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The introduction of iPhone has shaken the traditional telecom industry, and now all the elements of the user experience of mobile devices are being redesigned, including the dominant form factors, interaction paradigms, software platforms, and leading services.

During the last two years, I was leading a sizable user interface concepting projects that contribute to this industrywide redefinition process. In such a project, we need to question everything. Nothing that we have had so far can be taken as granted: anything can and must be reconsidered. UX designers that are used to working in the PC environment or in Web have always had relatively stable UI hardware to count on. Often as well the operating system is well defined, documented and design guidelines are available. What happens when nothing of this is there? When you have to design all of this in the same project: UI hardware, UI framework for the operating system, and then the applications? When you have to write the UI style guide? This is the most challenging type of project for a design leader. Nothing is stable, nothing to base decisions on

In this series of blog posts I will write about my experiences as a lead designer in such a project. Unfortunately, for confidentiality reasons I cannot use any of the real designs as example, so bear with me that I am staying on somewhat an abstract level. I still hope that the findings are useful or at least entertaining to some of you who are interested in UX design leadership or as participants of challenging design projects.

I will touch at least the following areas:

• design direction: how to lead design work
• processes: how to organize design work
• design tools
• people: how to work with people in the design team
• you

Now we are ready for the first insight.