GLOBAL – How do you improve on perfection? Well, Nokia are already looking for ways to take the successes of the Nokia N9 to the next level… and it wants your help.

If you can come up with a way of enhancing the beautifully-designed handset with its innovative swipe interface, you could become the proud owner of one. Nokia is giving away ten Nokia N9s for the best ideas.

All you have to do is go www.ideasproject.com/n9 and send in your suggestions.

We spoke to judge Peter Skillman from Nokia Design about the benefits of crowdsourcing ideas to the company.

“There’s a deep and enduring value in drawing ideas from passionate people outside the design team. The opportunity to walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins is invaluable. In the team, we’re so far beyond the bell curve in terms of our familiarity with interfaces that it’s hard to step back and see things from a regular user’s perspective.

“Just last week I was in India – in a single room dwelling – and the man who lived there was explaining to me just how hard he was finding it to use a smartphone. It really made me refocus and think again about first time use.”

But what of the Nokia N9 and its revolutionary swipe interface?

“Swipe as a UI pattern has been incredibly successful. It’s such a simple gesture, like moving a piece of paper across the table. But its beauty is in the way it allows us to reduce: we can eliminate all the buttons.”

“The pattern of the Nokia N9 is the intellectual foundation of everything we’re doing. We’re leveraging the success there and moving it forward.”

 

Anyway, if you think you can do better, send your ideas to the Nokia Ideas Project, which will be judged by Nikki Barton, Anton Fahlgren and Peter Skillman.

 

So, go on, how would you improve the usability of the Nokia N9? For full details and conditions, go to www.ideasproject.com/n9.