For the past two years Sofia has been invited to the World Handset Forum as a panel moderator, panel participant and keynote speaker. During her Amsterdam keynote, she presented concept phones for Starwars and Formula 1, beautifully rendered by our 3D-wizard Björn Ericsson. We gladly noted that the presentation was a huge success:

Quoting Marek Pawlowski, PMN

“It was left to Sofia Svanteson to deliver the final keynote of the World Handset Forum. For me it was far and away the most engaging presentation of the conference and it captured the imagination of all the delegates in attendance.

She opened by simply showing a screenshot of Siemens and Sony Ericsson user interfaces side-by-side. They were virtually identical and Svanteson asked the companies to explain how, despite all their talk of brand strategy, they could hope to differentiate their products when their GUIs were virtually identical.

She continued to show case studies of how both operators and handset manufacturers could properly translate their brand values into the user interface. This included the work Ocean Observations has done to transpose 3's award winning interior design for its retail stores into a mobile user interface.

It also ranged to new and thought-provoking concept designs for Formula 1 and Star Wars affinity handsets. These were designed from the ground-up to incorporate all the elements of their respective brand experiences, from the texture of the case material to the font used in the phone menus. It was refreshing to see many of the delegates leaving at the end of the presentation with the realisation that they had seen a vision of the future.”