Designing for the Next Billion Indians

Part 1: Impact of Research

House help, security guards, delivery personnel, electricians — they are all examples of the blue-collar workforce in India. Our nation has over 300 million or 30 crore blue-collar workers, but it is one of the largest unorganized sectors in the country. The lack of structure makes it difficult for companies to employ blue-collar personnel with ease and efficiency and limits the job-seeker’s access to well-paying opportunities.

To make things easier for the sector and to organize the blue-collar segment, we collaborated with NSDC in 2020 to create a Proof-of-Concept for a blue-collar job portal — ASEEM. One may think of it, for ease of understanding context, as “LinkedIn for the blue-collar world”. It would connect retail personnel, security personnel, delivery people, house-helpers, farmers, and more to high-paying employers looking for full-time or part-time hires.

As with any well-intentioned product, there were some bumps along the way, including time constraints for research and tight internal business goals to take the product to market. This resulted in us making assumptions regarding the behaviour and psychology of our end users. Needless to say, despite the obstacles, we came away with a treasure trove of knowledge.

The star of our take-away from the collaboration?
Research. This helped us immensely when, recently, we were approached to redesign the ASEEM app as a new product — BetterPlace App.

IDENTIFYING OUR USER

Users are the heart and soul of any application or business. Without someone to use it, the product cannot survive. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that we are able to understand our user base.

Our target audience largely comprised blue-collar professionals living in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, who were working as electricians, security personnel, farmers, house help, retail personnel, cleaners, and food stall managers or helpers.

RESEARCH: GETTING TO KNOW THE USER

While we had identified our users, there was a need to understand their behaviours, mindset, and preferences. In terms of technology, we thought it would be prudent to understand their level of digital literacy. After all, what is the point of creating an app that our target users cannot relate to or do not know how to use? Research done right is half the UX battle won; so, we dove into research methods and formulated relevant research outlines that would guide our future decisions.

I. Secondary Research: We carried out secondary research in the form of competitive analysis for UI/UX and communication strategy, but we knew that it would not be enough to understand our users.

II. Primary Research: We decided to go straight to the source. In order to get a better understanding of their lives and needs, we conducted primary research in the form of 700 surveys, both digital and experience-center-based, and 20 interviews, with our identified audience, covering their goals, fears, linguistic prowess, and level of digital literacy. We ensured that the questions asked were pertinent, yet open-ended enough for the user to give us any additional information that we might not have thought of. Our audience did not disappoint and we came away with valuable insights.

RESEARCH LEARNINGS

Overall Learnings: While goals were somewhat common across sectors, with upskilling, higher earnings, landing good jobs, and fulfillment of family duties trending the charts, the findings for language skills and the level of digital literacy revealed a chasm between the Tiers and amongst the various professions.

Linguistic and digital skills: Blue-collar employees who worked as electricians, security personnel, and in retail, exhibited proficiency in both English and Hindi, along with their native tongue (if different), spent 3 to 5 hours on their smartphone, and were well-versed with the various uses of the device, including but not limited to, online payments, banking, data transfer, disk cleanup, and downloading. They were also somewhat frequent users of popular apps like WhatsApp, Youtube, and Instagram.

In contrast, cleaners and food stall managers or helpers from Tier 2 cities were not proficient in English, spent less time on their smartphones, and avoided any form of online financial transactions, despite having a bank account. Their smartphone features were limited to the use of Google search, YouTube, and WhatsApp. Farmers and house-help in Tier 3 cities had the lowest score in digital literacy, having spent no time on a smartphone, lacking a bank account, and being conversant in only their native tongue.

Privacy concerns: The discoveries did not stop there. Another eye-opening find was the lack of trust in digital platforms. Our users were uncomfortable with disclosing their information for fear of identity theft or other forms of a security breach.

TRANSLATING RESEARCH LEARNINGS TO RELEVANT INSIGHTS

Having understood the behaviour, preferences, and digital prowess of our target group, we were able to extract key insights that would inform our approach to overall experience, visuals, and communication. This would include not just UX Design, but UX writing as well.

Overall User Experience

• Contextual and clear information: Users are looking for relevant, contextual information that shows a clear connection. They also respond better to words and short lines, with information being presented one at a time.
• Minimal navigation: Our users are wary of too many navigation options on the same screen and of CTAs that are preceded by too many steps
• Constant engagement: Users need to be given a reason to return to the app. Subtle nudges and addition of other relevant and beneficial features, besides the job portal, would prove to be an effective form of maintaining engagement.

Visuals

Use of space and colours: Users do not want to be bombarded with visual cues. While bright colours are recommended due to their association with positivity, balance must be maintained with empty space or whitespace to ensure visual relief.

Pop-ups: Users do not like too many steps, but pop-ups must only be used when decisions have to be made quickly. Pop-ups that have too much information or require the user to do any form of research or homework will lose the user’s attention and trust.

Visual nudges as actionable: The use of familiar arrows and symbols for CTAs are encouraged.

Visual hierarchy: A clear visual hierarchy is preferred so that the user knows exactly what to do as the next step.

Use of illustrations, icons, and imagery: These are more comprehensive for our users. They also reduce the dependency on knowing any particular language.

Content Design

Communication style: Users prefer an informal, encouraging, and respectful tone of voice. A formal approach does not work for them. Here, UX writing plays an essential role as it balances brand voice and tonality, which ensures that the user feels confident, smart, valued, and respected, and the communication guidelines specific to the app.

User Orientation: Users prefer actionable items to chunks of information, with content categorised clearly.

Emotion and behaviours: Users need to be kept visually updated on their current progress in the user flow. Vague information should be avoided and there is a need to affirm that the user’s information is safe with us. Excessive use of our T&Cs and the Privacy Policy is frowned upon.

UX DESIGN: INFORMED BY INSIGHTS

By identifying relevant insights through research, we had gathered enough information to guide our decisions moving forward. The difficult part was ensuring that our visual communication strategy fulfilled not just the user’s requirements but also stayed true to our brand voice and personality. In order to ensure consistency across the UX department, we established a few UX principles, specific to the betterplace app.

Visual Design System

With our User Experience Principles in place, we set out to create a visual design system that could be used across the board for any visuals related to the new app. A visual design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, assembled together to build any number of applications. It consists of:

• The Style Guide — the brand’s preferred typography and other visual elements like icons and preferred colours
• Component Library — buttons, menu, navigation etc.
• Rules of Use

THE RESEARCH CONTINUES. AND SO DO WE.

As we continue to make improvements and add features to the app, there is constant interaction with our end-users for the purpose of testing and validation. Why, you ask? Well, the app must continue to grow with its users. Primary research, even after the app is built, ensures that we not only maintain relevance, but also increases our potential to help.

After all, the more we interact with the heart and soul of our existence, the closer we will get to make the world of the blue-collar workforce a betterplace.

Credits-
Blog Writing by Aakanksha B & Pujashree Nayak| Graphics Design by Ekisha Narain
Research Contributors- Janavi Vengatesh, Deeksha Yadav, Aseem Saini
Thank you Guys for putting this together!