Designing for New Internet Users
6 Principles to Keep in Mind
A billion more people will come online by 2025. They’ll mostly live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America — often in rural areas with less access to formal education.
Put yourself in their shoes. Your first smartphone lights up in your hands after dreaming about this moment and saving up for months. But as confusing shapes and words appear, you start to feel overwhelmed. Is this world really for you? You’ve heard you can chat with your friends, but don’t know where to tap or how to begin. You’ve heard you can buy goods, but aren’t sure what all these symbols mean. You’ve heard you can pay your local shopkeeper, but don’t trust the money will actually get there. These challenges require a new way of designing. One that works for everyone. Regardless of where they live, what language they speak, or which device they use.
In 2020, we launched the Digital Confidence Design Tools in partnership with Google’s Next Billion Users team and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to equip technology-makers with resources to build more inclusive digital services. Since then, we’ve been working with organizations to prototype and pilot digital services that connect underserved users to the digital economy. We’ve designed mobile apps that allow low literacy users to complete their first e-commerce transaction, micro-merchants to digitize their operations, and migrants to send remittances back home.
Whether you’re a designer looking for inspiration or a product leader making the case for scaling to a new audience, here are some of the principles we’ve uncovered along the way when designing for new internet users (note: all company names removed for confidentiality):
1. Let users look before they leap
The process of setting up an account or trying a new feature can be especially overwhelming for users who are less digitally confident. You risk losing a user if the onboarding flow is long, doesn’t communicate its value early on, or is otherwise confusing.
Let users preview or try out apps and features without risk before committing. This helps them discover new possibilities, overcome the fear of doing something “wrong,” and weigh the cost (e.g., paying for data or using limited storage) associated with each task.
Ask — Does the product:
- Tell users how the new app or feature benefits them upfront
- Offer opportunities to “try it out” before asking users for a big commitment (e.g., creating an account)
- Demonstrate why a data expenditure is “worth it” by showing benefits
2. Provide timely guidance
People with low digital confidence are accustomed to relying on friends, family, or neighbors to learn something new or troubleshoot a problem. It’s hard to know who to trust for honest advice and help when they’re facing issues in the digital world. They may feel embarrassed or ashamed to ask for help, especially when their question relates to something “simple” like using their own smartphone.
Make each step in your experience clear by providing in-the-moment guidance about what to do next.
Ask — Does the product:
- Incorporate multiple forms of guidance throughout the experience (e.g., interactive tips within the interface or access to help via a phone call)
- Leverage teachable patterns that make it simple for users to guide one another (e.g., consistent button placement and color)
- Help users get acquainted to new features or flows
3. Minimize hierarchy
When you’re first using a smartphone, it’s easy to quickly feel lost in a complex app. It can be disorienting and counterintuitive to follow complex nesting and deep hierarchy.
Reduce nesting and avoid complex navigation in order to create straightforward flows.
Ask — Does the product:
- Offer easy discovery with low barriers to entry (e.g., tappable and browsable curated lists and pre-populated content)
- Introduces simple tasks before requiring complex flows
- Offers a clear “back” or “undo”
4. Offer multiple modes of interaction
People have a range of textual and digital literacy levels, and today’s interfaces are often not accessible to them. Interaction paradigms like voice are opening digital floodgates for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Present information in multiple form factors (e.g., text and image, or audio and text). Allow input in more than one form (e.g, text and voice). This enables greater confidence and flexibility than relying on any one medium.
Ask — Does the product:
- Allow users to easily choose whatever mode works best for them in the moment (e.g., text and voice are given equal weight)
- Take inspiration from the interaction modes used in popular, local apps
- Offer visual, textual, and audio descriptions of core actions
5. Embrace local aesthetics
Visual language created without regard for the local semiotic landscape often doesn’t make sense to new internet users. A “shopping cart” icon, for instance, may not resonate with someone who isn’t familiar with supermarkets. A “magnifying glass” icon may not be associated with asking a question or searching for something.
Adopt local visual and language cues in order to demonstrate your product’s relevance and ensure adoption.
Ask — Does the product:
- Use imagery that celebrates local culture and aesthetics
- Use iconography that is locally relevant and familiar
- Use visual metaphors that are based on your users’ everyday lives
6. Use understandable language
The next wave of internet users often live in areas that support a mix of regional, vernacular, and official languages. While they’re accustomed to switching languages in everyday life, it’s less intuitive (and sometimes impossible) to do so on their phones or within a product experience. Often they’ll skim text on their phones or have their phone set to a language in which they are not fluent to help them practice.
Allow users to access content in their preferred language; and be short, simple, and direct.
Ask — Does the product:
- Pair visuals with words to reinforce meaning (e.g., buttons with a label and an icon)
- Allow users to access content in their preferred language
- Give users the option to have text read aloud
Designing an inclusive digital economy in a post-pandemic world
COVID-19 has accelerated an existing shift of the economy moving online, from government financial aid to e-commerce to contactless payments. Despite this progress, the pandemic threatens to set back internet usage among new internet users. Income losses may lead to mobile data rationing. Moreover, a lack of digital fluency makes it hard for new internet users to interact with complex services that involve their money and are shifting from analog to digital for the first time. So, as the pandemic increases the importance of technology in the economy, we risk widening the gap between people who benefit from the internet and people who don’t. But if the private, social, and public sector work together, we can build a more equitable digital economy coming out of the pandemic — for the billions with smartphones today, and the next billion to come.
Come build with us
If you are interested in the problems of last mile financial inclusion and helping micro-merchants grow, we’d love to hear from you. You can reach us at LastMileMoney@ideo.com.
