IT IS raining cats and dogs and Damian Mycroft, the senior design manager at Nokia, knows he will not be going anywhere. He whips out his mobile phone and, before long, the 42-year-old is online looking at Lamborghinis, an item he is planning to add on to his shopping list when he gets his bonus.
Just then, a harried PR account manager pops into the room to announce that the Nokia Comes With Music launch would begin in a few minutes in the Berjaya Hall of Bukit Kiara Equestrian Park, Kuala Lumpur.
As a retort, the Brit cheekily snaps a picture of her with his phone. He later summons her by pressing on her image, showing off the touch-screen technology and memory recall interface within the little box that he and his team have designed.
Future forward: ‘It is about envisioning the future and, to do this, one cannot have a mindset that is stuck in the past,’ says Damian Mycroft. This includes the Nokia X6, a handphone which can offer up to 35 hours of music, 32GB on-board memory, an 8cm touch screen and a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens.
It is an apt setting for Mycroft to demonstrate how far the mobile phone has evolved. From making calls and texts messages, it has become a little box of wonders for people to go online, manage mail, talk, share photos and play their favourite music.
It is also a case of sheer coincidence for the heavens to be pouring that day as this was exactly the same scenario that had inspired this Brit to put a mobile disco into a tiny box of a handphone some three years ago.
In recalling a walk on a busy street in India, Mycroft remembers the sounds of nature being drowned out by the jarring sound of metal works in the background. Then he spotted a young man wearing a pair of earphones, obviously trying his best to sort out the music amidst the surrounding din.
“My first thought was: ‘Why not make a louder phone?’” recalls Mycroft.
The idea, which has materialised into two strips of wafer-thin speakers by the side of the X6, also led to the creation of an advanced music player where songs can be downloaded into an 8GB microSD card. Feedback reveals that the X6 is an effective alarm clock, too.
The business of putting big ideas into little boxes is not alien to Mycroft who, as a boy, would cut out cereal boxes and paste the openings with clear plastic to make them look like computers.
To get on the same wavelength with this digital designer who is constantly looking at how he can change the way we see and interact, you’d have to imagine a mind that is able to bridge technology with everyday life.
“The first thing about making successful use of technology is to look into what’s natural and intuitive to its users,” says Mycroft.
Relevance the key
Using the slim speakers on the X6 as an example, he reveals that he could have opted to use sound bugs, which can turn any flat surface into a speaker. The drawback was, being the size of tea cups, they were not small enough.
“Here, making something intuitive for a mobile phone user, is to have something that he can put into his pocket and not to have to lug a lumpy object around. The day will come eventually, and this is where a close relationship with the innovative product groups comes in,” explains Mycroft.
Understanding human nature is a subject that is very close to Mycroft’s heart, having gone as far as sitting among the slum dwellers in Bombay just so that he could get a first-hand feel of how people from different walks of life live.
“I see how they go out, do business, arrange to meet their friends. I find out about things that are important to them. Then comes the part where these lifestyle habits can be related to the digital world, to bring about a more convenient way for people to live, so to speak. The keyword here is relevance. People must be able to use the technology easily,” says Mycroft.
And yes, even this boss – who studied industrial design at Manchester University, completed an MBA in design management at Harrow Business School, and has seven designers under his charge – has had his ideas shot down occasionally.
“I once thought I had a great idea about making a fashion phone, sporting different skins to match the seasons, like a handbag. It didn’t even pass the drawing board, chiefly because a phone is supposed to adapt to the user, not the other way around,” he smiles sheepishly.
Still, to have Mycroft’s way of thinking requires a bit of mind-bending, a skill he honed while pursuing a foundation course at the Chelsea School of Art in London.
“One of the first things that I learned to do was to see things as they are and not imagine them to be what I think they should look like.
“Take a covered chair, for example. If I asked you to describe the shape, you’d tell me that it has four legs, even without peeking under the covering. That’s looking at things as what’s already there. I had to break away from this mindset and look at the world without making assumptions,” says Mycroft.
Envisioning the future
Careerwise, Mycroft started on his first job at P13, a London-based design agency where he translated brands into tangible experiences. After that, he joined Frazer Design, an agency developing consumer electronics, and then, Philips in the Netherlands, where he was part of the consumer electronics design team. He joined Nokia in 2006, creating new concepts for lifestyle products.
In retrospect, while Mycroft could have opted to travel the path of an artist and run the circuit of gallery exhibitions, he admits that it is the very idea of technology that has pushed him to place his talents in a more relevant world.
Having fiddled with computers since the 1970s, thanks to easy access to the community library and being exposed to his mother’s architectural work in designing houses for Richard Rogers (a well-known architect in Britain), his entry into the world of digital design was a natural course.
In the end, the function of digital design, says Mycroft, who leads the team behind Nokia’s range of musical devices, is not only about aesthetics.
“It is about envisioning the future and, to do this, one cannot have a mindset that is stuck in the past. You’d go nowhere this way,” says Mycroft.
As for what is to come, Mycroft says that the day will arrive when mobile Internet becomes so advanced that a person in Bombay will be able to have meetings with someone from across the globe via video conference on his phone. This is when distance and time will become irrelevant.
His job will then be to present this software interface to the person on the street, and making it so user-friendly that even a five-year-old can use it.
Published in The Star, Star Two, on 18th February 2010.
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