Prashanth S.

Designing for a billion users – Building globally accessible products

About The Speaker

My name is Prashanth Shanmugam. I’m a Product designer based in Hyderabad, India, and currently working at Microsoft. I have been designing digital products for over 7 years across various domains like Investment Banking, Telecommunication, SaaS, and B2B applications. I have worked on a wide range of products from B2B to B2C, web-based to native mobile apps, concept designs to scaled-up products, iPad apps to Kiosk interfaces, and with startups to large organizations.

I have worn a lot of hats during this journey from being an interaction designer focusing on modules of an application to a product designer focusing on design, strategy & vision of the entire product..

Designing for a billion users – Building globally accessible products

A guide on how designers can create products that are physically, emotionally, and cognitively appropriate for every user and how design is transforming to capture the next billion users. There are millions of mobile apps in the market. Are they really designed to be used by ~7.4 billion people on the planet? Not yet. So, we are in the quest to create more inclusive and accessible apps for every person on the planet.

Inclusive design is not designing one app that works for all. It is about designing a diversity of ways for everyone to use in all situations. We want to make sure every designer creates products and experiences excluding their abilities as a baseline.

In this talk, we’ll try to reimagine product design that is more inclusive in all situations and for all people. It starts from the font size, color, illustrations, reachability, interactions, gestures, haptics, and sound guidelines that you can follow while designing experiences.

Key Takeaways