Nokia Design Archive as a research project
The Nokia Design Archive project investigates the role of design within Nokia in 1995-2015 by utilising a globally unique and previously unseen archive. The archive offers a rare chance to gain a deeper understanding of design as a discursive tool for envisioning futures and impacting decision-making.
Access to previously confidential company documents allows a fascinating exploration of the design process and helps us gain a nuanced understanding of the role that technology has been designed to take in our lives.
The team’s research outputs will focus on how design is used within large corporations, and on the values and processes behind the development of technology products. In the global consciousness, the history of technological development in the 20th century is dominated by the Silicon Valley myth. Researching Nokia offers an alternative history, proving that even in a remote place like Finland (and the global network of Nokia design studios around the world), it is possible to create world-altering technological innovations.
In addition to learning about how design is used to generate change, the lens of design history allows us to explore Nokia as it truly was: a societal, cultural and technological phenomenon that changed everyday lives on a global scale.
The Nokia Design Archive project is funded by the Finnish Research Council.
Nokia Design Archive Research Team
Anna Valtonen
The Principal Investigator of the research project, Anna Valtonen, is Vice Chancellor at Konstfack, Sweden and Associate Professor in Strategic Design at Aalto University. Her focus is in the history of design (often in companies), as well as the future possibilities thereof. Design has always been about change, about how to change the existing situation into a preferred one. Much of Valtonen's work has been about facilitating this change and increasing collaboration across fields. She has a broad background in industry (end-user understanding, strategy, creative industries, management and new business development), academia (Post-Doc, Professor, Dean, Vice-President, Rector), and is actively involved in several national and EU-level boards, advisory groups and consortia. During her 13 years in Nokia, she also founded and upkept the Nokia Design archives as well as led many of the future-driven design activities in the company.
Guy Julier
Guy Julier is Professor of Design Leadership and Co-Lead of the Design Culture Research Group in the Department of Design at Aalto University. He works with researchers and students to investigate new design practices and economies. His books include, Economies of Design (2017), that provides an analysis of the multiple economic roles of contemporary design, and The Culture of Design (2014, 3rd edition) that offers a unique overview of design practice in contemporary culture and society.
Kaisu Savola
The post-doctoral researcher of the project, Kaisu Savola, is a design historian and curator. She defended her doctoral thesis ''Disrespectful thoughts about design': Social and political ideologies in Finnish design 1960-1980' in 2023 at Aalto University, Department of Design. In addition to her research, her recent work includes curating the spring 2022 headline exhibition at the Helsinki Design Museum and curating and producing the Finnish pavilion at the XXII Triennale di Milano in 2019.
Michel Nader Sayún
A project designer and researcher, Michel Nader Sayún, is a doctoral student in Aalto University School of Business. He holds a Master in Arts from Aalto University and is interested in how societies interact with and are affected by design. He has experience in social impact research and design projects around change in social systems and inclusivity in the design process. He has worked in Forum Virium Helsinki setting up the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities and doing social impact evaluation of smart urban projects as well as in other design related projects abroad.
Pauli Pakarinen
Pauli Pakarinen works as a postdoctoral researcher in the project. His research explores the intersection of work, technology, expertise in occupational and organizational settings. Pauli uses ethnographic observation, archival work, and interviews to develop new understandings on how expertise and technology are mobilized to produce interventions, solutions, advice, foresight, and imagined technological and economic futures. Pauli has Ph.D. in Organization and Management from Aalto University, Finland. Before joining the project, he was a postdoc at Stanford University and Emlyon Business School.
Lu Chen
Lu Chen works as a research assistant to design and develop the interactive archive visualisation. Lu is a master's student in New Media at Aalto University, minoring in Creative Sustainability. Before the master's, they attained a bachelor's degree in design at Aalto University and a bachelor's degree in information systems at the National University of Singapore. Their bachelor's thesis in design investigated the roles of design and designers in supporting immigrants' civic engagement in Finland. Lu is interested in the collaborative processes of knowledge representation and production within archives.
Alumni
Mikko Heikkilä
The project archivist, Mikko Heikkilä, has studied history at the University of Turku and the University of Eastern Finland. He has also experienced the 20th century Finnish technology craze when studying engineering at University of Vaasa. Mikko has worked in museums and different projects in the IT sector, most recently by being involved in the development of an open-source content management system for online digital cultural heritage collections.
Johanna Koivusaari
The project archivist, Johanna Koivusaari, is a records management and archival science student and Master of Science in Finnish language. Her master thesis in the University of Eastern Finland concerns the use and users of archives. Recently Johanna has been working for Aalto University Archives and the City of Helsinki, Education Division Archives. Johanna is very interested in history of technology and design and lived in Oulu during the technology boom in the early 2000's.
Muniba Rasheed
Muniba Rasheed is a graphic designer and a graduate of the Visual Communication Design (MA) programme from Aalto University. She designed the first version of the visual identity for this project. The colour palatte and visual style took inspirations from the iconic Nokia blue and the playful retro-futurist elements from the archival material.
Members of the Advisory and Collaboration Board
Maria Göransdotter
Maria Göransdotter (PhD) is associate professor in design history and design theory at the Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden. With a PhD in industrial design and an academic background in the history of ideas, her teaching and research explores how transitional design histories might open up conceptual spaces for thinking and doing design differently. Between 2008 and 2018, Göransdotter was part of the leadership group at the Umeå Institute of Design, holding the position as Head of Department between 2012 and 2015, and Vice Rector 2015-2018.
Ingrid Halland
Ingrid Halland (PhD) is associate professor at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen, where she teaches 20th century architecture history and theory, as well as contemporary art theory and politics of aesthetics. She also holds the position as associate professor II at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Her research interests include material histories, cybernetics, theories of environment, continental philosophy, as well as ethics of globalization, systems biology, and critiques of the Anthropocene.
Mika Pantzar
Mika Pantzar (PhD) is professor (Consumer citizenship) in Consumer Society Research Centre, University of Helsinki. His research interests have included domestication of technology, rhythm analysis and evolutionary economics, as well as data economy and the ways in which big data are used in consumer research. Former project (2006-2011) Co-production of innovations – Towards an integrative theory of practice within the Academy of Finland and Aalto University was finalized in the book Everyday life: The dynamics of social practice (SAGE, 2012).
Simona Rocchi
Simona Rocchi (PhD) is Senior Research Director of Design for Sustainability & Innovation at Philips Experience Design. She is responsible for the global creative direction of various strategic design initiatives that shape solutions for system change. She holds a PhD in Cleaner Production, Cleaner Products and Sustainability from Erasmus University, a MSc in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano and an MSc in Environmental Management and Policy from Lund University.
Hannu Salmi
Hannu Salmi (PhD) is professor of Cultural History at the University of Turku and Academy Professor 2017-2021. His research interests focus on digital history and digital humanities, the cultural history of the 19th century, history of film and the media and history of technology. His recent projects include Movie Making Finland: Finnish Fiction Films as Audiovisual Big Data and Computational History and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Finland 1640-1910.
Contact
Aalto University Archives
Creators of this site
Lu Chen, Michel Nader Sayún, Kaisu Savola
With the support from the Nokia Design Archive team and Aalto University Communications
