What users want in their mobile phones?: localization for low socio-economic emerging market

This paper describes our experience in customizing the software design of an existing smartphone product for a localized market. This was targeted as a low-cost smartphone for the masses in the rapidly emerging market of India, and the sub-continent region. The earlier commercial version of the product was already designed with enough user research and R&D efforts for few other markets. The challenge was to improve the existing features to make the next product version more appealing to the users. Due to the pressing business demand for short release time, we adopted the 'Localization' strategy based on user-centered design process, wherein user research was conducted alongside the design activities. This paper shares our experiences and learnings from the challenges we encountered. We share several instances of how user stories were inferred, converted into localization concepts and finally refined into commercially viable solutions.