PROJECT KISH - BHARAT INCLUSION INITATIVE
Inclusive financial contracts for marginalised communities
Project Kish, is a fellowship initiative under the Bharat Inclusion Initiative and we were engaged by them to make financial contracts easier to understand and accessible for people with low literacy in rural India with a broader goal of preventing financial scams. The Project Kish team had observed stories of financial scams taking place in multiple Indian villages involving mis-selling of insurance policies by major financial institutions where a lot of villagers had lost millions of rupees.
The client believed that such scams occur because of language barriers because most of the financial contracts are written in English when most people in rural India with low literacy levels are not fluent in English, making it difficult for the farmers to comprehend it accurately. The Project Kish team wanted to explore the hypothesis that visual representation of the contract terms could overcome language barriers and lead to ease of understanding and correct comprehension of financial contract for the community.
Approach
We approached the project by conducting two research sprints. The first sprint was focused towards gaining deeper insights into the user’s understanding of financial contracts, their financial decision making & social dynamics and also their preference & comprehension of diverse visual styles. Our team interviewed 25 potential users and stakeholders in Maharashtra and Gujarat, across 4 villages during the first sprint. Visual prototypes were generated in the form of illustrations and scenarios using the design guidelines which were then tested and validated with the users in the second research sprint.
'This looks like a symbol from medical context because of the ‘+’ sign..'
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Madhuben
Participant from Gujarat
Deliverable
At the end of the research sprint 1, our team extracted user insights related to their financial decision-making and comprehension of distinct visual styles for understanding of financial concepts which led to creating design guidelines to illustrate financial contracts with the goal of making it easier to understand for the target audience.
In Sprint 2, our design team created distinct visual styles of illustrations based on the design guidelines which was then tested by the research team in a small village near Satara (in Maharashtra state) to gain users feedback. Based on the insights, we iterated the design guidelines which is now ready to be implemented at scale. Along with the design guidelines, we also created infrastructure guidelines which were strategic recommendations for implementing the solution in the current local financial ecosystem.
Impact
With our solution, the following impact was achieved -
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Users felt empowered & informed to take financial decisions independently for themselves, without having to rely on anyone else
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The visual contract helped them in gaining an understanding of all the contractual terms better than ever before.
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The solution was appreciated by the user because it was perceived by them as being designed ‘for them’, making them feel included in the process as a result.
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The iterative approach helped the team in learning faster from the feedback and getting closer to the solution that was relevant for the end-user and easy to implement within the local context & infrastructure.
Project Team
Project Manager
Field Researchers
Visual Designer
