Going online for staying ‘on the line’

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‘Telecom’ was probably the hottest buzzword of 2010 in India, for all reasons right and wrong. Mobile telecom has seen a spiraling surge of subscribers, service providers and technology developments in the recent years, making it the favorite playground for young entrepreneurs. MobiKwik.com, which calls itself ‘India’s one stop shop for mobile services’, is a relatively new entrant on the scene. But it has grown rapidly with more than 20,000 registered members in a little less than a year of operation.

We talked to Sunali Aggarwal, Co-Founder of MobiKwik, about the journey of designing and setting up MobiKwik and the opportunities that lie ahead for this promising portal.

Sunali Aggarwal is an alumnus of NID, Ahmedabad and a part of the first batch of the New Media Design course there. She has been successfully running her own User Experience Design Consulting firm since 2006.

How did the idea of MobiKwik come about?
MobiKwik happened around February 2009. It was the brainchild of two IIT Delhi guys, Bipin Preet Singh and another fellow IITian. They came up with an idea to start an online portal for recharge. Around 90% of mobile telecom users in India are on prepaid connections. So there is a huge opportunity in terms of recharges. We noticed that people are increasingly moving to the Internet for buying tickets and bookings. There are a considerable number of people who have credit cards or net banking accounts and have prepaid phone connections. So why couldn’t phone recharge be done online? The idea itself was not very unique but the whole deal was to create more services around recharge to make it more convenient for people and to design a simplistic and easy online experience. So they got me onboard MobiKwik for User Experience Design input in terms of designing the front end for the entire portal.

How did you go about designing the ‘MobiKwik experience’?
We wanted that using MobiKwik should be easier than walking across to the market to get a recharge card. So we tried to understand the user perspective in terms of how they want to recharge and what they want to know besides recharge. We had very long discussions where we analyzed a lot of simple scenarios that we have experienced in our lives. Then we finalized a few scenarios that we thought were interesting and viable in the Indian context and said ‘Okay, now let’s build services around these scenarios’.

One very valid scenario in the Indian household is where only one person in the house knows how to recharge. I could be recharging for my mother, father and sister or even for the house help. So we built a service where you can add other phone numbers to your MobiKwik account and recharge for other people. We also realized that it would be easier if we provide an e-wallet service, where people can deposit money and use it for recharge whenever they want. Now how do we make recharging more convenient? So we created four channels for recharge – you can recharge online or by SMS or by calling. We were actually the first ones to come out with the SMS recharge service. Then we also built other unique services like Scheduled Recharge and a B-B service for companies who want recharges for all their employees.

So there was no formal field research or user research as such for gathering the user requirements?
No, the field research was done only after we built the portal because the truth is that users don’t actively participate when you just go and ask them questions. But when you show them something that is live and active, they are more responsive. With one of the founders being an expert in coding, we realized that we could build the portal, launch it online and then test it to get user feedback, instead of just guessing what will work and what will not. And that is exactly what we did. We did iterations based on what users liked and removed services that did not click with the users. We were actually quite blessed because users took interest in the whole process of building MobiKwik.

Coming to the design of the actual portal itself, can you briefly tell us about the process that you followed?
In general when we do a user experience design project, we first figure out the workflows. So we started analyzing workflows, comparing our workflows with other sites and came up with an easy workflow for recharging. Then we moved on to the wireframes, which are like grayscale blueprints of the website. In the wireframe stage we discuss page-by-page how things are going to flow from one page to the other. In this portal, functionality was the most important aspect. So our first job was to simplify the functionality as much as possible. We did a few of sets of wireframes, proto-tested them and gathered feedback from close family and friends. Then we kept refining the wireframes till we finally froze on something that we felt was very easy.

After this we went for the graphic design stage. We didn’t want the portal to be jazzy or heavy. We decided that we would use simple colors to highlight what is more important rather than creating fantastic visuals. If the content on the portal is very interesting, you sometimes don’t need to focus so much on the visual aspect. But it took a couple of rounds before we figured out that this is approach we want to take. All in all, we used a very iterative process for building the portal.

Has MobiKwik undergone any changes from last year till now, in terms of its look, services, etc?
Yes, it has been changing since the time we built it because unless we launched the portal, we could not do the actual testing. So we had a soft launch just for close family and friends. We had a thorough usability test via Skype where we tried to understand what people are doing with the portal, what they like and what they don’t understand. We actually went through a workflow change after the usability testing because people pointed out a lot of flaws. The payment process was very long; we cut it down to half. The visuals kept changing because we kept adding and removing a lot of things. We wanted the portal to be lighter in terms of loading time. So we removed many image elements. Changes kept happening on a regular basis based on the feedback that we kept getting from the users. We are still changing and there are things in the pipeline. But being a small team, there is only so much that you can do at a given point of time. But we rely on a strong network of freelancers as well.

MobiKwik has a lot of competitors, with some even offering incentives like free coupons on recharging. How does MobiKwik differentiate itself from the competition?
We are a little ahead of our competition because not a lot of our competitors have the kind of services that we provide. We are also excellent at customer support; you can call us anytime. So factors like these keep MobiKwik alive in the recharge business. But we don’t see recharge as the core business of MobiKwik. We started with recharge because it is a need. Going forward, we want to launch a lot of telecom-related services, like apps. The whole idea is to become like a virtual telecom service provider, that is, a service provider without a network. Hence we are not very concerned about the competition right now.

Coming back to the starting of MobiKwik, you are from a design background by education and the other two founders of MobiKwik are engineers. Was it difficult merging your thoughts and ideas?
It was difficult at times. Bipin and the other co-founder came to me for design input, not just in terms of look and feel but for complete re-organization. They knew that the only way to survive in this competitive market is to provide a simplistic yet enriching experience, which other websites didn’t do. At the point that we started MobiKwik, every service provider had its own recharge service. But they put you through multiple steps to give a simple recharge, which is not a valid deal for a user. If you are going with an online service it has to be simpler than what you experience offline. So with that premise in mind, they were pretty open to my design ideas. But as we were building the portal, we had our differences as to what is more important – usability or development? We debated on whether we should launch the product first and then test it or test it and then launch it. So we did launches and testing in various phases – a soft launch followed by a Beta launch and finally a full-fledged launch when we were confident. Yes, it takes time to get tuned to each other’s working habits because you come with your own priorities. And we designers tend to get finicky with smaller things like spacing, color, alignment etc. But when you are hard-pressed for time, it is best to ignore these things. It is important to understand each other’s perspective and know how to give priority to what and at what time. So it was a learning experience for all of us.

What were the major challenges that the whole team faced when you were starting up with MobiKwik?
There weren’t as many challenges as we thought there would be. Amongst us we had the potential for design, coding and business. So we didn’t face any difficulty in building the portal. We faced more difficulty in popularizing it and getting it out there. Marketing the portal was the biggest challenge.

How did you go about it?
We decided not to do any offline marketing, but to go online as much as possible. We did very aggressive search engine optimization for our site. Our site’s homepage changed because of the search engine optimization methods that we followed. That was the evolution process for us. We started blogging a lot; we are very active on Facebook. All these channels attracted a lot of attention. We made sure that we appear on all the tech blogs possible. That brought in a lot of traffic.

And what about the funding?
We put in our own money. We saved on the investment for design and coding because we had this potential in-house. So with our own skills and a little of our own money, we managed to set up the portal. It is a self-sustaining system right now. But going ahead, we are approaching investors to help us take it forward and make it a bigger portal.

Online recharge till today remains a predominantly urban phenomenon. So is MobiKwik doing something to reach out to a larger market?
It is very difficult to get the offline people to come online; because for them to do a recharge on MobiKwik, they need to understand the way the Internet works. So we cannot say that we will convert every offline user into an online user. That is not a realistic target. But we can convert the people who are already online but are doing offline recharges. They know how to use the Internet, access portals and pay online; they are familiar with these things. So that is our target audience for now. Converting offline users would be a long-term target.

Where do you see MobiKwik five years down the line?
It is difficult to make a 5-year plan because telecom is a very dynamic domain. But we are hoping to be the best service provider. That is the goal.

JAM (just a minute…)

What is the best moment of the day?
When I am sleeping.

If there were one person for whom you would like to design a thing. Who is the person and what would you design?
I would like to design a very easy to use computer for my mother, where she doesn’t have to learn too many things.

One word that would define MobiKwik?
Dynamic

One word that would define your design style?
Realistic

As a designer, one thing that you would like to change in the present system?
Bring about more transparency.

If you were an animated character, which one would it be?
Kung fu Panda. I like the character because he is simple, humble, funny yet sensitive and has his own little world. Most of all, I like the fact that he is extremely passionate about eating

Any role models?
None

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
I don’t think anybody has any reasons for writing a biography about me.

What are you afraid of regarding the future?
Losing people that I love.

How do you differentiate yourself from other companies or other designers?
I don’t know about other designers, but I see my work as being realistic and innovative at the same time.

What are the challenges you face in the present context?
Educating people about User Experience Design.

One aspect of design and business you give the highest priority to?
In design, I give simplicity and functionality the highest priority. In business, ethics is something I give the highest importance to.

One design-related book you highly recommend to read?
It is not really design-related but Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is one book I would recommend to everyone.

As a user experience designer, one website that you really like?
I like the Skype application. It is easy and I use it a lot. I like Gmail in terms of the experience. It is very organized and the whole conversation style of Gmail helps you track your emails very easily. Others that I use on a regular basis are Facebook, Linkedin, my own website, Basecamp and NDTV.

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