Video · About 40 minutes

Challenges and learnings of building for the next billion users (Google I/O '18)

Google (Next Billion Users team: Nithya Sambasivan, Josh Woodward and colleagues) · Google I/O (YouTube) Free Intermediate India

Challenges and learnings of building for the next billion users (Google I/O '18)

Most localization advice is written for German and Finnish, this session grounds it in India instead: the team that built Tez (now Google Pay India), Files Go, and Datally talks through designing for users who switch languages, may not read fluently, and are on shared low end devices. It is honest about what actually failed in the field, not a polished case study. Good for seeing why voice, icons, and vernacular defaults matter before English does.

  • Designing in the user's primary language first, then adapting to English, is the opposite of how most teams build, and it changes onboarding, trust, and layout decisions.
  • Many users share a device and switch languages between people and sessions, so a hardcoded single language setting quietly excludes half the household.
  • Voice, familiar imagery, and offline friendly patterns often carry more of the interface than text does for users who are not fluent readers in any script.
Watch on YouTube ↗

The question it answers

  1. How do I design for users in India who are on cheap Android phones and slow, patchy internet?

Read with it

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