Christian Kraft recently left his position as Principal Innovation and User Experience expert at Nokia Beijing, having spent 14 years previously as Senior Manager, Concept Innovation and User Experience at Nokia Denmark.

Prior to Nokia, Kraft worked at Cetelco/Hagenuk as a Software Engineer and User Interface Designer, and at Sony as a User Interface Specialist. Kraft has also written a book, User Experience Innovation: User Centered Design that Works, which was published by Apress in 2012. A visionary with over 100 patents to his name, Kraft was behind both threaded SMS Chat and the front-mounted roller-key, among many other Nokia innovations.

Newnham: What first excited you about technology?

Kraft: As a child growing up in a town called Fredericia in Denmark, I would say Lego was a key element in my interest in creativity. I was very fond of playing with Lego far into my teenage years. Today, it is difficult to say what was so fascinating about it, but looking back, it was about creating something not seen before and about pushing the narrow limits of Lego further.

Later, when I was a teenager and at college in the early ’80s, the first home computers came out, like the ZX-81, ZX Spectrum (from Sinclair), and Commodore Vic 20. I bought a Colour Genie, one of the first Asian-produced home computers, and I started programming in BASIC. I mainly created games, but due to the limitations and slow speed of BASIC programs, I soon started to do machine code using tables printed on paper to convert instructions. Programs were stored on cassette tapes in those days — a highly unstable method, I must say.

It was using this very manual method to do machine code for my Colour Genie, I managed to make a game inspired from the TRON movie and also, actually, very similar to the much later Snake for Nokia mobile devices.

I got my fair share of electric shocks because I never limited myself to battery-driven inventions

Newnham: It’s clear that you started “creating” early. How did the inventing start, and can you recall some of your earlier experiments?

Kraft: I started inventing very early. With Lego, like I said, and then with electric “gadgets” such as a light bulb inside a plastic cranium that would automatically light up when someone opened the door to my room. I got my fair share of electric shocks because I never limited myself to battery-driven inventions; instead, I would apply 220 volts to several of them.

During high school and university, I also was driven by trying something new — or doing something that already existed but in a new way. At university, for instance, we used a welding robot as a large plotter; we used it for writing logos and text on paper. Not exactly the original intention of a welding robot, but we developed our own programming language for it which was very cool.

I also found myself focusing on user friendliness of technology, so for the robot experiment, I ended up doing a 20-page user guide on how to develop programs for the robot.

Newnham: And then you became an engineer…

Kraft: Yes, but becoming an electronic engineer was not really in my natural path. My family come from a craftsman background. My father was an electrician so I guess that gave me some insights into the “electric” area, but I was the first person in the family, including a lot of cousins, uncles, and aunts, to even get a high school exam. The city I came from had no university and almost no jobs for academics, so none of my parents’ friends even had degrees. Because of this, I had no idea what it was like to be an academic, and hence I had no or little interest in becoming one.

After graduating high school, I wanted to take a year off to go traveling but a high school friend was going to Aalborg University, where you could start on a basic course and then later decide to become an engineer, surveyor, or similar, so I signed up at the last minute. My original idea was to study Chemistry, since I liked that in high school, but this course didn’t exist at Aalborg, so I ended up having to choose another course, and it became Electronic Engineering.

I designed and implemented the first ever mobile phone game — a Tetris variant that I created in one weekend.

Newnham: Tell me what happened when you graduated. What was the industry like back then?

Kraft: When I graduated, I had no real dream or idea what kind of job I wanted. I did know that I wanted to travel though, so I applied for around 80 jobs in other European countries, but with no luck. The employment situation for engineers was pretty bad back then, so I ended up just applying for everything and ended up with a job at Cetelco/ Hagenuk, just 20 kilometers away from Aalborg. This would have been January, 1992.

Cetelco was a spin-off of Shipmate, which was developing and manufacturing GPS positioning systems for ships and boats. Before I joined Cetelco, it was bought by German-based Hagenuk, but they still used both brands for their products.

When I joined Cetelco, it was manufacturing mobile phones for the analog NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone) system. They had also just started a project to develop digital phones for the GSM system (Global System for Mobile Communications). GSM was the first digital standard being applied to mobile communication, and it was still being specified in the ETSI forum (The European Telecommunications Standards Institute is an independent, nonprofit, standardization organization in the telecommunications industry), so targeting GSM was difficult since standards were still in progress.

At the time, mobile communication was quite a big industry in the North of Denmark (North Jutland), with several companies working in the area, and there was a level of cooperation among the companies back then. The first mobile phones from Cetelco were therefore codeveloped with Dancall, another big player from the NMT days, and they worked together so that the engine for the devices from both companies would be developed together, but all the user interface (UI) and other parts were done individually by each company. It was an interesting approach, and almost all mobile phones are actually developed like that today. You get a standard engine from a third party, and then you develop your own UI and design on top of it, although, at this time, there were very few players actually designing phones for GSM; Alcatel, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens, and Nokia were some of the pioneers, together with the companies in North Jutland.

At Cetelco, I became responsible for most of the UI. I, and one other, designed and developed the software for it. OK, admittedly, mobile phones were simpler back then, but the device from Cetelco/Hagenuk stood out from the competition. It had a full graphical display — pixelbased — when, at the time, most other devices used displays with segments instead.

The full graphical display allowed a lot of innovation in the UI, like menu-based UIs and soft-key operation. This wasn’t the norm back then; most functions were accessed through keyboard shortcuts. We also created the first soft-scrolling of menus, and later, I designed and implemented the first ever mobile phone game — a Tetris variant that I created in one weekend.

At that time, mobile phones also cost the equivalent to 1200 Euros ($1600) or more, so when I presented the game idea to the product manager, he was at first quite reluctant. However, the news about my game spread quickly through the organization, and also to the Hagenuk HQ in Kiel, Germany, where it was decided that the game should be included in the second generation GSM device, the MT-2000. This was 1992, and Nokia’s Snake game entered the market five years later, in 1997.

The MT-2000 and its predecessor, the MT-900, also had what I believe to have been the first-ever implementation of soft keys for a mobile phone. Nokia is often quoted to have created this innovation, but products from Hagenuk/Cetelco and Siemens were a couple of years ahead.

Newnham: What did your role become at Hagenuk/Cetelco, and why did you leave to go to Sony?

Kraft: My role with Hagenuk/Cetelco was software developer, and my responsibility — together with a colleague who was also looking at lower layers of software — was to build one of the first graphical mobile phone user interfaces in the world.

Then, in August, 1994, after less than three years of experience in the field, I was headhunted to go to Sony in Munich. At the time, Sony was trying to enter the GSM market, but due to lack of expertise in the area, they partnered with Siemens. Siemens would create the mobile phone and adapt it slightly for Sony, and Sony’s contribution was providing lower-cost chips compared to those Siemens could do or purchase themselves.

Due to the complex relations between Sony and Siemens — Sony was hoping to be able to develop software themselves, but this never happened — my role at Sony was quite different. A large part of the work was to make the workflow between Siemens and Sony as smooth as possible. German and Japanese cultures are quite different from each other, so I and another Danish colleague were often working as cultural translators.

The main device we developed together with Siemens was the Sony CM-DX 1000, which, compared to the similar Siemens model, had a novel pop-up earpiece that was used to answer and end calls, and to lock the keypad when down.

Newnham: You then went on to Nokia. What were some of the most exciting times for you there?

Kraft: I joined Nokia in Copenhagen in 1996 when Nokia was number three in the mobile phone business after Motorola and Ericsson. The spirit in the small Copenhagen office was quite amazing, with a clear focus on becoming number one.

At that time, a lot of the innovations and products were driven from Finland, so I had to get myself involved with projects that we were running over there. I was hired as a senior software engineer even though I never wrote one line of code for Nokia. At that time, a “UI” (later user experience — “UX”) designer was not an independent role.

After some time working with other emerging technologies (e.g. DECT — Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication), I was assigned as UI software chief for a product that would become one of Nokia’s more famous, the Nokia 7110, which applies a slide that slides down automatically. I have the patent for this function together with some colleagues. Naturally, this function had been a secret, so when the first Matrix movie came out at almost the same time as the 7110 was launched in 1999, it was a perfect story for marketing the device. Matrix was using the predecessor slide phone 8110 instead, but still with the auto-eject function of the slide.

The 7110 not only featured the pop-out slide; it also had a novel front-mounted roller-key, which I also co-own the patent for. This additional roller key was a major driver for Nokia’s future UI platforms; having three soft keys instead of two, which at that time was already a major trend. The 7110 had three interaction keys — “Select” on the roller-press, left soft key usually for “Options”, and the right soft key as “Back.” Except for the missing label for the middle key, this was to become the Nokia standard UI interaction paradigm — still used and applied to hundreds of millions of devices, if not a billion.

With Nokia, I started working across projects and platforms. I was often working as a UX consultant for a large number of phone projects and giving ideas for new UI and UX innovations. This is how I built up my credibility in the area of UX and innovation, and it was also how I learned to focus UX innovations to become not only patentable but also marketable.

In this role, for instance, I suggested highly-marketed SMS Chat functionality for the Nokia 3310. I also designed a novel music-slider function for music-driven Nokia products. At the same time, I was also working as a UX strategist in designated teams, led by some famous UX profiles like Christian Lindholm and later by Harri Kiljander, and I also worked closely on many tasks with Erik Anderson.

I was probably very difficult to put in a box; I was highly driven by creating great products that consumers would love. Creating patents was a secondary thing that was just a nice additional effect of creating innovations.

My understanding of what consumers may want also led me to later join the product planning for Nokia Entry business unit, focusing on creating true value for lower-income markets. Creating innovation for high-end devices often seemed easier, since there was a budget for adding new functionality, but I truly loved the challenge of delighting consumers, even with a very limited budget.

In terms of excitement, my true job excitement comes from two things: creating innovations for real consumers and working with people from all sorts of backgrounds.

Newnham: You mentioned threaded SMS Chat earlier, how did you come up with the idea for that feature?

Kraft: I was consulting on the 3310 program, which had a great, young product manager, Lone Sørensen. She wanted to create a relatively low-cost product that appealed to younger people because at that time, mobile phones still had a businessman status attached to them. So, the 3310 was to have exchangeable covers in many colors, and Lone set up a number of cross-functional innovation sessions to find some other truly marketable functionality for young people.

By a lucky coincidence, I was on a subway train in Copenhagen during this process and saw a teenager using her phone. I could hear her constantly receiving messages, and could see that she was also having to type heavily to reply. I turned to her and said, “Wow, you must have a lot of friends.” She then surprised me by explaining, “I do, but all those messages came from just one!”

This was a real Eureka moment for me. Yes, I knew about chat functions on social websites, but this was the first time I saw the same usage pattern on a mobile phone. At that time, handling such an SMS conversation was highly complicated. If you were, for example, writing a reply and a new message came in, you would have to quit the SMS editor, read the new message, and then find the saved draft message through the menu in order to continue writing the reply.

Getting from the insight to the idea, later accepted as a patent, was then very easy. And the product program took the idea in almost immediately, hence I created the first conversational SMS chatting system for mobile phones — close to how most mobile devices now handle similar conversations.

Newnham: You have a vast number of patents to your name. Can you tell me which ones matter the most to you personally and why?

Kraft: It’s probably the most sold user interface in the world — the Nokia 3 soft key UI which was applied to over a billion sold devices. This was not created just by me, but I was one of the driving creative forces on this project.

Before the iPhone, Nokia was seen by consumers as having the most intuitive and simple user interfaces, and I believe that I contributed a lot to that, which makes me very proud and happy. However, as I said earlier, happy consumers are what drive me, not having a patent.



SMS Chat was one of the easiest innovations I made, but the impact on the market was tremendous. The 3310 had other selling points, but I heard from a lot of teenagers it was the SMS Chat feature which they thought was cool, so that also made me very happy.

I have some patents around the ability to send pictures from one phone to another and the first ever downloadable animations for mobile phones. These innovations were leading the mobile phones away from being purely text-oriented to being much more multimedia-oriented.

I also have quite a few innovations around touch interfaces, such as zoomable character bars when searching contacts and a mechanical solution applying true click feeling for touch surfaces. Nokia was too slow to get on the touch “wagon.” This was quite frustrating for me, since I believed that Nokia had all the right ideas and the abilities to move fast into this new game.

Finally, I am proud to have contributed to both design and patents around word completion method for mobile phones — applied to probably one billion devices. I was one of the drivers for putting T9 — predictive text input — into the 3210. The T9 functionality made texting on mobile phones so much faster, and it changed Nokia’s path radically.

Again, I feel a bit sad when looking at the strategic mistakes Nokia made when the touch-driven devices started coming out. Nokia used to move quite fast when the market or consumers were changing, but something went wrong in this case.

Newnham: What is it about Nokia, do you think, that bred and fostered innovation?

Kraft: Nokia has a long culture of innovation. It allows employees to innovate, and this made it successful. Strategic decisions and maybe some stubbornness also brought Nokia to where it is today. Nokia is still a highly innovative company, but due to the less favorable financial situation, trying out the innovations in the market has also become more difficult, as well as risky.



The Scandinavian background of the company also fosters innovation, since Scandinavian children are taught in quite liberal ways, allowing a lot of room for questioning. This is an area where I see a clear difference from, for example, China, where I work now. The Chinese are traditionally taught to do what they are told and not to ask questions about solutions and directions — whereas Scandinavians, and, in particular, maybe Danish people, are taught to question things. So, the origin of companies may also make a big difference in company cultures.

Innovations are a balance between what is needed and what is possible.

Newnham: Had you always been someone who came up with creative and innovative solutions to problems, even in your personal life?

Kraft: I am probably not the typical inventor type who makes all sorts of small improvements and experiments at home. I think my innovation capability comes instead from seeing and experiencing problems for myself, for friends and family, and for people on the street.

I always question these things. It is part of my nature to question why solutions are bad. I can also get quite angry when, for instance, I use a web page that is designed badly. So, my key ability is to see problems and issues that have not been solved in the optimal way yet. This initially negative way of looking at things leads me into a very constructive and innovative approach: suggesting solutions.

My technical background probably helps me here also. I cannot say that I use specific parts of my education in my everyday life. What I use, though, is the knowledge about what can be a possible solution and what cannot.

Innovations are a balance between what is needed and what is possible.



Newnham: You are considered one of the earliest pioneers of mobile UI/UX. What skills do you think have helped your career in this field?

Kraft: There were no courses around these subjects when I was younger, so I guess it comes from both observing and experiencing problems — because it then became intuitive for me to find solutions to these problems.

I also saw the potential of mobile technology very early on. I entered the mobile phone industry at a very early stage — when most people did not see the potential of mobile communication. I definitely did see it, though, and how this technology would change the way we communicate.

Perhaps, also, my observation skills are so acute from having two alcoholic parents. Every day when I got home from school, I would have to very quickly assess what the situation was. I later read that children of alcoholic parents often develop this skill — to see a situation from the outside and understand what is going on. I am sure that I have used, and still use, this skill in my everyday work. It makes me capable of seeing things that others don’t; what people need and want, without even asking.

Newnham: How would someone go about designing a great UI/UX? Where do they start, and what should they consider?

Kraft: I don’t necessarily recommend courses. I have seen hundreds of students who come from dedicated educations around UX, but I have seen very few truly shining stars in this area, so I think approaching UX academically seems to focus people into theories and specific tools. Both these elements tend to limit people.

Also, UX educations rarely focus on the result — the actual design and how people like or dislike your design. Steve Jobs is clearly one of the exceptions in this area. He cared about the result, the details, and the process. He actually cared less about what consumers thought, initially at least.



Designing a great UI/UX requires a number of skills. First, you need to be able to design for someone other than yourself. Designing for yourself may be a good quality, but you also need to empathize with other consumers/users. You need imagination. Would your grandfather be able to use this? Would young teenagers think that this is cool? And so forth.

You also need to be able to think more holistically. I have seen so many designs in my career where each designer of an application tries to optimize the UI/UX only for his/her part of the process, leading to a highly inconsistent UX. You also need to know what is possible. Not only what is technically possible, but maybe also what may be possible within current strategies, within the current roadmap, and within a specific product. Suggesting impossible solutions will just make you stand out as incompetent, and people may stop listening to you.

Logic and structure may not be the typical etiquette you put on an inventor, but I am a highly analytical person who can see overall structures rather than just details. I also have the ability to go into the details, and I can switch from details to an overview in a split-second. It is a common saying in the UX world that “the devil is in the details,” so you need to master the details — but you also need to master the overview and equally, structure, too.

And studying human behavior is key — not necessarily from books, but from personal studies. I look at how my friends, my parents and kids use devices. This is where empathy and reading people come into play again. You may also study reports completed by consumer insights teams, but digestion of this requires even more empathy. You have to read through the text and see the underlying problems and needs that exist.

Finally, I must return to passion again. If you do not believe that what you do can make a difference, forget it. This may well mean working weekends. When I had a great idea, I never cared if it was 1 PM or 2 AM. I was purely driven by passion. Yes, I also had long periods of what, from the outside, may be perceived as ineffectiveness. Those periods are crucial for me to build up passion again — and to leave room for new ideas to emerge in my mind. When this is done and when I have made a draft puzzle in my head, then I am extremely effective.

Newnham: After fourteen years at Nokia, why did you leave in 2010, and what did you want to do?

Kraft: I left Nokia in 2010 because I wanted to try something completely different. A few years earlier, I had been introduced to scuba diving, and decided to take some serious time out. I had been disagreeing with Nokia’s strategic decisions and its slowness in going for touchdriven devices. I was also disagreeing in the strategy of not taking bigger risks.

At that time, Nokia’s business was still healthy, so, in my mind, that was exactly the time to take bigger risks as a company. But they didn’t, and the fact that they didn’t made me, as an innovator trying to drive new and sometimes disruptive solutions, feel less needed and respected. I actually felt like I no longer had the energy and maybe even opportunity to really contribute to Nokia’s future success. So, without any real plans for the future, I bought a one-way ticket to Thailand and became a Scuba Dive Master on the small island of Koh Tao.

My initial plan was to live a completely different life for one year, but after one year, I felt it wasn’t long enough. With my bank’s approval, I continued for one more year and started to write my book, User Experience Innovation. Writing it only took me a few months, but publishing took much longer, so it was released in early 2012.

I also started slowly looking for a new job. My ideal job would have probably been working remotely in Thailand (the Philippines or Malaysia) — scuba diving in the morning and working in the afternoon. But I discovered that the world isn’t that globalized yet, and I also realized being in a team makes my innovation stronger.

I didn’t have a strong need to go back to Denmark. After I left Nokia Copenhagen, Nokia decided to close down its center there, and the job opportunities in Denmark, in general, were limited, so I started looking at other places, such as in Asia. Eventually, I got offered a good job with Nokia Beijing, where I work now. The job gives me the opportunity to work in the area where Nokia is still successful and where I still have a big part of my heart — the lower-end devices. This is an area where Nokia is still fully in control and where decisions are made inside of Nokia rather than by partners. It is also an area where most people may say that there is no longer room for innovation — but where I wish to prove them wrong.

Newnham: What are the greatest lessons you have learned about the field over the years?

Kraft: I have learned that even as a company that has the most successful and user-friendly UI, you cannot rest on your laurels. You cannot assume that consumers will stay with you forever unless you reinvent yourself again and again — not least around UX. UX is what rules the world of personal electronics.

Features and technologies hardly matter anymore. Yes, there are still “technology races” going on; more pixels in your camera, more sensors, better displays, more apps in the App Store. And yes, a few consumers will listen and react to this, but the majority of consumers will look for better overall experiences. And, in this context, an experience is something closer to the needs of the consumer. Something that will truly help them — yet only a little, maybe — in their everyday lives. Technologies are barely enablers for experiences. Nothing else.

Newnham: What do you think the future holds for mobile?

Kraft: I definitely see some trends. It’s already obvious that the laptop market is being threatened by tablets and, to some extent, even by smartphones.

The laptop industry has for years over-estimated the customer needs for laptop computers. Why does an 80-year-old woman need a Quadcore laptop if all she needs is to see photos and emails sent from her grandchildren? The same even applies to teenagers. They probably spend 70% of their online time on social web pages, the rest watching movies, feeds, and so on.

Another trend related to this is that I see Microsoft, with their fullblown, “We can do everything” operating systems, is targeting only a few consumers. They have forgotten the basic needs of consumers in a feature race. More is not better. Less is better.

Finally, I am pretty sure that the smartphone market is slowly becoming saturated. The “one size fits all” will come to an end. The need for new form factors and, not least, user experiences will arise, sooner than we think.

The clearest trend is — yet this trend has actually never been new — that “devices” should not deliver features or technology. They should deliver some true, at least perceived true, value for the consumer. Do I really care about more pixels in the camera if I still cannot take good photos in a dark bar?

Newnham: How do you think mobile UI/UX will develop in the future?

Kraft: I see some worrying signs around everything being harmonized, for example, most smartphone experiences are almost identical today. And I also see that many mobile phone manufacturers don’t truly value UX. When I started in the mobile phone business, UI was basically ignored. I have seen this change, very slowly, into today, where the UX is almost the key parameter for selling devices. However, I still do not feel that this insight is truly embraced.

A number of electronic industries and mobile phone manufacturers are still lagging behind — just have a look at your TV remote control for instance. UX has gone from being a glue that you put on at the last minute to becoming the key selling point for a number of personal devices. It’s certainly growing and getting more attention now.

So, user experience is already one of the key purchase parameters for consumers — but the companies have not been following along. Most “technology companies” are still exactly that: technology companies.

You have to possess huge amounts of curiosity, and you have to allow yourself to dream dreams that are bigger than yourself.

Newnham: If you could offer one piece of advice to someone interested in a similar career path, what would it be?

Kraft: There are many ways and educations to becoming a UX expert. When I started in the area, there was no dedicated education, but no education can drive you to what is really needed to become an innovative UX expert. You have to be driven by passion for creating something extraordinary. You have to possess huge amounts of curiosity, and you have to allow yourself to dream dreams that are bigger than yourself. You basically have to question all existing solutions.

If you do not have the ability to see problems in your own or others’ everyday lives, you can probably still become a mediocre UX/ UI designer. But if you want to become an inventor and a great UX designer also, the ability to identify problems is the key element. If you can foresee problems that the consumers will have with your UX/UI design, then your solution is already so much better before it leaves your hands.

If you want to create inventions, you need to identify a problem to solve. Problems can be tiny or they can be huge, but, no matter what, every problem contains at least one invention. Some problems may contain thousands. A good UX/UI design starts with seeing and accepting the problems, and a good invention starts with solving those problems.