UI/UX for Startups-Designing products for Indian Consumers #mojomeets
The 6th edition of mojomeets took place in Bangalore at Instamojo which put together a panel discussion and invited five experts to share their stories.
Session Highlights
Here’s a running list of learnings & insights from Session that I was able to capture:
The session started with Sampad Swain, Co-founder at Instamojo giving a short intro about Instamojo and their Design journey. He mentioned how Design played a pivotal role in the process of building Instamojo.
The biggest learnings we could get from building Instamojo was:
1. Do DIY products work in India? Well It Works
2. Affordability is greater than accessibility when building a product for India
3. Simplicity can only be experienced.
He highlighted saying that People will not care much about your brand, but will care about what it offers. People share links in bulk. Instamojo is a DIY product — and it works.
You should not tell people what your design is about — just show them. — Sampad
Mohamed Ansari moderated the whole Panel Discussion.
When asked about what is their understanding of Design? Here are interesting answers that popped out.
According to Tanushree, Design is about problem-solving.
User is not an entity but a person representing the ecosystem he belongs to and the context of his usage, matching this approach with Bussiness needs, thats a successful Design. Also it should communicate to the User at a personal level that’s where UX comes.
She also talked about how design has empowered Women.
According to Vishal, Design is the overall experience of the consumer where his expectations are met.
Jatin feels Design is beyond UI/UX, its WHAT, WHO, HOW. There’s no particular way of solving the problem. There’s are infinite ways of solving it but we need to just focus on the problem and how to solve it.
Ajith says “Design is about effective communication”. The three things that matter the most are Communication, Value, Honesty.
According to Sidharth, Design is about solving Ill-defined problems.
The speakers also discussed Design Thinking, they added that Design Thinking is Common Sense. They spoke about Bias and how it has stopped us from thinking differently and that’s where the design thinking framework comes in hand.
Coming to point……
How do we Design products for Indian Consumers?
Here are some Learnings
Most Internet users are coming from India
Inherent focus is on Mobile Applications. eg UPI overtaking Cards for Payment.
India is Community Driven Country
The biggest brands in India are community-driven ones. eg Amul and Cadbury Chocolate established a web of trust and emotions, relying on community-based solutions.
You tell me its good, I’ll use it .
Don't Forget Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cities in India
Understand the importance of personalizing and catering to the consumer base in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities of India. To cater to different regions, invest in vernacular languages and Focus on making the products local and easy.
- Understand the Different Usecases.
- Think and Do a Fair amount of Testing.
Indian Consumers are habituated towards using things in certain ways, If we keep updating or Changing it. We may lose consumers.
3. Think about Technological aspects.
eg Internet Connectivity is not accessible everywhere in Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cities.
4. Consider Voice UX — a friendlier option
Don't take the western idea of Design, aesthetics, etc while designing for Indian Consumers.
We should not apply western culture while designing for Indian Consumers. Here localization is the key. Our Indian aesthetics are different from the western audience.
Don't come in as a Designer to tell the User that i know what is best for you. Come in to solve their problems.
Change the idea from Observing to Participating.
Observing may give you wrong insights but Participating in it will give you a whole new understanding of things.
The Panelists continued the discussion with a few questions from the Audience.
They also spoke about the Design Framework and how it keeps changing with respect to projects due to time and budget constraints.
The framework is there to guide you.
Define the problem + Understand + Get the right Usecases + Plan it better
Last but not least, a very important point that Ajith stressed on was
Designers should respect Time, Save Time to Think Creatively
— Happy Designing!
