Younghee is a product and interaction designer from Nokia. This talk though left me on an arc from curious to wondering about some unanswered questions about Nokia’s actual role in the developing world. Nokia is engaged global product development. Mobile phone users are of course massively global. How do you design products for poor neighbourhoods in Mumbai or Rio. Nokia conducts charrettes of sorts with locals, design contest sketches and forms all on one sheet of large paper, interviews photos, the whole family comes, high illiteracy too requires interpretation.
winning example a phone you can point at the sky to get the weather. intuitive, many people dependent on weather.
winning example an environmental phone that measures air quality and charges by solar power.
Ghana phone with 4 sim cards, because there are 4 providers and you need multiple SIMs as you move about.
Everywhere, unbreakable waterproof durable – common requirements (does this help nokia?).
And the skepticism, not that the devices aren`t potentially enormously valuable and empowering to people, but how does, and how much money does nokia make from impoverished people all over the world?
she`s not talking about operators at all, or how those services are delivered and contracted. What about them? [Rob next to me mentions there are some opperators that deliberately set up in conflict zones because they are unregulated. And when government returns, they leave.]
And are these commando-style ethnography missions truely effective practice for nokia?