MobileActive.org interviewed Apala Lahiri Chavan, an expert in Design for Emerging Markets. She is the current Chief Oracle and Innovator of Human Factors International. Through her experience working in the fields of human and computer interaction and user experience with a particular focus on emerging regions, Lahiri Chavan and her team have done cutting edge work in the design of interactive systems. More information about Lahiri Chavan and the work she has done can be found here.
In our interview, Lahiri Chavan talks to us about the importance of paying attention to contextual user needs when designing mobile technologies for users in emerging markets. She started her career as a computer programmer, although soon realized the lack of user-centered research employed in the development of interactive systems. This then motivated her to want to be an ‘advocate for the user’ as she explains in the interview. She wanted to start designing information systems that people could intuitively understand. Her passion to work with people in developing countries is what led her to the field of Contextual Innovation.
Contextual Innovations is a "systematic multidisciplinary process of inquiry into the new frontiers of user system interactions. It allows you to gain practical knowledge about your target markets to develop entirely novel, more useful and effective products and services." The importance of Contextual innovation is that is pay’s special attention to the unique user requirements of developing regions such has high illiteracy rates, multilingualism, and dialectal variation. Lahiri Chavan also also speaks about the importance of engaging citizens of emerging markets in to the design process.
To get a more detailed account of the phrase “Contextual Innovation’’ see Lahiri Chavan video about Design for Emerging Markets. She talks about the design process that must be employed when designing systems and products for users of developing regions. In this animation Lahiri Chavan goes through several processes of design innovations and calls attention to the importance of cross-cultural challenges.
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