In 2008  Clara Gaggero and I became Research Associates at the Helen Hamlyn Centre, part of the Royal College of Art.

We collaborated with Samsung, a major worldwide electronics company, on the subject of mobile communication for seniors. This collaboration ran for one year and we completed the project in September 2009. We were involved as User Experience Designers and Product Designers

It was heavily focussed on user centered design, and we conducted pan european research on how to improve access to mobile technology for senior users.

We created three product concepts, and published a report for Samsung of our research - which we plan to share in conferences and online. Both Clara and myself are available to present lectures on this project.

The Book:

Most phones come with flimsy manuals with complicated language and jargon. These books, which can live on a bookshelf, actually contain the phone.

Each page reveals the elements of the phone in the right order, helping the user to set up the sim card, the battery and even slide the case onto the phone.

The second book is the main manual – the phone actually slots into this and becomes the center of attention.

Arrows point to the exact locations the user should press, avoiding confusion and eliminating the feeling of being lost in a menu.

The Cards:

Phones have become over complicated and many users are afraid to break them or get lost in menus - so they don’t explore and learn all the things they can do.

A set of cards represents every function inside the phone which users can flick through and discover.

The phone is supplied empty, and users add the functions they want by tapping a card onto the screen.

Cards can be carried in your wallet so functions can be accessed on the move.

To encourage learning, the back of the card explains what the function does, and how to reach it using the menus.

The Map:

To encourage users to explore and familiarize themselves with their phones a map was created, which guides users through the meandering labyrinth of menus.

Users tests showed that people were quickly discovering and getting interested in new areas of their phone previously buried under layers of menus.

If you are interested in finding out more about this project, please contact me directly.