In the third part of our series on Designing the Future with Nokia, we take a look at our approach in meeting the brief.

In order to answer this brief effectively we knew we had to design a research program that would be at the same time inclusive but targeted, open but strategic, experiential but conceptual.

Again, as Arthur C. Clarke wrote, when trying to imagine what the future might look like, two dangers lie ahead: Failure of Nerve and Failure of Imagination. The Failure of Nerve occurs when even given all the relevant facts we cannot see that they point to an inescapable conclusion, which basically comes down to the available facts/insights not being marshalled correctly. A famous example of this kind of failure is Sir Simon Newcomb at the beginning of the 20th century discounting the possibility of flying machines by incorrectly marshalling the facts of aerodynamics.

On the other hand, the Failure of Imagination occurs when the really vital facts are still undiscovered and the possibility of their existence is not admitted. A clear example of this kind of failure is represented by Auguste Comte’s dismissal of the possibility of a chemical or mineralogical understanding of heavenly bodies. An assertion that a few decades later would be utterly refuted by the invention of the spectroscope and the consequent take over of astrophysics on astronomy.

The first failure can be avoided with a solid evaluation process of the insights generated and the involvement of experts and specialists of the researched field who can recognize where the ‘facts’ are pointing towards. On the other hand, the second type of failure can be avoided by doing the exact opposite: involving non-experts. Too much knowledge can burden the imagination.

With this in mind, a few principles guided the design of the research programme:

1. Open up. Allow ideas to come from anywhere and allow consumers to take you to places you wouldn’t expect to be taken to. Opening up helps keep the Failure of Imagination at bay by enabling contributions by non-experts or non-professional users. Opening up the innovation process translates into listening and analysing relevant conversations going on on the web, broadcasting insights and idea generation tasks through crowdsourcing models and co-creating solutions with consumers. However, it doesn’t necessarily help stop the Failure of Nerve…

2. Bottom up is not enough. Bottom-up processes are great but in order to be effective they need to be complemented by solid strategic direction and expertise. Successful innovations emerge at the intersection of three, sometimes very different, agendas: the consumer and his needs, the brand and its strategy (vision, strategy, commercial viability), the expert and his vision (tech trends, design principles, market trends). This is why open innovation works best when implemented through a hybrid model that brings these agendas together and fosters the collaboration of consumers, experts and stakeholders rather than handing over control entirely to either the consumers or the designers.

3. Start broad and funnel down. Listening is key before starting any design effort. The web gives us the opportunity to listen to conversations and observe consumers’ interactions in a ‘natural’ environment. In a way it allows us to apply elements of the qualitative approach on a mass scale and in a cost-effective way. It is about reversing the research funnel, starting by consulting the crowd, moving on to work with defined online communities, then collaborating with an intimate group of co-creators. But starting broad is not just about social media analysis and crowd-sourcing, it’s a principle that needs to be applied to every stage of the process to avoid limiting scope too early in the investigation. To use Donald Rumsfelds lexicon, truly breakthrough innovation comes from identifying and solving unknown unknowns, rather than just the known unknowns.

4. Allow group thinking as well as individual thinking. Group thinking is generative and provides elements of validation, but it is also skewed towards social conformity. On the other hand, individual thinking provides a more independent idea generation process but it’s not generative. The best ideas often come from building on each others contribution rather than coming up with the final solution in one go. A balanced innovation process needs to ensure both the dynamics are well represented.

5. Telling stories for better design. Storytelling is the art of crafting and presenting life and all of its varied experiences in enjoyable, rational chunks that invite the audience to feel as much as think. As a part of user experience design, stories serve to ground the work in a real context. They are an effective way to collect, analyze and share qualitative information from user research, spark design imagination and help us create usable products. But most importantly, they help keep people at the center of the work. An experiential approach to idea generation, idea development and idea testing is key to generating better user experiences.

6. Cross-over. We live in a post-digital ecosystem where online has become an additional layer to the offline experience and location is rapidly becoming the key added value of the online experience through mobile technologies. If we want real insight we must engage consumers in their natural environment. As a result, the research mix we use must mirror the engagement dynamics of this hybrid ecosystem and live across mobile, web and face-to-face.

7. Rapid prototyping. Prototyping makes idea development playful and social and is naturally generative. As the consumers, the brand teams and the designers work through the prototyping process they are going to generate hundreds of iterations, spin-offs and completely new ideas. Because building on each other’s ideas is key to crafting successful solutions, being able to translate some of the seed ideas generated along the way into tangible ‘objects’ that people can play with is crucial. However one of the main challenges of using prototyping in an innovation programme is that it needs to be ongoing and real-time. This is why researchers, strategists and ‘makers’ have to work together and in real-time throughout the entire process.

Following on from our last post, here is the second part of our series on Face’s work with Nokia on the “Designing Relevance” brief.

Nokia had a challenge on its hands: to regain and drive thought leadership at the high end of the North American smartphone market.

Previous research had shown that:

1. 1. Consumers were less aware of Nokia’s high end offerings in NAM;

1. 2. Nokia offered a wide variety of services and outstanding device functionality but was not engendering as much delight and ‘relevance’ in the user experience as they would like in order to become the top partner for the consumer.

Although these factors were common across both the range of markets and consumer segments that Nokia operates in, the main assumption was that the problem was most acute at the high end. Evolving the UX and brand positioning here would insure the rest of the market would follow.

This was not the first time that questions had been asked about the brand performance in NAM. But this time it was felt that to get different results it needed a different approach both internally and externally.  Everyone agreed on one thing – it needed to be a research approach that enabled the relevance, insight, solutions, and design teams to work together and create an insight-driven dialogue with consumers and turn it into a collaborative process in order to address the following challenges:

1. 1. Regaining the position of ‘thought leaders’ in the mobile space and occupying the desirable position of ‘Innovator’;

1. 2. Demonstrating with innovative and relevant solutions that Nokia is leading the way;

1. 3. Improving Nokia’s performance and traction in NAM (as a direct result of delivering on the above 2 challenges).

From the challenges on the table it was clear that the output of the project needed to be more than just insights or learnings. It had to translate quickly into solutions that could be actioned into brand and commercial strategies capable of helping Nokia to regain their brand position.

The Brief

At the core of the brief there was the belief that in order to regain a thought-leadership position the classic Nokia franchise of ‘Connecting People’ had to be re-invented by focussing on making its core assets more relevant. In other words, Connecting People through Relevance.

The business was conscious that in a technology environment where innovation is usage- and experience-led the point is not inventing from scratch. Instead innovation should start with observing what people are doing, understanding their experiences, and then increasing the value of those practices through surfacing what is relevant and evolving it into fully formed solutions. The question was – how?

The business recognized that this was a challenging brief and it was convinced that a new insight and innovation approach was needed to ensure the strategic vision and developed solutions would be consumer-driven, and that the outputs of the programme would be delivered as quickly as possible.

With this in mind Face was briefed to help Nokia define what “relevance” means for today’s and tomorrow’s leading edge smartphone users and create a number of consumer-driven cross-platform propositions that would allow them to leapfrog into the position of delivering the most relevant global solutions.

This vision for relevance had to be articulated into a series of strategic innovation principles. Each one of these principles would be a way of understanding the world as it is now and will be in the future; each would provide a series of strategic approaches that could support existing and future consumer needs; and each would be translated into seed ideas and fully formed solutions that could support these visions of relevance and act as differentiators.

On the basis of this brief, the research objectives were articulated as follows:

• - Define the value of ‘relevance’ and what it is to consumers;
• - Uncover the ‘hacks’ that consumers are employing to make their current mobile experience more ‘relevant’;
• - Co-create with consumers the user experience and design for a future generation of Nokia ‘solutions’ that deliver on the value of “relevance”
• - Work with the Nokia Relevance team to output use cases, personas and user experience maps that can be taken into further concept definition;
• - Refine, develop and prioritise the outputs collaboratively;
• - Relate solution ‘concepts’ to potential Device, SW and peripheral development;
• - Support development of business cases for the top solutions (Where’s the market, will they buy it, does it have the capacity to meet the key success criteria;
• - Uncover people’s perceptions of the barriers / stress test the user journey that results.

And to do all this in a new and innovative way.