Emerging Markets and User Research - Apala Chavan

transcript

Human Factors International, Inc. User Experience for a Better World

Innovative Solutions – What Designers Need to Know for Today’s Emerging Markets

27th,August 2011

Bengaluru

Apala Lahiri Chavan

Chief Oracle and Innovator

Human Factors International

Pioneering User Experience strategy, research, and design since 1981

Largest User Experience company in the world

Local proximity, global reach…

Human Factors International

Attention

Decision§ Emotion

§ Motivation

§ Arousal

§ Unconscious Learning

Human Centered Design

The HFI Framework™ Version 6.0 Innovation and User-Experience Design

This is a journey

"through the

looking glass" of

different world

views, different

realities, and

different

conventions.

Another Culture But The Same Design?

We already know that the usual ways of designing and

introducing a product or a service may not

work anymore in the newly opened markets. Not

only do the cultural differences play a major role in what, how, and

why customers behave the way they do, but the existing

technologies, distribution channels, people’s

wants and needs become new elements to consider.

The Three Myths About Emerging Markets!

Emerging markets are nations with social or business

activity in the process of rapid growth and

industrialisation.

- Wikipedia

According to The Economist, many people find the term outdated,

but no new term has yet to gain much traction. Emerging market

hedge fund capital reached a record new level in the first quarter of

2011 of $121 billion.

"regions of the world that are experiencing rapid

informationalization under conditions of limited or partial

industrialization." - Emerging Market Report, 2008

Emphasizing the fluid nature of the category, political

scientist Ian Bremmer defines an emerging market as “a

country where politics matters at least as much as

economics to the markets.”

It appears that emerging markets lie at the intersection

of non-traditional user behavior, the rise of new user

groups and community adoption of products and

services, and innovations in product technologies and

platforms.

-Emerging Market Report, 2008

The Themes

1. Culture

2. People

3. Technology

4. Transition

Culture

Who Exactly are the Emerging Markets?

Culturally Speaking…

India -

China -

The 3 charts below and on the next slide

present the position of each of the three

countries with respect to each cultural

dimension. This is based on our own research.

Interestingly, we found a lot of difference

between what we saw and what we had read

with respect to secondary research data

regarding these countries and there position

on these dimensions..

The Story of a Pair of Non Identical Twins

India -

China -

The Story of a Pair of Non Identical Twins

Genre of Methods

Culturally Speaking…

People

Demographically Speaking…

Older or Younger?

Viewing the Population - China

Viewing the Population - Brazil

Viewing the Population - India

Technology

Technologically Speaking…

Technology adoption and usage has sometimes been unexpectedly much ahead of

mature/developed markets. The ubiquitous rise and rise of the cell phone is a prime

example.

Technology has, like the cell phone, often become the great equalizer in these , often

unequal and hierarchical economies.

The population in these countries are eager to adopt and use technology in spite of some

obvious disadvantages like illiteracy and very low income levels.

What is happening in Asia is a "re-imaging" of the role of the mobile - Dr. Genevieve Bell.

Technologically Speaking…

Transition

The profile of the typical global consumer

will be very different very soon!

Individually poor BUT collectively rich

VERSUS Individually rich AND collectively

A Common Thread

Another Culture But The Same Design?

Designing for Emerging Markets

A Cautionary Tale!

34DNA of ‘this as well as that’

“Societies change around their DNA. And plurality or „this as well as that‟ is the DNA of indian society.

The concept of avatars creates many dramatically different manifestations of the same god.

The bloodthirsty kali, the patient wife parvati and the strong ten armed durga are all but different forms of

the same divine feminine power.” Bijapurkar

Role of User Research

In China

In Africa

In India

Environment

The Ecosystem View

Personal friends

Car Club

Business

contact

Relatives

Consumers

Internet forums

Restaurants

Shopping

Kids activity

Grocery

1. Discovering an Entire New Segment of Users

2. Advising against entering a new market

3. Advising relook at strategy for a specific

segment.

From Trendwatching

Research Methods

The Research Method Makes All the Difference

Vuja De and Culture Strain

Vuja de

Vuja de happens when you enter a situation you've been in a

thousand times before, but with the sense of being there for the

first time.

Cultural Ideal versus Cultural Practice

The places where the tensions are strongest between those two things are

the most interesting. They're also often places where technologies are very

successful.

57Culture specific methods

Bollywood Technique

Jungian Archetype Probe

Emotion Ticket

Funky Facilitator

Bizarre Bazaar

The Genie Box

The Semantic Dial

Rasas are the essence of our emotions

that exist both in the body and the mind.

The central objective of classical Indian

art and drama is to create rasa in the

spectators, in order to communicate or

suggest a kind of knowledge that cannot

be clearly expressed in words.

Classical Indian art will try to cover all

rasas found in life, but will focus on the

most desirable rasas.

Less agreeable rasas may also enter

Indian art, but mostly to create the

contrast that makes the agreeable rasas

even more powerful.

Delving into ‘Rasa’s [Emotion]:Inspiration from the Structure of Indian Esthetics, Art Forms & Poetics

This culture probe was designed as a set of cinema ‘Emotion tickets’, carrying the Bollywood theme forward.

•These tickets were categorized to express the nine ‘rasas’or emotions used extensively in Indian performing arts.

•These ‘rasas’ were surprise,happiness, anger, loathing, courage, desire,disgust/despair, mirth, pity

•Each ‘rasa’ was expressed through images and dialogues from Bollywood films.

•Users were expected to articulate their feelings when interacting/using any financial service and/or technology, by recording it using the appropriate rasa.

Delving into ‘Rasa’s [Emotion]:Inspiration from the Structure of Indian Esthetics, Art Forms & Poetics

This method has been designed to make use of archetype folk characters

rooted in the Chinese culture and to have users transfer those archetypal

characteristics to other contexts.

The method entails using little pewter statues of characters from Chinese folk

tales. These characters are very well known amongst the Chinese

population.

Exploring archetypal associations in a „playful‟ and projective mode helps

elicit unfiltered and deep responses from normally „formal‟ and „not free with

strangers‟ Chinese users.

Jungian Archetype Folk Probes

The Bollywood Method

During the user testing the users were

subjected to dramatized scenarios rather

than a simple statement of the task.

The idea was to help users get over the

problem of articulating what they are

thinking when doing the tasks.

It is usually very difficult for Indian users

to „talk aloud‟ when doing a task during

usability testing. Immersing them via a

scenario seems to help take attention

away from the „seriousness‟ of the task.

It was also noticed that using metaphors

from cricket (such as the analogy of the

very popular cricket commentators who

provide running commentary of the

game) and Indian commercial films

further helped the process of articulation

Thank You…

hfi@humanfactors.com

Thank You…

Human Factors International, Inc. User Experience for a Better World