Lessons Learned

Like the user interface design itself, user interface portfolio management is an art of logic. What have we learned working on the UI styles at Nokia?

1. Product segmentation must be a key input to the UI strategy. Segmentation is a well-known and frequently applied approach in consumer markets, but creating truly appealing products requires that segmentation reach all corners of product development, including the user interface. Your UI designers must know your users, how and what they think, and what kind of products the company is planning to offer them.

2. You need a manageable set of user interface styles. Yes, perhaps you should design one UI style for Brazilian schoolgirls and a completely different one for Finnish lumberjacks, but eventually you just won't have the design and implementation resources to focus on everybody. Too many UI styles mean that you lose the advantage of streamlining rapid product variant creation and consistency over different product generations. Too few UI styles mean that a significant part of your customer base won't be happy. Nokia's current approach has been to cover most of the high-volume product categories with two UI styles and their variants-Navi-key and Series 30-and then introduce new UI styles in emerging product categories to probe the markets. This has proved to work since the mid-1990s.

3. User interface styles must have a sound foundation and still be flexible. You don't know now what features you'll have to integrate into the next-generation product, so the UI platform must be solid and scalable. Longevity of a UI style also makes it easier for the replacement customer to stick with the familiar brand name. On the other hand, UI styles inevitably have to accommodate new features, work with new technologies, and allow personalization. Nokia's approach to UI styles mandates dynamic softkeys and scalable screen resolutions, and it has therefore proved to be very flexible with respect to new features and displays. The underlying software architecture is as solid as we can get it, to support about 50 different display languages today.

4. Watch for the revolutionary opportunities. The marketplace is continuously changing as operators merge or vanish, and as new customer generations and segments appear. User interface technologies are developing, making completely new product categories and form factors possible as they do. You'll have to be continuously alert to predict how existing UI styles will cope with this (watch for approaching usability knees) and to kick off new development work in time to be among the first to reap the benefits of new opportunities.

What will the future be like? Nokia will definitely continue to evolve and improve the Navi-key, Series 40, Series 45, and Series 60 user interfaces for mainstream product segments while introducing new and sometimes more revolutionary user interfaces, just as we did with the Series 80 Communicator UI. Beyond our walls, the marketplace grows and changes, new customer segments are born, and old UI technologies give way to new ones. A solid UI style backbone is essential for building good user interfaces for the mobile information society.