India is experiencing a dramatic increase in the adoption of smart phones. It is not uncommon to see people load music or movies on to their phones for Rs 20 from a vendor on the footpath. During our field visits, we see many small businesses using Whatsapp to communicate with their clients, suppliers, buyers. The revolution has begun!
For a small business, the line between the household and business is blurred. Most businesses are self managed and employ a maximum of 5 people. They look at their regular household expenses like food, transport, education and business expenses like purchasing inventory as just expenses. The revenues from the business pay for these combined expenses. Even some part of the loans taken for the business go towards achieving some personal goals like education fees, etc. They are constantly juggling around money and often only have mental notes or informal personal notes. They do not maintain any formal records either because they are low literate or mostly because they are worried about the "government getting to know" or income tax. Without a system for managing finances, they may miss opportunities to increase profits or trim expenses.
You need to provide an application for such small business owners to help them manage their finances that will help them improve their business outcomes. You need to consider their aspirations and goals. The application should also implicitly manage their financial services (bank account, loans, etc). Pick a particular occupation e.g Tailor, Restaurant owner, Kirana store, Manufacturing shop and design the application tailored to his/her needs.
You can use any tool of your choice including simple and clear pencil sketches.
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A story board to narrate the above scenario and how you are solving it ( 6-10 thumbnails)
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At least three representative application screens - give special importance to icons
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A poster to promote your concept
Remember we are going to evaluate you on the following parameters:
- How you think and how creative you are
- Your sense of design
- And how quickly can you learn/implement
If you are going for the kill and you really want to wow us, see how you can add the following:
- Data Visualizations
- Material Design
- Implement a prototype; there is nothing like code
Fork this repository. When you are done, commit your work and send us a link to your repo. We would like you to come in and present your code to the whole team.
May the force be with you!