to satisfy all types of persons and all types of needs. In Nokia, we are more concerned with usability – that is, we want to consider the needs of the largest possible number of people. If you can improve usability, you can attract a larger number of people than those of the original target group."

But the drawback is that this approach may also be counterproductive, such as when the company launched a very simple telephone without any gimmicks. The Swedish press immediately dubbed it ’the Bimbo-phone’ – a dim telephone with no brains.

"That was bad image! Even though we are convinced that a lot of users would have liked the phone, nobody wanted to own "a bimbo". Nevertheless, we have benefited from the experience, as telephones with only a few keys have a lot going for them. We developed the Navi Key telephone with less keys, and our Navi Key type models are considered the easiest telephones of all," says Lindholm.

Small, but OK

Lindholm does not consider that manufacturing increasingly small telephones presents a problem, even if they are inaccessible to visually and physically impaired people. Nokia’s smallest telephone is only 10 centimetres long and weighs 79 grammes.

"There is a huge market for tiny telephones, but that does not mean that all telephones have to grow smaller. We have decided always to carry a "classical" model with large letters, an easy-to-see display and easy-to-use keys. No negatives – you could say."

The development of user interfaces in telephones is a constant balancing act between the amount of information to be shown in the display and the size of the letters to be used.

"We adhere to two principles in our development work: one is to have sufficiently large letters in the display for the text to be legible, the other is to provide a certain amount of choice in the "mobile environment", particularly for outdoor use. There it must be possible, for example, to press your way to larger typefaces," comments Lindholm.

Users are Involved

In Nokia, Lindholm is the person responsible for ensuring that users experience the company’s products positively, so it follows that his department involves users in the development process. Nokia analyses the user profile and often invites groups of users to participate, in groups whose profiles change according to the target group defined for a new product. The company prefers not to say how often.

"Sometimes we invite users to discuss a draft project or simply the use of a mobile phone. On other occasions we want them to test prototypes. We have a continuous dialogue with our users," says Lindholm.

Guidelines – if they are good

Panu Korhonen is Nokia’s Research & Development Manager. His department is responsible for developing future philosophies for mobile communications products. Crisp & Clear asked Korhonen, who is trained in applied mathematics, how common standards are incorporated in this work.

"There is a number of excellent standards, also in the usability area. We do not participate actively in the standardisation work, but we are on ETSI’s mailing list." (See the article on page 13-14)

As one of the major players in the market, do you not feel any obligation to participate in the standardisation work and to comply with existing standards?

"We comply with standards if it will benefit users. If we do not believe it will, we will try to find better ways."

Panu Korhonen agrees with his colleague Christian Lindholm that Nokia should not design "for all".

"Some models are very small and not easily operated by disabled persons. Also, we do not make special solutions for disabled people, but we try to enlarge our target groups for new products by means of sound and visual feedback."

A New Way of Thinking

Continues Korhonen: "Maybe we ought to think of disabled people in a quite different way. I mean – if we develop a telephone for skateboarders, who would like to have an SMS message read aloud by an audio device while skating and being unable to watch the display – we will have reached the target group of blind and visually impaired people as well."

"That’s why we are not all that concerned with Design for All, but rather with giving each product the broadest possible appeal. This aspect is very important to keep in mind, especially when we are developing small models. The more we consider our users, the harder it is to make the very small instruments. A small display, for example, requires a highly intelligent software to become functional."

Do you agree with the Chairman of the ETSI Human Factors Committee, Knut Erik Nordby when he says that usability and Human Factors aspects are often sacrificed when a new product passes through the Finance Director’s office?

"No, I see no conflict there. If a product has a high degree of usability, it is bound to sell, and that is good for the economy."

Published in Crisp & Clear No. 3, October 2000