Tail wags the dog: How small-scale user research can influence a large-scale corporation
The Next Billion. Just uttering those words in the halls of the mobile industry gets the spreadsheets spreading and the buzzwords buzzing. After all, the next billion users in emerging markets represent a huge market segment that must mean huge profit, right? But how do we build products and experiences for people we know little about?
Take rural India for example, where 800 million of the Next Billion reside. With very little wired infrastructure, technology adoption, or internet access, mobile devices could prove be the great equalizer. However, empowering tools like mobile internet, government and NGO apps, and business/micro banking apps are not even available because of the lack of a nationwide data network. Add to this the alarming fact that, even in areas of India with data/3G coverage, data usage is unusually low, and you have an environment that is unlikely to change any time soon.
An equally challenging problem with innovating and designing mobile solutions for rural India is that, like most emerging markets, they are not a homogenous group. Rural India has vast numbers of ethnic groups, religions and cultural backgrounds, combined with varied educational levels, and over 200 mother languages.
As a mobile chip provider, Qualcomm has a keen interest in the Indian market. At the end of last year, Qualcomm Research decided to examine solutions for these design and technology problems in rural India as one project. While the Engineering team looked at technical solutions that could be implemented on India’s 2G networks, the Business team would examine the bottom line and the User Experience team would examined the problems from the human perspective by initiating a primary user research project in two regions of rural India.
While we could have made a few cross-cultural design recommendations for low data devices and called it a day, we believed that, if applicable user needs were not addressed, data usage would show little increase. So began the user research. We focused our research on universal human traits – communication, sharing, family connections and social circles. Interviewing and shadowing a small but diverse group of individuals and families in two regions of India, the project successfully outlined a path forward for both the user and technology, while proving to be one of the most interesting and insightful user research projects I have led. Perhaps more importantly, every group in Qualcomm who would listen was encouraged to take part in the research and make use of the results, proving to be the most valuable result of the project.
In this presentation, I will:
- Walk through the origins of the project
- Discuss the intricacies and eccentricities of planning, and executing research from half a world away.
- Have an interactive discussion about the misconceptions we sometimes carry with us as researchers.
- Discuss the findings and how they influenced the overall project.
- Share design ideas for emerging markets using design considerations – language, literacy, mental models – from the research.
- Outline the benefits that a small user research project brought to our product roadmap, planning, and bottom line.
Hopefully each attendee will identify with a piece of the story that they can take back to their own companies to promote the value of user research.