In 2009, Nokia began seeing challengers to its market share as a result of the growing demand for smartphones. Realizing a shift in customer expectations, Nokia approached Method, GlobalLogic’s experience design arm, to create a strategy and roadmap for re-envisioning the entire customer experience, from product packaging to the retail environment. Nokia’s multi-phase, multi-year engagement with Method resulted in a framework that helped rationalize the company’s overall product offering across devices and services, including a global reinvention of the Nokia retail store experience.
Nokia
Retail Store Experience
Engagement
Method collaborated with Nokia to perform comprehensive research about the existing landscape and out-of-box experiences for Nokia products, including reviewing competitive products and interviewing real users around the world. Working closely with Nokia, Method developed an overall customer journey framework to guide multiple divisions within Nokia’s internal design teams. Method then created a brand to embody this framework (“NEX”) and produced a series of branded insights, including a user experience methods book, customer journey map, concepts for out-of-box and set-up experiences for new products, and ideas for interactive retail experiences.
Outcomes
The innovative digital touchpoints were revealed at the Nokia World conference in October 2011 and are currently in use in Nokia retail stores worldwide. The new retail experience was unveiled in conjunction with the launch of the Nokia Lumia smartphone. To promote the award-winning phone’s user experience and hardware design, Method created a suite of applications that showcased the smartphone’s lifestyle benefits. Since the launch of the Nokia Lumia, strong sales of the smartphone are helping Nokia’s mobile phone business achieve profitability and regain market share, as the demand for phones is close to outstripping availability. “The fresh thinking from Method is helping to redefine what people expect from retail,” said Felipe Del Corral, Head of Digital Retail Worldwide, Nokia. “They have successfully created interfaces that consumers enjoy and that place Nokia at the forefront of retail innovation.” “We’re getting very positive consumer feedback,” said Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia. “You can see it when you go in the stores, and you get a sense that they’re buying devices.”