This is the eighteenth in a series of posts discussing themes raised in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by C K Prahalad. In chapter 2 the author refers to the importance of careful interface design. Bearing in mind that the customers in bottom-of-the-pyramid markets are often first-time users of products and services, such products and services have to be easy to understand and operate.
Interface design should take into account a range of factors including the languages spoken by prospective customers, their degree of literacy, and their familiarity with other products or services. In Mexico the retailer Elektra uses fingerprint recognition technology for its in-store automatic teller machines. There are numerous opportunities for interface innovation including the use of icons, colour coding, voice activation, and biometrics.
There can also be some surprises in the preferences of customers when it comes to interface design. For its agricultural electronic kiosks in rural areas of India, EID Parry discovered that its customers preferred an English-language interface over an interface in the local language, Tamil. Wireless communications technology and other forms of new technology have spread far more rapidly in India and Bangladesh than anticipated.