About

Payal Arora, digital anthropologist and author of  the book, ‘The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West’ talks to Jayadevan on the sidelines of the Design Up conference in Bangalore on designing products for the Next Billion Users or NBUs. She is presently Professor & Chair in Tech, Values & Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University and has been researching digital behaviours in different economies for over ten years.Note: If you are listening to this episode on Apple Podcasts (click here), please do consider leaving us a good rating. It takes a few seconds, but helps make the show become more discoverable. You could also find us on other platforms like Spotify and Google Podcasts. If you want to listen to this on your phone’s browser window, just minimise the browser window and it should continue playing.TIMESTAMP:1:05 - The NBU as the new focus area for businesses and investors (especially Western)2:30 - The poor-rich gap and misunderstanding the wants of NBUs3:45 - Internet as the sole “leisure economy” for the NBU5:05 - Designing products for Next Billion Users9:50 - Catching up with socio-politics around NBU design vs allowing users to create for themselves12:30 - Surviving piracy while targeting NBUs13:25 - Implications for privacy of NBUs14:55 - Adding friction into product design to reduce social risks17:50 - Social Credit System in China, the biggest NBU product20:45 - Want for fabulousness by the NBU, digital products as an equaliser between the rich and poorLink to Payal’s website: http://payalarora.com Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe