All language subtitles for 25 - Akhil - A perspective on the Next Billion Users.en

My name is Akhil, and I am
a UX designer at Google.

I'm a part of the Next
Billion Users team.

We design products for

users that are coming
online for the first time.

In my job, I make
sure that people

can interface seamlessly
with technology.

An example of that would be,

let's say you want to
send your mom a text

and the phone has the
capability to send a text.

My job is to bridge that
gap and make sure that you

can tell the phone to
send a text to your mom.

Now if done well,

you won't be
pulling your hair.

The strange thing about
UX design is that

you won't really notice
it if it's good design.

You only notice it when it's bad.

There's about a billion users

that are going to come online

from countries like India,
Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico.

These users have slightly
different constraints

from users that we
typically design for.

One of them is that a
lot of these users are

using low-end devices.
What does that mean?

It could mean that they don't

have enough storage
on their phone,

which means they can't
install a big enough app.

That's an example of using
a low-storage device.

Sometimes they won't
have access to data or

they have access to flaky data.

You want to make sure
that your app works

offline just as well
as it works online.

Another example
could be literacy.

A lot of these users
aren't literate

or they might not speak English,

whereas a lot of the internet

is serving people
who speak English.

That's another thing
to think about.

How do we make
multilingual interfaces?

Or how do we make interfaces that

don't rely on language at all
for someone who can't read?

An interesting example of
this could be the music icon.

Something as simple as

a music icon that we
take for granted.

The music note is
something that a lot of

people don't understand, or
they don't know what it means.

The reason for that, we think

is because the music icon is

a very Western classical
music piece of iconography.

Since a lot of users
aren't exposed to that,

they don't actually know
what that icon means.

I think when technology
is built correctly,

it can be a very effective tool.

For things like navigating
to a place or finding

a partner or seeking information
or learning a new skill.

I don't think your access
to these things should

be based on how old or new
you are to technology.

A lot of our users that
are coming online for

the first time aren't often
confident with technology.

And so to not design for them and

not help them have

access to the internet
and to technology,

it feels like a great
disservice to them.