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.

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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 NBUs

3:45 - Internet as the sole “leisure economy” for the NBU

5:05 - Designing products for Next Billion Users

9:50 - Catching up with socio-politics around NBU design vs allowing users to create for themselves

12:30 - Surviving piracy while targeting NBUs

13:25 - Implications for privacy of NBUs

14:55 - Adding friction into product design to reduce social risks

17:50 - Social Credit System in China, the biggest NBU product

20:45 - Want for fabulousness by the NBU, digital products as an equaliser between the rich and poor

Link to Payal’s website: http://payalarora.com

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