Image: Interaction Design for applications and framework: Nokia N9, 2009 - 2011.

I have worked as an UX designer or interaction designer for most of my professional career. I started in 1999 at Metsävainio Design where we made the full product design, including the UX concept and detailed interaction design and specifications. In 2004 I changed to Nokia Networks/NSN, my tasks there included usability, UX design and visual design. I worked for Movial Creative Technologies (2007 - 2009) and Nokia Maemo/Meego (2009 - 2012) purely focused in interaction design of Nokia N900 and N9 phones. In addition to the design work I did some design coaching.

Image: Interaction Design for applications and framework: Nokia N900, 2007 - 2009.

UX Design Process

Designing the full user experience starts by innovating the product concept and UI concept based on techology studies, user research, personas and use cases. Then concepting the scenarios and the usage flows before going in actual functions, and bringing the concept alive by high level use case visualizations. The usage flows are designed more concrete through the functional requirements, usability and layout design. First a design concept is created and after that starts the specifying of the UI. The tools I have used for design are e.g. Adobe Ilustrator, Photoshop and some prototyping tools. The UI specification is written e.g. by Word, Illustrator, etc. depending which tools are used in the project. Also one of the important tasks for designers is to co-operate with the software developers, hands on helping with the implementation questions and validating the design from the implementation: when the software is coded and can be tested, the designer is the only person who knows clearly does the UI behave and look as wanted. Validating the UI, commenting and filing bugs guarantees bettter end product.

Image: Interaction design for Nokia Siemens Networks, BTS Site Management applications, 2004-2007.

Framework Design and Application Design 

I have made design for high level UI framework, UI components, tools and applications. Depending what is the task, the approach is different. For Myorigo Mydevice (2001 - 2004) I designed the overall mobile phone UI framework concept, navigation methods, UI structure, content management and application framework, and also some applications. The framework design work started from very high level concept creation and through iterative prototyping, visualizations and wireframe drafts ended with detailed framework functional specifications and UI component specifications. In application design the work is subjected to the application framework and UI components usage. Creating the design by following the framework functional logic and layout rules and using defined components unified way is crucial for achieving good user experience for the end product. In Nokia N900 and N9 UI interaction design, the tasks were very similar as with Mydevice.

In NSN the work was different, concentrating on improving the existing complex PC GUI application solutions, making the UI's easier to use and layouts and UI structure more intuitive and human. Here we also made a new UI framework, called BTS Site Manager, where I designed e.g. framework navigation components and other UI components.

Project work 

When doing the design, in all phases of the project, team work is important: the team should consist on designers, project managers, SW engineers, SW architect and test engineers. Doing it together in agile or lean way has been the most efficient, good quality and innovative way of working.

Image: Concept and interaction design for Myorigo Mydevice and research projects, 2001 - 2004.