A very relevant interview of Nokia's director of design strategy. Among all what he said, some excerpts I found interesting:

We actually do studies - with full consent of the users - on smartphones. We do 100% tracking of all functionalities over a period of time. This means, we have granular view of usage. So then we can look at what are people using, why, what paths aren't working. This has been missing from an industry that tends to ask people "will you use an MP3 player on your phone?" and they answer "yes" and typically people will overestimate their own interest in it. (...) the definition of hackability is too narrow. Hackability is much more about everyday kind of things, starting from the colored replaceable covers. You might say, that it is too tightly driven but the trend of customizing the generic will continue. This will continue both in hardware and in software. We have tools to sketch in software, like on the Nokia series 60. I am not a programmer but it took me two hours to learn it and to write applications that I use nearly everyday. So that's me sketching my own use. I think that's another way of staying close to users and usage. Hackability is broader than just open software. (...) one thing that we have launched publicly is an application that allows people to have a local Bluetooth web-page while they are walking around. It can be read by other people in their proximity. We are trying it out just by having the software available for the Nokia series 60 phones. I think the software that we are building for the series 60 will allow a lot of innovation in that area that we can't anticipate.

Why do I blog this? it's vers refreshing to get Nokia's director of design strategy. His insights about Nokia's paths are very insightful and might shape some current trends.