Nokia Asks You to Design Their Next Smartphone
Now this is a concept straight from Simon Cowell; setup a product you want people to buy. Then before you actually create the product for consumption, hold a vote. Who’s voting? Well, the consumers who your new product is targeted to in the first place, of course. This way at the end of the day, you know that the end product with the most votes will appeal to the majority of your consumers (since they voted for it already). Consumers even benefit because they get what the majority voted on instead of what the 10 product designers ( or however many) at the company wanted to put in the product.
Well, it worked for American Idol, so why not Nokia? That’s right, Nokia has setup a website for people to goto and vote on what features they would like to see in their next smartphone.
This website has a set of sliders that you can use to determine what features you want in your next phone. You slide them then hit submit when done. There will also be multiple rounds of voting (like Idol). The rounds are determined on what parameters they are focusing on. The first round is input mechanism and device display and is going on right now.
“The next round of voting, which will open on March 22, will allow participants to select a preferred size and shape for the concept device. Subsequent rounds will focus on materials, connectivity, and camera features. There will also be a round in which users will vote on whether they favor the Linux-based MeeGo platform or the newly opened Symbian operating system.” – Ryan Paul, Arstechnica.com
And so on and so forth.
So far Nokia has received thousands of votes and has said in a blog entry that so far most users want a 16:9 capacitive screen between 4 and 4.5″ and a physical keyboard (and I couldn’t agree more, go voters!).
I plan to place my vote right now, won’t you join me?
Head over to Design By Community to vote.
Unlockr,
I voted. I have used Nokia cell phones since 1992 and still believe they make the most reliable phones. I now am using the Nexus One because it is more flexible and fun to use. I hope that Nokia has got the message(looks like symbian 3 might be a good start). Guess we’ll see.
Dennis