Nokia People First

Nokia’s advanced design team today shared “Homegrown”, a long term research project looking at how Nokia can help people make more sustainable choices. The team is exploring specific environmental and social issues including recycling, energy and how to make the benefits of mobile technology available to more people.

People First’s navigation is shallow with minimum use of metaphors and abstractions (folders, applications, etc…) Your personal history of events in maintained in a singular vertical list settling over time, with new content being added at the top of the list.

A dual layer display allows the user to balance energy efficiency with rich visuals. The user interface graphics are optimized for low-power and high-contrast B&W graphics. When an item is highlighted, a second full color display is partially activated in lieu of, or in combination with the first.

In an effort to increase local relevance, dynamic keymat graphics, based on a low-power bi-stable display, allow a greater number of language variants at little to no extra cost and on-screen actions are presented in textual and iconic form making the system accessible to a larger audience.

One interesting fact about People First is that Nokia is “encouraging personalization, hacking, and entrepreneurial ventures with widgets support, accessible native programming language (as simple as html) and freely available hardware and software specifications.”