Theme: developing for emerging economies
At Home Exercise: Single Story
Growing up my parents would reiterate various stereotypes regarding white people and black people to my siblings and me. One thing they repeated about white people are how white kids grow up disrespectful towards their elders (talking back, acting out, etc.). Things they repeated about black people are about how they’re scary. What enriched my understanding regarding these stereotypes was becoming friends with people of different backgrounds than me, learning from them about themselves and their backgrounds, and trying to understand their backgrounds through listening and empathy. By becoming friends with people different from myself, I get a snippet of them and how that changes my views on these stereotypes. Albeit, at times I do witness incidents similar to what my parents have stated, but just because it happens with one person doesn’t mean it applies to all.
During the group activity in class, we talked about different stories our parents have told us. Interestingly enough the three of us (who come from different backgrounds) have heard similar things regarding white people and black people from our families. We each agreed that in order to understand perspectives of others different from us we need to talk to them and try to gain a better understanding than by placing judgment.
Quotes
Amos Winter and Vijay Govindarajan, Engineering Reverse Innovations
“Products for emerging markets must provide 100% of the performance at 10% of the price.”
This quote sounds like common sense, but reading this article made me realize that multinational companies try to cut corners in design. This idea of taking out some features to make a product cheaper without truly understanding the users in these emerging markets is not user-centered design.
Sathik & Kumar, Global Product Design
“In the first instance, washing machines manufactured by Haier Corporation in China, based on a ‘global’ design definitions were not being used for washing clothes, as one would expect, in remote regions of China. Instead, they were being used to wash potatoes, fruits and vegetables, besides clothes (Ho 2003).”
I pulled this quote specifically because it makes me think of my family home. When my childhood home was renovated, my parents installed a dishwasher, but instead of utilizing its actual purpose, my mom uses the dishwasher as an extra storage space for containers, pots, and pans. I didn’t think of this as transitive culture, but in terms of this paper, it would be one example.
Chavan et. al, The Washing Machine That Ate My Sari – Mistakes in Cross-Cultural Design
“Affordability is a double-edged sword,. Lo barato sale caro, goes the saying in Latin America—“what is cheap ends up being expensive.”
This reading talked about emerging markets and price points. It’s similar to a theme brought up in “Engineering Reverse Innovations” about designing a product to sell at a fraction of the cost. It seems that designers didn’t do research into pricing and shopping behavior. This might be something to consider when designing a product for a different country: look into people’s attitudes about price, quality, and affordability.
Chavan et. al, The Washing Machine That Ate My Sari – Mistakes in Cross-Cultural Design
“Successful design for emerging markets, on the other hand, requires radical innovation.”
This makes me think that we should think outside of the box when it comes to creating products for an emerging markets. Instead of turning to traditional design methods, we should utilize other design research methods to capture a better understanding of this market.
Mya Frazier, How P&G Brought the Diaper Revolution to China
“Delight, don’t dilute.”
Short and simple UX tip when it comes to a multi-national company designing for an emerging market.
Gillette Article
“To successfully sell products overseas, particularly in developing markets, companies must tweak them so they’re relevant to the people who live there.”
We need to consider the users as well as understand their culture, experiences, and how they do things. We can’t just take users that are close to us who are the same ethnicity as the users in the emerging market and assume that the users close to us will have the same experiences.
Exploration
I never heard the term reverse innovation before this week’s reading, so I wanted to learn more about it. I found this article that contains a definition and examples of reverse innovation: http://www.casestudyinc.com/reverse-innovation-definition-and-examples.
The examples help me understand this concept better. Companies build for emerging markets first then expand. I didn’t know that Vicks Honey Cough was produced for Mexico first!
Tip #5 in “Engineering Reverse Innovations” reminded me of the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit. This article by Margaret Price promotes the idea of a persona spectrum (explained below) and the Inclusive Design Toolkit. (Margaret Price was a guest lecture for my HCDE 508 class last spring). https://medium.com/microsoft-design/kill-your-personas-1c332d4908cc
In their toolkit, there are different cards with types of constraints, and these cards can be used when brainstorming design. This allows one to get creative in thinking of a design solution that meets these constraints like the wheelchair example in the “Engineering Reverse Innovation” reading. There is also the idea of persona spectrum versus just the persona. This persona spectrum looks at 3 types of persona: permanent, temporary, and situational. This persona spectrum is in line with constraints. You design for the permanent, but it can benefit the temporary and situational.
Thoughts
Critique: It was hard for me to take away any lessons in the “Global Product Design” paper because I kept getting distracted by how it was poorly written. I appreciated being introduced to the idea of transitive culture as well as examples, but I had to do double takes throughout the paper because of poor writing.
It was funny to see “mms” and “sms” in a reading. These are phone terms I haven’t heard in a long time.
In the P&G Pampers reading, there was this sentence “…something Roberts has done in dozens of countries, including Germany, Russia, and Jakarta.” Jakarta is not a country; it’s a city.
I actually read the Gillette article twice last year, so I was highly familiar with the problem and what they did to create a better fitted product for the emerging market. However, it was nice to read other examples that made similar mistakes to Gillette. You would think these stories would be viral and that multinational companies would learn from them, but I guess making mistakes is the best way to learn.
Professional Inspiration
Think outside of the box! Get creative! What may seem like a great solution might not be the solution at all.
Hannah's Process Book 