LAWRENCE (January 24, 2007) – The Department of Design/School of Fine Arts announced today it has developed a long-term multi-disciplined project with telecommunication industry leaders Nokia and Cingular. Partnering with the School of Journalism’s News and Information track, as well as The School of Business Entrepreneurship Program, the Department of Design will collectively examine the high-end Nokia N93 camera phone.

“The significance here is the participation of two of the world’s largest brands supporting KU with real products and services for educational advancements,” said Gregory Thomas, Design Department Chair. “Our students are in need of real-world challenges involving real-world industry and not textbook case studies. We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to bring several schools together on one project.”

Thomas has had a long-time relationship with Nokia’s Design Director/Brand Experience Designer Gerardo Herrera. Shortly before the December holiday, a proposal was made for a cross-disciplinary project examining current and potential use of the sophisticated hardware. Nokia responded by a gift of up to six phones and additional hardware. Thomas then approached Cingular Wireless and received six months activation (project length) and call/data usage for the project.

“Nokia has a positive impact on society that extends beyond the advanced technology, products and services the company creates. Nokia is an active contributor to educational causes, with employees making their own contribution as volunteers in a range of programs throughout the world,” said Herrera. (More information about Nokia is available at www.nokia.com.)

“Nokia's design teams continue to explore collaborative connections of multidisciplinary educational teams to help create breakthrough innovations that enable a comprehensive approach of both the mobile and customer experience,” said Herrera. “Nokia Design is looking forward to the University of Kansas' insight to this multi-disciplinary project, their use of Cingular services and our Nokia mobile devices.”

A common thread that would bring all three educational units – Journalism, Business and Design - working together was all that was needed. Journalism’s Rick Musser, head of the news and information track, quickly embraced a concept of journalism students identifying applications for the device specific to the youth market. Additionally, opportunities exist for Nokia to lead the citizen journalism movement among this highly influential and motivated target audience. The journalism students would experiment with the phone on blogs, vlogs and explore MoJo (mobile journalism) applications. 

“The last year has seen video applications on the Internet explode onto the media scene,” Musser said.  “Advanced journalism students in our multimedia newsroom will put these multi use phones to the test under real world conditions.”

Wally Meyer, Director of Entrepreneurship Programs for the School of Business, was then brought in because of the recent collaborations between Design and the Business school. The Entrepreneurship Program will identify the size and trend of the addressable market; the likely Nokia market share and sales potential; and costs associated with market entry, all while recognizing the unique media consumption habits of the college target audience and the highly competitive nature of the category.  

"This project provides the students with a true experiential learning opportunity in which the business students will apply their entrepreneurial knowledge acquired from their business classes to a real world business challenge," Meyer said.

Design will approach the project from several angles. The Industrial Design area will examine the ergonomics and functionality of the N93, Interaction Design will analyze the navigational components and the Graphic Design area will create a blog and other media tools to facilitate communication between all teams and document the educational process for the school’s industry partners.

This learning project will seek to capitalize on the emerging phenomena of citizen journalism while also creating a business proposition for the Nokia phone/camera with the key college market in mind. Students will learn by leveraging their own expertise and contributing valuable insights from their own disciplines as well as via the interaction from the other disciplines of journalism, design and business.

Nokia, Finland’s largest company, is the number one cellular phone producer in the world. More than 850 million people have a Nokia mobile phone in their hands. No other consumer electronics company in the world has ever had such a customer base. In 2006, Nokia was the world’s largest camera manufacturer with approximately 140 million cameras sold as well as close to 70 million music enabled devices, making Nokia the world's largest manufacturer of music devices as well. Cingular, a part of the new AT&T, is the largest wireless company in the United States, with more than 58 million subscribers who use the nation's largest digital voice and data network.

CONTACTS:

Gerardo Herrera
Design Director, Brand Experience Design
Nokia
Mobile: +1 818 726 2065
Phone: +1 818 876 6007
Gerardo.Herrera@nokia.com

Gregory Thomas
Chair/Department of Design, School of Fine Arts
785 864 2955
gthomas@ku.edu

Rick Musser
Director Multimedia Newsroom
William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications
Dole Center
785 864-7638   Office
785 864-0614   Fax
rmusser@ku.edu

Wally W. Meyer, Jr.
Director of Entrepreneurship Programs
School of Business
785 864-7583 Office           
816 305-3503 Cell
wmeyerjr@ku.edu