As we had informed you earlier , Nokia India had kindly invited us to attend the Nokia Digital Design Bootcamp at Oberoi , New-Delhi.
The evening centered around interaction with Nokia’s design team responsible for the amazing iconography , homescreens and even upcoming UI technologies. We are thankful to Nokia for giving us the opportunity to peek into the mind of these talented designers and get a first hand look at the designers perspective of a device.
The one on one interaction with the very people who design the devices that millions use in an experience to be remembered.
The event started off with Nikki Barton , Head of Digital Design who shared with us the vision of the entire design team.
Her talk revolved around how the present challenge in designing UIs is to seemlessly include a vast amount of information be it facebook , twitter , RSS , etc. while keeping the experience very friendly for novice users. Her inspiration for present generation devices is what people had dreamt as devices of the future a few years back. The design elements she works on are inspired by what she imagines mobile tech will be10-15 years from now.
Up Next was : Robert Williams
Rob is a design manager at Nokia and is responsible for the world famous and recognizable iconography in Nokia Devices.
Rob initially got into design because he liked creating things which people actually used. His inspiration for icons comes not only from his own experiences but from humanity in general. For example , the NGage icon had 5 different variations before the final was settled upon. This was because certain icons represented certain emotions with people however the final icon was something everyone universally associated with games.
His design aesthetics are focused on form over function. He believes that usability and recognition of icons comes over style.
Third we have Julianna
Julianna is a Homescreen Designer at Nokia. Her interaction with us involved us designing our own homescreens , this demonstrated the need for personalization.
Julianna emphasized the desperate need for personalization in mobile devices. All bloggers present were requested to create their own vision of a homescreen on magnetic tablets.
A few bloggers including yours truly were selected to then explain the logic behind their homescreen. The magnetic board on the right was my design , the idea behind it was that I need a general clean layout , emphasis on RSS feeds which are essential for me , a small clear window to display my wallpaper.
Overall it was an interesting experience.
The last member of the team was Younghee Jung.
Younghee works on future UI concepts and also on emerging technologies , gestures , sensors.
Younghee shared her knowledge about upcoming gesture based technologies. Gestures like flipping over the phone to silence a call were all implemented by Younghee and her team. She shared inside information about how Nokia works to incorporate new gestures into its devices like initiating bluetooth transfers. It is interesting to know that Nokia pays extra attention to the culture of a country to ensure that a particular gesture is not offensive to the culture of a nation.
I’d like to once again thank Nokia India for giving us this exciting opportunity to interact with the Design team. We hope that such events are organized regularly (and we are invited 
)
We’d also like to thank Nikki , Robert , Julianna , Younghee for taking out the time to come all the way to India and for giving us a fruitful interaction session.
The entire event was captured on video and you can view them below.
Hope you liked all the videos! 