This report is about my learning and the experience gained in the internship programme at Samsung Design Delhi. I have successfully completed my internship in a period of six weeks. During my stay at SDD, I have handled one major project—Mobile for Indian Youth—from initial research to design ideation. This project was divided into four main stages: research on the youth segment; understanding differences between global and Indian youth; development of Indian youth user segments through personas; and finally culminating with design ideas mapped on a feasibility time graph. Regarding this project, I was given freedom to experiment with the design process followed under continuous guidance and feedback from SDD team members. The project was chalked out in various phases, and every phase ended with a presentation and future directions. The project is seen as a strong opportunity to uplift Samsung’s presence in the Indian market. Some of these ideas will be part of upcoming mobile phones by 2010-2011. This realistic goal helped me to stay focused on current user needs, missing links, and hence act on the opportunity areas figured out during research. Here I was able to work within the constraints of industrial requirements and tight deadlines. I also got exposure to diverse activities and industrial methodologies followed by designers at SDD. Interaction at different levels—users, designers, management, engineers, and testing—trained me in interdisciplinary learning and gave me the confidence to participate further in professional work.

A bank is a fundamental financial setup that formalises our financial activities. Banks have played a major role in helping manage our money and offer fair savings and credit products. With the intervention of digital technologies, banks have remodelled their functioning and reach. But there is a large section of society that is still unbanked or underserved. In my project, I have tried to understand the financial needs of urban low-income users and the mismatch between current banking services offered to them. Their needs and cognitive potential are different due to low levels of literacy, low monthly earnings, and low digital technology intervention. The most felt needs for this user group are easy account enrollment, suitable savings, credit, and remittance products with micro-value transactions on a suitable delivery channel. According to financial inclusion plans, the RBI has introduced No Frills Savings Accounts with relaxed KYC norms and encourages banks to collaborate with banking facilitators such as FINO to source banking services to unserved and underserved populations. This project, in partnership with FINO’s current setup, allows me to explore the potential of mobile banking, which offers suitable financial services in a safe and usable interactive experience.

The micro-task market allows small tasks (typically requiring work for a few minutes or even seconds) to be posted as requests on a common web-based platform. These tasks are then distributed among large numbers of potential respondents. The respondent can select and complete any task for rewards that can be monetary or non-monetary (e.g., enhancing reputation). To ensure quality, the completed work is monitored through filters and peer review. One such micro-task service is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. In this study, we investigated the barriers to such services being accessible to large numbers of potential users in developing country locations. For the purpose of comparative study, we adopted a few tasks from Amazon’s MTurk. The original MTurk interface was compared to four major interventions: MTurk in Kannada, Original UI and Kannada Video Instructions, Improved UI and Kannada Text Instructions, and Improved UI and Kannada Video Instructions. We calculated the effects of improved UI, instruction format, and language localization on the task completion and remuneration rates for micro-tasks among low-income novice computer users. We found that just language localization was not sufficient to enable micro-tasks, but improved UI and language localization proved positive. These results are instructive in outlining the challenges of having such supplementary income-generating opportunities benefit those with basic computer skills and low levels of income. We also present recommendations on key changes in the design of such services that can significantly impact access and usage among currently excluded user groups.