This week in User Research & beyond

Interested in knowing more about tech user behaviour?  We present you with news and insights from across India on how users are making decisions and adapting their preferences. 

News of the week:

The Economic Times noted on September 30, 2020 that Cisco’s virtual meeting application Webex is highly popular in India due to the surge in work-from-home employees. The app is used for conducting virtual meetings, and India has seen sign-up for around 4 million new users since March 2020 (Source)

Opinion of the week:

The lockdown induced by COVID 19 and the subsequent hibernation of global economies have transformed user behaviour. Reliance on digital platforms for shopping, entertainment, education and work has increased since March 2020. Yourstory.com describes how digital payment solution providers in India believe contactless payments are here to stay. (Source)

Tweet of the week: 

There’s a myth out there: Users Hate Design Changes. This isn’t true. Users don’t hate design changes, they hate the choices designers make when rolling out a change.https://t.co/c1OCZSiloq pic.twitter.com/mvziJFFDLx

— Jared Spool (@jmspool) September 30, 2020

Jared Spool, UIE.com, @jmspool  (Source)

Product of the week:

Lokal App (Download App)

Janish Pasha and Vipul Choudhari developed Lokal, since they believed that a context-based news app would solve India’s fake news problem. Since the app didn’t experience anticipated traction upon release, they decided to interview around 500 users across India. As a result, they started presenting news in both text and video. This along with business classified and hiring/matrimony ads enabled them to see a surge in users. They recently got selected for Google for Startups Accelerator 2020. 4.5 million people use the app today. (Source)

User Advocate of the week:

Deepak Singh, Product Manager

Deepak Singh works as a Product Manager of Flipkart from September 2019. After graduating from IIT Kharagpur, he worked at companies such as MX Player and UpGrad before joining Flipkart. He releases a weekly newsletter at Growth Catalyst and his recent article published on September 27, 2020 discusses how user-centric onboarding is the stairway to growth as it leaves a better first impression in the minds of users. (Source) Follow Deepak on Twitter.