Nokia Concept Sketches: Muting Your Phone

As part of Nokia Showcase 2010 in Bangkok, Younghee Jung talked about the design process of Nokia, specifically with gestures. The phone maker maintains teams in London, China, and the US, who actually travel around to get input from people all over the world.

But interesting things also happen within the design offices. Users of phones like the N97 and the 5300 XpressMusic know that when a call comes in, they can just place their phone on a table face-down to immediately silence it. But that easily understood gesture was the result of brainstorming and collaboration. A sketch shared by Jung showed other ideas:

Younghee’s team didn’t take any hardware limitations into consideration when coming up with ideas. That’s why there are concepts which involve simply glaring at the phone to mute it, along with more workable ideas like cupping the phone with both hands to “muffle” it.