Designing for the Rural Communities
How contextual understanding is key in building relevant & easy-to -adopt digital product.
If you live in Jakarta, you’ve probably ordered meal delivery through an app before. Maybe you’ve also used an e-commerce app to pay your electric bill or to load money onto your electronic toll pass. Apps like this are an integral part of everyday life in Indonesia’s major cities. Through these digital products, city dwellers have grown accustomed to the convenience and speed at which services are delivered. It’s probably one of the perks of city living to have adequate infrastructure that allows for technological advancement. This opens the door for the development of various digital products and services that aim to make people’s lives easier. With growing options of digital products available in the market, so does its people’s reliance on these products.
There may not be a similar dependence on digital products in rural areas. This is primarily due to the fact that the services that these digital products offer might not be relevant to the life of an average villager. With about 51% of Indonesians unbanked, and roughly 26% underbanked¹, digital payments only account for 20% of all transactions in Indonesia². People still prefer cash for daily transactions, particularly those living in rural areas, because they do not understand digital payment methods³.
Picture this as an example. Sri, a middle-aged woman in Gunungkidul, a district in Yogyakarta, finds the interaction in digital payment apps confusing. As a farmer who has limited experience with digital apps, she doesn’t understand much of the financial lingo displayed on the screen. On top of that, she has a hard time recalling the sequence that she has to tap on the screen to pay her monthly electricity bill. As a result, she becomes wary of digital payments because she is afraid to tap the wrong button on screen. Paying cash or having face-to-face interaction where she could ask when she couldn’t understand is much preferable.
Individuals from rural areas like Sri struggled to understand this process that seemed too complex. And that’s why contextualizing design to users is very important. This is just one area of example about how digital products necessities differ in different contexts.
Our experiences in Gunungkidul (Yogyakarta), Kupang and Soe (East Nusa Tenggara) couldn’t illustrate this experience better. In collaboration with our research partners, we got the opportunity to speak with village chiefs and village assistants to gain a better understanding of their roles and what we could do to support their work. They are looking for a digital solution to streamline the administrative tasks, such as setting up reports and getting leadership approval, so that they can focus on empowering village communities. The digital solution was needed to make sure everyone’s responsibilities are divided equally and managed according to their respective roles. There was, however, significant concern about whether the digital product would be easily adopted. It was therefore our objective to develop a user-friendly, intuitive application that can provide village helpers with everyday assistance.
We tried to learn more about everyone’s responsibilities by holding interviews and holding workshops to fully comprehend the administrative burdens they undertake. Through these preliminary discussions, we were able to put ourselves in the role of a village assistant and draft a storyboard depicting a typical day in the office and some possible approaches.
Our goal is that by creating this storyboard, we will all have a clearer understanding of the situation at hand and be better equipped to see any unforeseen consequences that may result from implementing initial solutions. We then asked for feedback from the village chiefs and other staff members by passing out post-it notes and color-coding them (red for concerns, yellow for approval). By doing so, we may avoid making sweeping generalizations about their requirements and instead focus on addressing their actual problems.
Creating a comfortable and familiar digital environment for users is key to creating a product that is easy to adopt. Thus, we conducted some preliminary research to determine what types of software the team was already familiar with, allowing us to determine their level of proficiency with a number of different digital platforms. Our research shows that many government systems rely on Excel, Word, and WhatsApp for their project management needs. These applications provide a foundation from which to pick the system’s font, color scheme, and icons. Knowing that people use a wide variety of browsers (including Internet Explorer), we’re also making sure that the fonts may be accessed from all platforms.
The visual language used in the design is also an extension of this idea. We applied a practice known as vernacular design, which is based on the premise that artistic expression should develop naturally out of established cultural norms. With this method, we can take advantage of what already exists while also giving the new design a refreshing spin.
We drew inspiration for our design from various sources, including the Indonesian flag, a map of the country, and the emblems of the Ministry of Villages and the Village Innovation Program. These visuals were used to further solidify the brand image. We also determined the colors of the brand based on the color of plants and soil, extending this concept even further.
An intuitive interface with a distinct visual style can greatly increase the adoption of a digital product. By learning about the user’s history and pain points, we can create an impactful product that is tailored specifically to their needs. Furthermore, it debunks the concept that digital products must be sophisticated and demand a particular level of comprehension.
There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to designing for users. Users have pre existing expectations, knowledge levels, and perspectives that shape how they interact with a product. Our job is to build a solution based on that context to create something people want to use rather than something else they have to figure out how to deal with.
In Sixty Two, contextualizing users’ context is our main mantra before coming into the design process.
If you’re curious about our process in delving into rural communities, head to this link for the full case study!
www.sixtytwo.co/works/world-bank-pendamping-app
The Team
Agustian Hermanto, Victoria Simansjah, Fikrun Nashih, Kautsar Anggakara, Lody Andrian, Dahlia Kuwatly
