Designing for the next billion users

Designing for the next billion users requires careful consideration of user experience (UX) to ensure that products are accessible, usable, and enjoyable for users with diverse backgrounds, cultures, and technological abilities. Some key UX considerations while designing for the next billion users include:

Accessibility

Designing products that are accessible to users with disabilities, including users with visual, auditory, and motor impairments.

Crafting products could be kind of complex, but not unfeasible, for users with special needs. In the visual, HOH, cognitive, motor, and other classes of special needs, certain innovations could be:

1. For the Visually Impaired – Contrast colors for better visibility with a well-enough font style and size, that doesn’t have an adverse effect on the UI elements, could potentially be a way to make content have a finer apparentness. Apart from this, constructing appropriate ‘alt text’ for the images is another aspect that enhances accessibility. With better design imagery, even heavy content can be optimized. Moreover, to make the UI design color-blind-friendly, one can make use of a high contrast ratio.
2. For the Deaf and HOH (Hard of Hearing) – Making use of subtitles and transcriptions for audio media. Captions, in a similar manner, can be used to play the same role.
3. For the Cognitively Challenged – Delivering simple language, consistent navigation, understandable hierarchies, a good informational framework, etc, could be factors that can help users challenged with dyslexia, learning disabilities, and other cognitive ailments. Apart from this, proper time adjustments must be reformed for time-dependent tasks. Neglecting spelling errors can also help. The content must be developed while keeping in mind the safe content guidelines, like trigger warnings, flash warnings, limiting flash to less than 3 times per second, avoiding red-colored blinking content, etc.
4. For Motor Ailments – Designing content that’s compatible with both keyboard navigation and command technology, and other assistive technology could prove beneficial to users with certain motor challenges.

Formulating augmented accessibility, requires, beginning with a concept, researching, designing, auditing, checking for errors, re-analyzing, etc, which if followed, could cause a UI/UX to stand out.

Usability

Ensuring that products are easy to use and understand, even for users with limited technological experience or skills.

The term ‘usability’ defines how practical and with what ease, would a user be able to perform a specific task with your product. Usability is a choice consisting of a rigid framework of solid research and user-tested design decisions, with the aim of ease of use. There are five core qualities that need to be measured to understand the degree of usability a product has.

1. Learnability – The swiftness with which a fresh user is able to understand the basic navigation and functions
2. Efficiency – The time needed for users to perform a specific task
3. Memorability – The handily with which users can reacquaint themselves with the navigation and functions, after revisiting the site
4. Errors – The standard and type of errors that users make, and how can they minimize and rebound from these errors
5. Satisfaction – The level of comfort and satisfaction users experience while they perform tasks through the interface

Localization

Adapting products to meet the needs and preferences of users in different regions and cultures, including language and cultural differences.

It is due to localization that a specific product is able to meet the language and culture of a given locale market, which in turn spreads product usage. Regards that must be kept for designing a particular culture, community, or group of individuals consist of the date and time formats, the numeric format followed, the currency, keyboard usage, sorting, collation, symbols, icons and colors, legal aspects, etc. In fact, texts, graphics, and other sorts of multimedia containing references to the objects, ideas, and actions of a given culture, must be carefully understood, and shouldn’t be misinterpreted or viewed as insensitive. An idea of local nuances must also be kept in mind. Understanding the religious angle of a community is another factor, apart from the do’s and don’ts.

User-centered design

Keeping the user at the center of product design and development, by acknowledging their requirements, and feedback is what user-centered design is all about. It adds an emotional insight to the product. The design must have the notion of the interaction of the product with the end-user, the requirement clarification, an iterative designing process, and a feedback loop mechanism.

Conducting user research and testing to gain a deep understanding of user needs and preferences, and designing products that meet these needs.

A five-stage design process is considered while formulating a UCD:

• Empathize
• Define
• Ideate
• Prototype
• Test

By taking these and other UX considerations into account, designers and developers can create products that are accessible, usable, and enjoyable for the next billion users and help drive the growth and adoption of technology in new and exciting ways.