Jan Chipchase, Principal Engineer at Nokia Research Center, studies people around the world—how they behave, communicate, and interact with each other and the things around them. He shares his observations and insights with Nokia designers, who often accompany him on field trips, helping them to create new ideas for how mobile devices will look, work, and be used in the future.

Most of his time is spent in the field conducting research. This takes him out onto the streets and into people's homes to observe, document, and analyze the rich tapestry of everyday life. Recent projects include visiting Uganda to look at shared phone use, India to look at how design can make mobile devices more accessible to people with low or non-existent levels of literacy, and South Korea to look at how early adopters were reacting to mobile TV.

His research focuses on the future three to fifteen years from now—understanding today's base human motivations, detecting early signals of new trends and combining this knowledge with an understanding of where technology is heading. The research is used by the design team together with a suite of other tools to help inform and inspire the design of future products, features, applications, services, and platforms. In 2006 alone this took him to fifteen different countries, helping Nokia understand both the similarities and differences among cultures.

Technology, Disruptive Thinking, Innovation, Journalism, Futurism, Business Leadership, Editing, Inventors, Oncology, Authors, Engineering, Filmmaking, Media Professionals, Music, Culture