Martin Wezowski, senior designer at Sony Ericsson, says: “We divide people into what their needs are.”

Wezowski says there are three important things to remember when developing a new phone; ease of use, attractiveness and innovation

He refers to the popular W800 Walkman phone to illustrate his point. “People want to listen to music or look at pictures wherever they are,” he says. “It’s about people expressing themselves and doing something that’s stimulating, and a lot of this focuses on socializing.
 
“My father, who is in his 60s, uses his mobile phone to listen to music all day long,” Wezowski says. “And the other day, I passed a group of teenagers who had hooked up a phone to a set of speakers to listen to a dance track. Based on what we see and know, we believe it’s better to create a device such as the W800, which is directed at music lovers rather than at a specific age group.”

Neither do the designers label products as being for males and females. “People talk a lot about unisex products,” Wezowski says. “Personally, I don’t know of any unisex people. Everyone is an individual, with their own special needs. For instance, take the Sony Ericsson P990 mobile phone, which is a feature-heavy business phone. I’m sure a lot of people think it is a typically male device. But if you go into any office these days, you’ll probably see as many women as men using it. So instead of dividing males and females into separate groups, we look at them as a group that, in this case, needs a big screen and a lot of features.”

Wezowski and his team also take cultural differences into consideration when designing a mobile phone. “If you look at Japan and at Asia in general, you’ll see young men and women wearing their mobile phones around their wrists or as necklace pendants, and they also like to decorate their phones using strong, vivid colors,” he says. “But if you visit the US, on the other side of the world, the trend is much more towards clamshell phones that are a bit more conservative in look and feel. Also, in comparison with their Asian counterparts, people in the US prefer to carry their phones in their pockets or attached to their belts.

In addition to looking at the global trends – that people like to listen to music on the move or that professionals want to access their work wherever they are – we also design the phones depending on which markets we are launching them in.”

Wezowski also sees a trend towards what he calls “pocket-ability” – phones that are so sleek and slim that they can be worn on your body, and that come with a range of useful functions that successfully fit into the user’s life.

“Before, we were just buying an object, but today we are buying an object that comes with its own set of benefits. Basically, you discover all the features when you turn it on and that’s when you decide whether you want to buy it.”

Torunn Hansen-Tangen