PROJECT OVERVIEW
Kistpay is a smartphone financing platform, committed to driving digital and financial inclusion for all by empowering millions of unbanked individuals through affordable smartphone.
Problem
There are various channels where kistpay operates and provide it’s service in Pakistan. One of them is through mobile retailers. For Kistpay, they act as a Influencer to attract end customers but is difficult to capture this market.
My Role
I joined the team mid-project as a Product Designer, tasked with creating a mobile application for retailers' daily use. My responsibilities included conducting UX research on mobile retailers, designing the end-to-end solution, and validating it throughout the process.
Outcome
~ 2,500
Analytics
Onboarded Retailers in different cities of Pakistan.
~ 10,000
Analytics
Phone Financed with zero default rate.
85%
Customer satisfaction score
Analytics
Tools Used
Figma
Miro
Maze
Analytics
Disclaimer: The data in this case study is simulated and created solely to demonstrate my design process. I strictly adhere to confidentiality agreements, ensuring no proprietary or sensitive information is disclosed.
HIGHLIGHTS
Empowering Mobile Retailers
PHONE STATUS
Through barcode scanner, Mobile retailers can scan to check Phone CPLC/PTA status.
BUY OR SELL
Mobile retailers efficiently manage purchases and sales after checking phone details.
CREDIT BOOK
While maintaining buy or sell logs, Mobile retailers can always keep track of daily finances.
INTRODUCTION
Background Story
Smartphone penetration in Pakistan is among the world's lowest. Out of a population of 220.89M, only 18% (40.59M) use smartphones. With an average smartphone costing PKR 18,000 and an average household income of PKR 40,000, it is nearly impossible for lower-income individuals to afford one through credit or financing. Kistpay aims to enable everyone to own the smartphone they want, overcoming financial obstacles and promoting digital inclusion.
Source: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/02/08/what-will-it-take-for-pakistan-to-achieve-financial-inclusion
Amma Tower Mobile Mall at Saddar Mobile Market
The main challenge is connecting with millions of unbanked individuals to provide smartphone financing through our platform. In Pakistan, over 100,000 mobile retailers profit daily from selling new and used smartphones, especially in major cities like Karachi. These retailers are tech-savvy and well-versed in phone hacks. Lower-income groups often rely on nearby retailers for technical help.
However, penetrating this market requires presenting our offerings and benefits effectively.
Design Process
Since I joined this project in the mid, I teamed up product manager, app developer and technical lead to roughly create our process with Lean UX Framework. The main reason of choosing this framework was to reduce time and learn faster from our customers.
Me
Technical Lead
App Developer
Product Manger
THINK
We started with Interviews
To better understand the demographics of mobile retailers, my team and I conducted in-depth interviews. This was challenging, particularly with small mobile shops who had small space to stand and limited time due to their continuous customer interactions. We simplified the interview questions, making them close-ended, and took the opportunity to observe their daily work as well. We successfully interviewed 30 mobile retailers.
Insights
We utilized affinity mapping to identify themes from the information gathered during user interviews for each group.
Managing logs
Currently, mobile retailers have two methods for logging phone sales or purchases from customers or other retailers. One method is manual entry in a ledger. The other is using web or mobile applications like Digi Khata, which is rarely used due to its interface and user experience not being retail-friendly.
Check for stole phone
Mobile retailers frequently encounter issues with CPLC-blocked or non-PTA phones. They need to use SMS services to verify the authenticity of these phones, but this method is costly.
Monthly budgeting
For retailers, it's crucial to manage their monthly budget and calculate their profits. This often requires having a full-time person dedicated to recording and calculating the budget and distributing profits among them.
Observations
During our onsite interviews, we observed the behaviour of both retailers and customers involved in buying or selling smartphones.
Lower-income customers are more likely to default
Most lower-income individuals hesitate to buy smartphones on installments due to frequent snatching cases in major areas and rigid down payment terms from retailers, leading to a high default rate.
Retail market is competitive but also supportive.
In one area, there are more than 50,000 retail shops selling smartphones, leading to intense competition. However, they all support each other in various aspects.
Identifying Opportunities
The above findings helped us further narrow down problems facing by mobile retailers and customers, so we identified few opportunities:
We know that manual logging and calculation of smartphone sales and purchases is time-consuming for retailers.
How might we design an app for them to efficiently logging their stocks and budgeting monthly expenses, that would increase the engagement by 5%?
We know that it's crucial and important for retailers to check smartphone before buying them from customers.
How might we design an app with the feature to efficiently check smartphone for PTA and CPLC status that would increase the engagement by 10%?
We know that penetrating the market is challenging due to the high default rate for financing customers.
How might we design the process of financing smartphone more engaging through retailer's app that would build trust for us and eventually with customers?
Defining Goals
The truth is, no retailer would install and use the application if they could not find the value for their day to day work. Hence we used JTBD (Jobs to be done) framework to define goals that could uncover new opportunities to fill the gaps. Here is one example:
Situation
Customer comes to sell phone
Motivation
Check PTA and CPLC Status
Expected Outcome
Reduce the risk of buying phone
When Customer comes to sell phone, I want to check PTA and CPLC Status to reduce the risk of buying a phone from them
Creating Stories
We wrote over 70+ stories that could provide value based on retailer's goals and qualitative insights we got from onsite interviews. We drilled down into three criteria in order simplify app interacting with retailers. Here is one example:
Information
I view stocks in my inventory
Call to Action
I want to sell them
User Input
to customer (enter detail)
As a Retailer, I want to sell stock I have in my inventory to customers after dealing with them
CREATE
Designing for Retailers
After gathering insights and identifying opportunities, we dedicated our time to designing our solution by thoroughly mapping out the problem and creating a corresponding design. Here are the results of achieving 5 goals from our iterative design, critique sessions and validating designs with Retailers:
CHECK PHONE STATUS
We leverage the use of Barcode scanner to efficiently scan and check PTA / CPLC status before buying it from customers.
LOG PURCHASES AND SALES
We designed the solution for customer to efficiently manage purchases and sales after checking phone details.
MANAGE EXPENSES AND LEDGER
While maintaining purchase and sales log on kistpay, We took this opportunity to design ledger book for interconnected retailers and personal finance where they can log their personal expense and calculate ledger with their customers and retailers.
MANAGE INVENTORY AND REPORTING
Most of retailer uses handwritten book to log their inventories. We digitize this method to reduce the time and cost of a retailer.
GAMIFIYING THE FINANCING PROCESS
We designed an efficient financing process to reduce the risk of default through gamifying flow and giving them offerings.
CHECK
Usability Testing
We conducted testing using Maze with 30 retailers and received valuable feedback that helped us refine the mobile retail app:
Testing Session
We went to market with prototype to test out few of our main features and asked them follow up questions using Maze
30
Participants
05
Goals
83%
Average Success Rate
Check Phone Status
While testing out with retailer, we found that:
65%
claimed that retailer app helped them reduce time for logging
56%
found it easy to manage inventory and monthly reporting
31%
found ledger book easy to manage credits for buying or selling phone
CONCLUSION
Major Takeaways
Challenges & Learnings
This project was a valuable learning experience as product designer in Financial Inclusion sector. It taught me the importance of user-centric design and onsite testing with real users.
Future Work
We have already determined feedback from retailers and will use this in future iteration as this is not the end.
