Speaker : Christian Lindholm

Vice President of Global Mobile Products, Yahoo!
Blog : Moving experiences

I joined Yahoo! in the beginning of September 2005 as Vice President of Global
Mobile Products. My responsibility is global creation of the different mobile products Yahoo! makes, such as their mobile optimized portal, e-mail and instant messaging phone clients. Before joining Yahoo!, I worked ten years for Nokia in various roles in the areas of user interface, product creation and venturing.

Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's largest daily newspaper called me the 'godfather of mobile phone users', I guess that was a tribute to the efforts I made making Nokia phones easier to use. During my time at Nokia I invented the Nokia Navi-key user interface, and I am the father of the Series 60 user interface and the creator of Nokia Lifeblog – a multimedia diary.

As a product maker, my passion is to make stuff easy and delightful to use. Things can always be simplified and made more delightful to use. I hold several patents both in SW and in HW. Together with my Nokia colleagues I wrote Mobile Usability, one of the first books dedicated to the mysteries of designing compelling small user experiences. My current passion is in the Internet, which I see evolving to a ubiquitous platform for content and communication.

I have a master's degree in Economics from Hanken, the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration in Helsinki, Finland. I have worked as a visiting researcher at the Centre for Design Management at London Business School. My research interest lies in understanding how design, technology, usability and marketing affect product success in emerging markets where no dominant design has been established.

I am a keen sailor of big and small yachts. The small yachts are radio controlled. I have won many Finnish championships, a Nordic championship and several top 10 places in World Championships in the Marblehead class. Currently I sail an International OneMetre. My summers I spend with my family aboard Amanda, a classic Hallberg-Rassy 29 cruising slowly in the Finnish archipelago or in our villa in Ekenäs on the south coast of Finland.