Over three decades ago, people across the globe began to buy their first mobile phones. These simple devices—rather rudimentary in hindsight vis-à-vis where we are today—were all the rage when they were introduced to the world. They had no cutting-edge cameras or the ability to share and find content on the internet, but for the first time, people could talk or text on the go. Phones were free from their helical cables, and the games (Snake!) were only a bonus. From this point onwards began a journey that continues to this day—a transformation of how we connect with the world and everyone in it. And in this now-expansive milieu of mobile phone technology and innovative design, there is one name that was once synonymous with it: Nokia.

Nokia’s vast repository—from sketches and photographs to unseen prototypes—opens its door to the public as Aalto University, Finland, launches the Nokia Design Archive. Unveiled befittingly in the country where the Nokia mobile phones were born, the archive offers the world a glimpse into the inner workings of the iconic technology design company that once claimed nearly half the global market share in smartphones. “At a pivotal point in our relationship with technology, the archive provides a unique opportunity for understanding how we got where we are and how we should move forward,” says lead researcher Professor Anna Valtonen in an official statement.

The archive’s digital portal, now freely accessible to all, encompasses an array of sketches, photographs, presentations, interviews and more, all indicative of the company’s ‘golden age’. Through visualisations and expert analysis, the visitor journeys through over 700 curated entries from the mid-90s to 2017 and an uncurated section with around 20,000 items and 959 GB of born-digital files. The content was licensed from Microsoft Mobile for research and education purposes when Nokia’s handset operations were terminated and the brand relaunched under a different parent company. “Every large global company is trying to understand what drives people, how we see the world around us—but you don’t want to let anyone else in on this thinking,” says Valtonen in the official release. “The archive is one of the first opportunities we have to see the work that every organisation does behind the scenes,” she adds. Valtonen, who was involved in archiving design processes at Nokia over 20 years ago, presents some of her original presentations, sketches and renderings in the entries.

Several others, including researchers, designers, design historians and organisation and management scholars, contribute to the collation of the archive through their expert lenses. Together, they look back at a time when inbuilt cameras, primitive QR codes, location sharing and video calls—essentials in contemporary smart devices—were only dreams of the product designers. Back then, when phones had black and white screens and could only facilitate calls and text messages, designers were imagining countless possibilities of what phones could do and be. “When we started the project, the focus was on objects. As we began going through the material, we soon realised that it was about people,” says design historian Kaisu Savola in a statement. The huge qualitative data set, the ideas and the processes it harbours are explored from a human and not just a technological angle.

As visitors skim through the contents of the archive, Nokia’s pursuit of understanding people and their lifestyles through the lens of product design becomes apparent. The world now encounters social media and artificial intelligence at a capacity comparable to mobile phones in the 1990s. The archive, hence, comes with a nudge to contemplate these relationships and creative exploration around human needs and concerns. Furthermore, the researchers try to subvert the notion of technologies and formulations concealed in black boxes away from the public eye, attainable only for experts and people in power and catering to global corporations and governments. The team hopes to continue their work on the Nokia Design Archive, developing its contents over time to underline the vision and intensive efforts that fuel the realisation of any technological innovation. “The archive reveals how designers made visions concrete so that they could be properly explored long before they became reality,” Valtonen concludes in an official statement. “It reminds us that we do have agency, and we can shape our world—by revealing the work of many people who did just that,” she adds.