I travelled to Indonesia on a business trip and during my stay there I took up a small personal project of getting to know the local cell phone market and possible opportunities to design new application. As I am an active member of couchsurfing which is a wonderful place to meet local people and escape from all the touristy things, it didn’t take too long to find David, my Indonesian friend and local guide. He accompanied me to many small shops, malls dedicated for cell phones and even showed me around the night life in Indonesia. After the ice breaker in Bahasa, it was really easy to talk to people and shoot pictures.

After going over my notes and photographs, I put together a presentation to summarize my findings. I am publishing it here for anybody who is interested in designing application for emerging markets and wants a quick overview.

Download presentation

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All the photographs are taken by me and although I don’t mind sharing them, I would appreciate if you give me some credit and don’t steal them completely

Nokia Lifetools is an SMS based infotainment service available in India, Indonesia, China and Nigeria. It provides information on Agriculture, Education, Entertainment and Healthcare. The client, even though runs on SMS protocol, has been designed in a way that the user gets as engaging experience as a web based client. Some of the key information provided through Lifetools are agriculture, english learning and healthcare.

I worked on various versions of the client designed for both S30 (low end) as well as S40 (mid range) based single and dual SIM devices. I participated in competitor product analysis, conceptual and detailed design, handling localization and observing usability studies at remote locations.

Brain storming on onboarding experience

High level subscription flow

Wireframe samples

Looking for some action after a long Usability study day

Nokia Listings is a local marketplace on mobile where users can discover and transact with others via a simple interface. The client is intended for the average emerging market user on a mid-end (Series 40) phone. So it works via SMS if GPRS is not enabled on the device. The product supports listings for “Jobs”, “Buy and Sell” and “Local Services”. I worked on the Job section of the product and designed use cases for OTA (Over the Air) application update, profile and alerts management.

Wireframes samples

Use case for profile management



Use case for dual SIM

Nokia maps point of interest is an information layer on the exiting maps application for S40 (mid range) platform, where popular places such as monuments, buildings & local businesses can be registered through crowd sourcing. I worked on the proof of concept for Nokia Research Center and designed wireframes for various use cases for the client as well as web interface.

Wireframe samples

For handheld



For web

In April 2009, I went to Maputo in Mozambique as the user study lead on the Promosoft MHCI mobility team. Promosoft wanted us to design a new product for micro finance operations in Mozambique, so we were there to learn more about the needs of various banks, micro finance institutes and their clients.

Some of the HCI methods that I had applied on the field were, contextual inquiries, artifact walk-through, passive observation, informal interviews etc.

It was a great new experience to conduct a user study on the “green fields” We also spent a night in a small village near Xai Xai with a peace corps volunteer.

Based on the research I generated number of ideas with my team and we designed a SaaS based micro finance solution for small and medium sized micro finance institutions.

For more information see the concept video below:

or visit Mambu online which two of my team members translated into reality from the initial design.

Photo courtesy: Eugene Danilkis

In this semester long design project, me and my colleague Josh Coe designed a service for a sports park in Funchal, Portugal. The final deliverables were concept video of our proposed service and the design process that we followed.
We designed a multichannel notification system based on web, sms, kiosk and public displays, that connects intentions of people to the physical & social context through exposure of information. I planned and conducted a survey and number of user interviews, designed the customer journey and service blueprints based on the research, and generated number of ideas and validated them through speed dating. One of the concepts was finally video sketched.

Our process included

• early exploration (territory map)
• immersive research (stakeholder map, customer journey, service blueprint, customer typology)
• experience prototyping
• initial design (scenarios, story boarding)
• speed dating to validate our design ideas
• concept video

service blueprint

design ideas

storyboard

concept video

I designed a tour planning application as the final project of the Interface and Interaction design. I conducted an informal interview session with the tourists visiting Madeira to understand their needs. Based on the interview data, number of ideas were generated and validated through a speed dating session on additional tourists. After that I created the paper prototypes followed by the hi-fidelity prototype.

paper prototype sample

final video sketch

The final video sketch was made by my colleague and team mate in Flash.

interactive prototype

I created an interactive prototype based on the wireframes. Please switch to single page view mode in Acrobat Reader to get a better feel. Follow the green highlighted buttons to navigate through the application.

We were asked to design a location-based blogging system for handheld devices. The challenge was to provide a rich experience in a limited screen size. Our 3 member team designed an application for Symbian-based phones as opposed to the iPhone as most teams had selected. We were intrigued by the challenge that the smaller screen size of the Symbian phones provided.

I designed the persona of a 32 years old male Tommy Lundgreen who works during winter at the airport and travels rest of the time various places for hiking.

wireframe samples

I designed 3 posters for the final project of communication design on the issue of child labor.

In this semester-long assignment, each 5 member team was asked to design a collaborative shopping system based on an existing contextual inquiry video. Emphasis was given more on the methods and processes that the team followed. We employed a number of techniques like modeling, heuristic analysis, keystroke level modeling, cognitive walk-through, think aloud usability study and, experience prototyping. The team at one point had difficulty coming to a conclusion due to the lack of data from the CI video, which drove us to a super market in downtown for a body storming session, to find an answer.

The team enjoying a pie after the body storming session

The end product was a browser plug-in and an interactive interface that can be used in multiple platforms like iPhone, web, Microsoft surface etc. during the exploration phase, the team identified key issues such as difficulty in taking the final decision, loosing interest due to lengthy buying procedure and many more. We addressed the problem by designing an engaging game like experience that will make group shopping a truly fun activity.

models

Flow Model

Cultural Model

design ideas

Most of our design ideas were inspired from the data collected during the contextual inquiry. The influences highlighted by the cultural model identified group harmony as a key factor for consideration in the group shopping experience.

wireframe samples

Landing page wireframe

Detailed page wireframe