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The challenge

In a twist of fate, a team of Aalto University researchers found themselves responsible for two decades of Nokia’s best kept design secrets. They decided to share them with the world by experimenting with a unique online museum, or an interactive platform,and gathering experiences from many designers who worked in Nokia Mobile Phones. The question was, how could this be done? 

Now freely accessible from aalto.fi/nokia-design-archive the Archive’s holds a wealth of sketches, photographs, presentations, interviews and more, spanning the ‘golden era’ of a company that once laid claim to almost half the global market share in smartphones. Visualisations and expert analysis guide visitors through over 700 curated entries spanning from the mid-90s to 2017 — with an uncurated repository containing some 20,000 items and 959GB of born-digital files — the content licensed from Microsoft Mobile for research and education purposes when Nokia’s handset operations were put to rest and the brand relaunched under a different parent company.

The story: From a research archive to a digital museum

When lead researcher professor Anna Valtonen received a call about years of design archives about to soon get left behind, the decision to secure the materials and move them into storage at Aalto University was made. After practical and legal hurdles, a myriad of boxes were stored in Aalto University until the Research Council of Finland granted funds to archive and catalogue them, as part of a research project. The aim was to learn about the history of Finnish design and to make this cultural heritage accessible to everyone. 

Valtonen was herself involved in archiving design processes at the company over 20 years ago, working in design in what was then a burgeoning new tech company. Original presentations, sketches and renderings, including her own and those of over 500 designers, now comprise some of the fascinating entries that can be explored by the public.

Anna Valtonen: A van full of treasures and lightning-fast negotiations  

I worked at Nokia for 12 years and was actually involved in starting the collection of design archives. We got a room in the basement, bought archival drawers and created a practice for all designers to file the work that they had done. When I left, I made them promise not to throw anything away and to continue the important work.  

Years passed. Nokia sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft Mobile Phones and in 2016, Microsoft announced it was ceasing phone production entirely. That’s when my former colleague called. He was moving to Seattle –– the other side of the world, –– the very next day, and offered me the archives… provided I could get a van there within 24 hours. If I couldn’t, the material collected over years would probably be left outside in the rain, destined for landfill.  

Getting a van was easy, but I knew the materials couldn’t be handed over unless ownership rights were in order. That meant we had just 24 hours to negotiate a solid agreement with Microsoft’s lawyers. We managed to secure full rights and moved all the materials into storage at Aalto University.  

Anna Valtonen is Vice Chancellor of Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm and a professor at Aalto University. She has also served as the Dean of Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture and as Aalto University’s Vice President. 

The challenging task was to organise the materials and make them digitally accessible to the public.

The Aalto University researchers behind the project include designers, design historians, and organisation and management scholars, each bringing their own expert lens to the archive and its contents. 

Kaisu Savola: Stories began to emerge almost on their own

I joined the project led by Anna in 2020, on the recommendation of Professor Guy Julier. The start was intense: in August, Anna and I met over coffee to discuss the project, and by October, we had already submitted a funding application to the Academy of Finland.

The task turned out to be much bigger than I’d imagined. Initially, it felt like we just had boxes full of random plastic junk. But as we organised and contextualised the materials, stories began to emerge almost on their own.

Kaisu Savola is a design historian and postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University’s Department of Design.

Michel Nader Sayún: Making the materials accessible

I joined the project two years ago to help digitise the materials and figure out how to make them accessible to users in an engaging and inspiring way.

I sketched different solutions for data visualisation, and we hired Master’s student Lu Chen to develop it into an interactive application. Currently, the Unicorn has two parts: a network of objects, concepts, and themes that users can explore, and a timeline featuring the designers involved, along with their stories and anecdotes.

Michel Nader Sayún is a designer and doctoral researcher at Aalto University’s School of Business, focusing on designers and creative practices within organisations. 

But the project didn't stop with digitising the materials. In 2023, the decision was made to create an interactive platform to make the archive more accessible.

From October to December 2023, Nader and Chen prototyped and tested four interactive visualisations with content curated by Savola and organised by Nader. Chen continued to create the revised interface design and programmed two interactive visualisations and the portal from June to August 2024. Improvements to the portal back end infrastructure and user experience were made from November 2024 until January 2025, readying the Archive for a successful global launch on the 15th of January.

'Archive users often come from the research community. We wanted the Unicorn to reach a much broader audience, so we thought carefully about what different users might want from it. For example, it would be wonderful if the application could help schoolchildren and students understand how objects and the world are designed — and show them that they can do it too! I also hope businesses beyond design firms will explore and learn from the archives', Valtonen says. 

Lu Chen: Evoking emotions and sparking insights in users

For an information designer, visualising Nokia’s archives was a unique challenge. Instead of statistics, the task involved presenting objects, curated collections, metadata, and designers’ stories. We wanted the visualisation to evoke emotions and spark insights in its users.

Media and social platforms often portray certain designers as star individuals, but Nokia’s archives reveal design as a long-term, collaborative effort. By using a time filter, we can see how designers' practices and working processes evolved over two decades. From 1992-2014, entries related to design strategy increased from less than 10 to almost 250, which reflects how design gradually took on a more strategic and influential role within the company.

Lu Chen is a designer and a master’s student in New Media and Creative Sustainability.

The results: Where are we now?

The outcome, Nokia Design Archive, contains the visions that transformed how we connect. Through never-before-seen sketches, photographs, videos and interviews spanning from the mid 90s to 2017, online visitors can access the inner-workings of Nokia Mobile Phones to learn how design ideas shaped our world.

Even though the archive is extensive, the potential for more research, learnings and additions is enormous. For that reason, some entries are labelled as 'unknown' or do not have a complete description yet. In the words of Valtonen, the Principal Researcher of the Nokia Design Archive: 'When it says 'unknown' somewhere, it just means we haven't come that far yet. That's also the beauty of this project - that we are not sharing it as a commercial site, it is not a service, it is not polished or finished. We are really opening-up the first starting points of a larger research effort.'

With donations from more designers and more research being done every day, the Nokia Design Archive is constantly growing. Through this experimental project, we envisioned how an archive could become a living, growing, dynamic space for knowledge creation with a wider community. For us, the image of 'a dusty and isolated storage room' should be renewed – in the post-digital condition, the network allows us to fabricate 'rhizomatic' connections between archives and other memory institutions. 

The wish is to inspire similarly creative archival practices and digital cultural heritage around the world, making qualitative data accessible, visually exciting and appealing to a wider audience. 
 
Freely accessible to all beginning 15 January 2025, is brought to you by Aalto University in Finland. It has been made possible by donations from Microsoft Mobile Oy and designers.

The impact

Only 15 days after Nokia Design Archive was made public to the world:

• The has gained over 193,000 visits.
• We have achieved over 300 media hits in over 40 countries, including feature-length coverage across the globe: , , and , among many others.
• The reached over 119,000 impressions, 9,390 engagements, 78,300 video views and 6, 330 link clicks on social media (between the 15th and 19th of January 2025).
• The Nokia Design Archive landing page, published on aalto.fi, has gained over 18,000 page views.
• On both mainstream and social media, researchers, journalists and everyday people are now sharing their archive finds, contributing data-based conversation to topical global discussions on our relationship with tech.

Sources of data: Meltwater, aalto.fi site analytics, Nokia Design Archive analytics