I developed this IP telephony concept during the autumn 2000 for Ericsson Business Corporation. The work included doing the interaction design, graphical design, prototype development and usability testing. This was three years before the first version of Skype was launched 2003. The sound quality in the application was incredible good at the time. This at a time when most people used dialup modem to access internet and hardly anyone used a wireless access. Laptops was rare, and about 90+ % of the population in the developed world still had fixed line phones at home. In Sweden at that time about 40% of the population used internet at work at least on a weekly basis.

Mikael Björling
Mikael is UX line manager and Senior Lead Designer at the Ericsson UX Lab heading up a team of UX designers, front end developers and user researchers at Ericsson’s UX Lab in Stockholm, Sweden. He was previously Director of the Networked Society Lab. Mikael’s specialty is in understanding how consumer behavior, emerging technologies and new industry logics are shaping the future society and at the intersection of these areas, innovate and build great user experiences. Mikael believes that with the ongoing digital transformation we have a great opportunity to shape a better world! Mikael joined Ericsson in 1998 and is based in Stockholm. You can engage with him on Twitter at: @mikaeleb or at LinkedIn.
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