[Sigia-l] "Messy" design, Indian style

[Ziya Oz]

We often get flummoxed when a Western oriented site needs to be redesigned
for non-Western audiences. Beyond the necessary mechanical changes required
for more mundane things like language, labeling, etc., there may also have
to be a whole new design approach altogether (cf. recent thread on Google in
Asia).

Here's a WSJ article on Indian supermarket design with insights on Western
vs. Indian approaches:

Americans and Europeans might like to shop in pristine and quiet stores
where products are carefully arranged. But when Mr. Biyani tried that in
Western-style supermarkets he opened in India six years ago, too many
customers walked down the wide aisles, past neatly stocked shelves and out
the door without buying.

Mr. Biyani says he soon figured out what he was doing wrong. Shopping in
such a sterile environment didn't appeal to the lower middle-class shoppers
he was targeting. They were more comfortable in the tiny, cramped stores --
often filled with haggling customers -- that typify Indian shopping. Most
Indians buy their fresh produce from vendors who keep vegetables under
burlap sacks.

So Mr. Biyani redesigned his stores to make them messier, noisier and more
cramped. "The shouting, the untidiness, the chaos is part of the design," he
says, as he surveys his Mumbai store where he just spent around $50,000 to
replace long, wide aisles with narrow, crooked ones: "Making it chaotic is
not easy."

Even the dirty, black-spotted onions serve a function. For the average
Indian, dusty and dirty produce means fresh from the farm, he says. Indian
shoppers also love to bargain. Mr. Biyani doesn't allow haggling, but having
damaged as well as good quality produce in the same box gives customers a
chance to choose and think they are getting a better deal. "They should get
a sense of victory," he says.

<http://tinyurl.com/2goedy>

One wonders what the Indian version of MySpace would look like then. ;-)

--
Ziya

"Every problem comes from a solution."