chads, Brazilians were submitting their votes electronically via their own homegrown system, UE2000. Developed to perform even in the 90 percent humidity of the Amazon region, the system has been a success around the country and has since been deployed in Argentina and Mexico [ 11].

[ 11] Smith, C. E. Design for the Other 90%. Paris: Editions Assouline, 2007.

time design staff dedicated to studying the practices of users at work and at play. Recent Nokia models have featured a multiple phonebook to support phone sharing—common among emerging-market families— as well as dust resistance and a user interface in up to 80 languages. The phone is also equipped with a prepaid tracker that lets the vast majority of emerging-market users, who use prepaid service plans, keep track of their usage and call expenses.

As Desai points out, “The need is to develop products that are appropriate rather than merely cheap. Nokia created a mobile phone with a flashlight; no technological miracle, but an innovation that understood the rural Indian’s needs [ 10].”

[ 12] “Mobile Phones, the New Currency.” Indiatimes Infotech, 25 April 2007.<http://info- tech.indiatimes.com/ Technology/Mobile_ phones_the_new_cur-rency/articleshow/ msid-1954845,curpg- 1. cms>

Hydro Rollers and Wallet
Phones—the Infrastructure
Question

The extent to which well-designed mobile phones have become the telecommunications standard in emerging markets brings to mind assumptions about the technological infrastructure so easily made by designers from outside the target—as well as the ways in which contextually appropriate design can help markets leapfrog generations of technology entirely.

In thinking about emerging markets, Web designers and ASP engineers cannot take robust broadband for granted. Product designers also cannot assume that a power grid is as reliable as it might be in developed markets. That said, well-meaning Western designs for the other 90 percent feature a dispropor-

tionate share of low-technology solutions like cycle-powered, low-bandwidth B&W screens, hydro-rollers, and foot-operated water pumps [ 11]. These are great solutions for populations in which high technology is not yet part of daily life, but newer mobile technologies not requiring an extensive infrastructure or other dependencies are rapidly making their way into even the least developed regions of the world, and reaching “the bottom of the pyramid.”

In fact, the less developed the market, the better an incubator it can be for innovative ways of thinking about design. Unencumbered by “hardwired” networks and established patterns for product usage, new designs can far more quickly establish themselves as the standard in developed countries.

As in many developing markets, the terrestrial telephone grid in much of Africa and South Asia is not well established, and the financial services system has left many people without banks. Consequently, mobile phones have emerged not only as the communications standard, but also as a preferred financial instrument. By providing a range of near-field communications features not generally available in the West, including money transfers and an e-cash feature, mobile phone providers like the Philippines’ Globe Telecom have become a kind of shadow banking system. A new term, “wallet phones,” has sprung up to describe how the currency-free future is dawning in these “developing countries” [ 12].

In 2000, while the U.S. was still wrangling over hanging

In Search of Emotional Data,
the Bollywood Method

As designers survey the range of factors that influence product adoption—infrastructures, culture, language and dialect, purchasing power, literacy, urbanism, and terrain— entering an emerging market can seem like traipsing through a minefield. It’s not an inept analogy if one approaches design in the same old way. If the failure to understand the target market is the cardinal sin that causes so many other emerging design missteps, it is using traditional methods of design that causes designers to misunderstand their target market in the first place.

Conventional design methods are fine for conventional markets. Founded on familiar use patterns, cultural values, and market expectations, the processes and techniques keep designers well within their comfort zone. Successful design for emerging markets, on the other hand, requires radical innovation. It demands culturally sensitive and sometimes unorthodox approaches that can throw a designer off balance. But it’s only when designers transcend conventional thinking about product design that they come to really understand their target market and users and