Video · ~38 min

Designing for the Next Billion Users (Google I/O '17)

Astrid Weber and Nithya Sambasivan, Google · YouTube (Google for Developers) Free Intermediate

Two Google UX researchers who did fieldwork across India and other emerging markets walk through what actually trips up new internet users: low literacy, English-only interfaces, and phones that were never built for your app. It is grounded in real observation rather than opinion, which is rare for this topic. Treat it as a lens on your own users, then go watch how people in your target city actually hold and use their phone.

• Literacy and language are first-class design constraints: voice, icons, and visual cues often beat text for users who do not read English comfortably.
• Real users share devices, run low on storage, and stretch data, so onboarding and account patterns built for a single always-connected owner will fail.
• Watching people use products in their own context surfaces problems no amount of desk research will, so pair this talk with your own field visits.