Key insights from a series of user tests on a No-Code prototype for digital payments
Digitisation and the pandemic has changed the way India transacts. But ask a user if they know what is UPI, most will answer with a no, and a few would still opt for cash or bank transfers as the 'safer' choice. If digital payments are the future, then Bharat needs product that they can trust, and use with confidence.
We learnt few key insights directly from users on how language helps in building trust, what Indian users think about digital lending, how does rejection helps in building trust and much more.
Parallel together with TTC Labs, CIIE.co, DICE and D91 Labs took part in a year-long initiative to understand how to build a digital culture of trust among the Bharat audience especially around Digital Financial Services.
This resulted in a Design Jam - a collaborative workshop of designers, fintech experts and business managers to co-create a digital payments product provocation for users from low and middle income backgrounds.
Pawan Bakshi, India Lead, Financial Services for the Poor at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Sanjay Jain, Chief Innovation Officer at CIIE were present during the final showcase, and gave us valuable feedback including a suggestion to test these ideas with the real users.
Read all the ideas from the Design Jam
InstaPay was a fictional digital payment application that uses UPI to enable peer-to-peer as well as peer-to-merchant payments. It also offered value added services like bill payments, mobile recharge, among others.
100% of the users even if knowing English, wanted the app to be in Hindi because English words were difficult to understand. Surprisingly, they still preferred English words like 'Eligibility' over Hindi 'Paatrata'.
60% of the users could easily discriminate between personal and non-personal data and were very cautious while sharing sensitive information like Aadhaar and PAN.
All users loved the idea of getting a loan from the comfort of their homes but they did not like the processing period wait of 3 days and wanted it instantly.
On one hand everyone loved the comfort of taking loan from a digital app but had massive mistrust with unknown apps preferring digital lending options from their banks.
Typically a brand loses customers the moment a loan is rejected, but while trying to show rejection with empathy, respect and explainability, we saw 80% of the users trusting the app even more.
We build upon the ideas from the Design Jam and polished them further to create a No-Code enhanced prototype of a digital payments app centred around five key ideas:
Using Hindi to increase explainability of difficult financial phrases
Using audio-visual clues to aid with text when words and phrases are difficult or non-legible
Replace long, complicated forms with minimal and essential data requests
Giving clear and simple information to make users understand digital transactions
Increase comfort by passing important information through a non-intimidating character
90% of the users had used UPI service providers before but had no idea that UPI itself was a government initiative under RBI and felt more confident to use the app when told through a video.
80% of the users felt instantly at ease when they saw the key features of the app even before sign up; convinced of the functionality, safety, and credibility of the app.
Users liked the app in their own language but they still wanted English words - not Hindi, to understand the financial terms preferring a language of communication rather than perfect translations.