Why Indian apps are different from Western and Asian apps? — Developer’s Commute Newsletter
Why Indian apps are different from Western and Asian apps?
If you are an Android Developer or an IOS developer in India, there is an interesting question that lays the foundation of every app.
How should we design the UX of the app?
As an app developer who has used both Western apps and Eastern apps, India forms a unique destination. It is the culmination of both western and eastern design. If you have used any Eastern app or Asian app, you might have noticed that they are cluttered with a lot of buttons and menus. But in Western apps, it is more about minimalism.
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We can also spot this in their philosophies. If you watch YouTube regularly you might have noticed the videos of minimalism popping up in your feed. All these videos are mostly created by Western Youtubers whereas Asian YouTube is much more about drama and chaos.
This difference in philosophies is also reflected in the products in their markets. The apps made in Asian countries have a lot more menus and buttons. Whereas Western apps are much more minimalistic and designed for single-use cases.
Why?
There are several reasons:
— > Chaos and drama is the part of Indian culture
— > Indian people like to live in communities
— > Our religion reflects Chaos, drama and calmness
— > Our Language reflects a lot of curves and straight lines
I will expand on these reasons in my next newsletter but for now, I want to change the question.
Indian apps reflect a culmination of both Western and Asian apps, which makes them more unique as compared to other Asian apps.
What do I mean by that?
India is influenced not only by Indian culture but also by British and American culture. As Indians, we not only watch Bollywood but also enjoy Hollywood. Our YouTube search history is a mixture of English-speaking Youtubers and Hindi-speaking Youtubers. This impacts the design of our apps.
It means that we want chaos and minimalism at the same time. It is reflected in our day-to-day apps. Let’s take the example of Paytm. This app is used by almost every Indian to make payments. If we look at the design and functionality of the app. We can book flights, and movies, make payments, do recharge, almost anything you need to do. However, the main focus of the app is doing online payments.
With a simple click and a QR scan, we can pay for whatever we want.
It also reflects in our day-to-day lives. It is much easier to spend money nowadays as compared to when we used to carry cash. I will also expand on this topic later on.
For now, we can say that if you are designing an app for an Indian audience keep in mind that your functionality should be simple or it should have one use case. But, it should help users in many ways.
This is for today I hope enjoyed this newsletter. If you enjoyed it please let me know and if I have written something wrong please forgive me.
Thank you for reading
Regards,
Developer Commute’s Captain
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Do you want these topics in your Email Inbox:
Interesting facts about apps
Expert Advice
Core Concepts
Developer Stories
Apps Reviews
Human error
Code Philosophy
Additional:
- Coding Memes
- Interesting Tweets & Articles
- Motivation
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