Designing for digital behaviors of micro-entrepreneurs in Indonesia
Indonesia: where mobile & micro-entrepreneurship meet
As the world’s 4th largest country by population, 4th largest mobile market (with one-third of waking hours spent on mobile), 97% of businesses categorized as micro-small-medium businesses (MSMB’s), and a booming young digital population (83% of Internet users being millennial or Gen Z): Indonesia is a country with rich, emerging behaviors at the intersections of micro-entrepreneurship and the digital context.
Our team conducted research & product strategy in Bandung, Indonesia in collaboration with a large global technology organization dedicated to designing products which support economic and digital wellbeing for MSMB entrepreneurs and early Internet users.
Project Snapshot
Bandung, Indonesia
2022
In partnership with: Studio D
Project category: design research, product strategy, visual storytelling
Role: Project Lead & Research Lead
Process & outcomes
Situated in Bandung, the capital of West Java, Indonesia: we conducted 68 in-context interviews across a range of small business owners, consumers, content creators, experts, and community leaders. This ranged from observing micro-entrepreneurs adapt their analog businesses to e-commerce platforms, to sitting in community cooperative group meetings, to interviewing influencers and mobile experts on emerging trends.
We synthesized these learnings into a report of key patterns and themes, including case studies, experience journey archetypes, micro-entrepreneur personas, and design opportunities.
At 5.4 hours a day, or one-third of daily waking hours on mobile, Indonesians spent the most time on mobile in the world in 2022. With the influx of attention spent online comes large-scale risks and opportunities for economic and digital wellbeing.
We identified seven design opportunities that could support healthy and supportive digital behaviors of mobile users, whether engaging as a citizen, micro-small entrepreneur, content creator, or consumer.
We facilitated a week-long research & design immersion, hosting 10 international client team members to join in-context research in Bandung. This culminated in a design & product development workshop, where we ideated, prototyped, and refined 8+ product concepts around the design opportunities supporting micro-small entrepreneurs and digital consumers.
Ms. Doc Martens
A micro-documentary featuring Nike — a student, creative, entrepreneur, and one who embraces riding her motorbike in the rain.
This film is a portrait of a 21-year-old and her multiplicity of identity, online and in the real world, as she seeks the spaces and relationships where she can feel at home.
Her story is a reminder that our stories are universal, and all uniquely our own. We screened this film at our design workshop as a grounding medium, a reminder for design & product teams of the realities and nuances of the people we are designing for.
