I led creative direction and interaction design for Nokia Watch, a concept wearable that positioned itself as a mindfulness, wellness, and workout companion. Built as an affordable introduction to wearables, it had to deliver a clear, polished experience on extremely constrained hardware, proving that thoughtful design can make even the smallest screens feel engaging and effortless.
The vision for Nokia Watch was to create a lifestyle companion that could guide workouts, track wellness metrics, and support mindfulness throughout the day. Beyond its features, it needed to serve as a brand touchpoint, extending Nokia’s design language into a wearable format that was approachable for a broad audience. Our challenge was to make every interaction count, ensuring the watch felt fluid and intuitive, despite significant hardware limitations like minimal RAM, restricted memory, and even the inability to use more than one font weight.
Working end-to-end, I defined the product’s interaction patterns, visual language, and overall user experience. The focus was on simplifying navigation and prioritizing clarity, with layouts and gestures designed for quick, on-the-go use. Hardware constraints pushed us toward design ingenuity: optimizing iconography for legibility at a glance, streamlining animations for performance, and reducing visual noise to create a calm, consistent feel across wellness, workout, and mindfulness modes. The result was a product concept that balanced brand consistency with usability on one of Nokia’s smallest digital surfaces.
Outcomes
Although the watch was cancelled just weeks before launch due to Nokia shifting away from brand partnership products, the work became a reference for how to design for small screens within strict technical constraints. It has since informed best practices for future Nokia projects, demonstrating how thoughtful design can scale a brand into new device categories while keeping the user experience front and center.
Next Project
CSL