Another year in designing for the next billion users
Almost a year ago, I wrote this blog about my learnings from designing for Next Billion Users in India. And TBH, I did not plan this sequel. I was supposed to understand our users (NBU) better by now. But on contrary, I always found myself surprised by them in one way or the other. And that’s what I’m going to talk about.
To add some context:
I work at Aasaanjobs — a recruitment company which provides employment to blue collar jobseekers across India. Hence, you will see lot more examples around interview, application, id cards, etc. Also, as blue collar jobseekers in India were introduced the magic of internet recently, the word,‘Next Billion Users’ comes into the picture.
So, here are ‘few more’ learnings from designing for the next billion users:
1. Are you aware of the world outside the mobile?
A while ago, we were testing out different ideas for recording attendance at Job Interviews. One of the idea was — when a jobseeker reaches the venue, he/she can scan a QR code pasted there to record attendance. I showed the prototype to one of our users. As soon as I presented the QR code, he said —
“Bhaiyya, yaha muze paisa bharna hai kya?”
Do I have to pay anything here?
Oh boy! With the rise of digital wallets across India, it’s very common to see a lot of such QR codes pasted across shops in India. So, the QR reminded user of paying a shopkeeper using a digital wallet, whenever he was short of cash.
And it reminded me that how unwary of surroundings I was. In India, people are often duped to pay in the name of providing a job. And putting QR code sticker was not a good idea!
So, this made us realise that —
Your designs are not limited to the screens!
It is really important to be aware of the world in which your user lives (not just your competitors). More importantly how’s that world changing with time?
With the rise of mobile internet, our economy is changing faster than ever. People are paying through digital wallets. Social media is getting stronger by the day. Travel has become cheaper. People are using bike rental services.
And all of this is affecting the way people perceive your app or product. So, don’t shut yourself inside office cubicles. Observe the trends, read the local news, then use all of that to serve your users better.
2. Are you sure about going 100% digital?
We always market ourselves as a digital recruitment company — we operate everything online, dashboards, apps and blah blah blah. But going “full digital” is almost impossible — at least for the time being.
Here’s my first hand experience:
To speed up the process of employee onboarding, we came up with this concept of “Digital ID cards”. It was appreciated by our clients at the start, but eventually we saw a rise in the requests for physical ID cards. Because —
“Yeh app wale ID card pe log vishwas nahi karte! kuchh official dedo!”
“People do not trust this digital ID cards. Give us something ‘official’”
Although lot of efforts are being put into making everything online, paper hasn’t lost its value. Traffic police still ask for physical licenses. You still need to sign papers to rent a house. And my dad still prints out flight tickets!(I mean who does that!)
India is still hesitant to go “100% digital”.
We should definitely strive to be 100% digital, but it’s not all in your hand. Neither your users have any control over it. Unless society as whole starts trusting the digital world, there will always be an offline element to your product. (of course, there are few exceptions.)
So, don’t be bullish on making a ‘digital’ solution to everything.It’s okay to have offline + online solution to the problem at hand. Solution will change with time and will only get better.
3. If you want to talk to users regularly, why not setup a process around it?
Over the time we as an organisation understood the importance of staying in touch with users. So, we decided to make user research a habit. And whenever you want to make something into a practice, you better put some rules around it.
So we came up with rules like — every newly joined designer/product manager must spent 8 hours in a week talking to users. We made a bricks-and-mortar framework around how to build a questionnaire. So there’s minimum delay between realisation of need for research and the final conversation with user. Made a documentation template.
(Soon going to publish an article about our “quick & dirty framework of user research”. Stay tuned!)
Believe me, setting up such a process helps you cut through a lot of hesitation & fear amongst your colleagues regarding user research. Also, remember —
Knowledge has no meaning if it‘s not shared
We started doing regular user research presentations (Almost one every month). Apart from designers, it is important for other stakeholders like engineers to understand how users are reacting to our product. So, we involved them into these presentations. Also, we started documenting the research and made it available to all the employees.
4. Don’t stereotype; empathise :)
Whenever any discussion around NBU arises, people start complaining about ‘dumbness’ or ‘disloyalties’ of these users. People start talking about how mobiles are ruining people’s live, how Tik-Tok is taking over everything and what not.
But, as a designer, are we allowed to stereotype NBU? or in fact, any user?
You can’t judge people and empathise with them at same time!
(Credit for this awesome quote goes to Karen Faith. She gave an awesome talk about “getting out of your comfort-zone” at DesignUp. Every other quote, God swear, is an original composition. :D)
The moment you start stereotyping your users, you start becoming apathetic towards them. And as a designer, it’s very common to find yourself carrying burden of ‘stereotypical age-old personas’. How to save yourself from this? — spend some more time with users!
You’ll be surprised to see how smart these users are! How fast they fill the online forms. How efficiently they use their data packs. How they do ‘jugaad’ to get around so called ‘dark UX patterns’ in your apps.
Designers are often considered responsible for humanising a technology. But it’s better if we stop speculating about ‘how internet is ruining our youth?’ and start talking to users more, understanding them better & ultimately using the same internet to make life easier. :)
In past couple of years, the word, ‘Next Billion Users’ has started getting more buzz. As more n’ more people start working towards benefit of these users, we would start understanding them better.
I hope you find the story useful. Let me know what you think.
