Building for Bharat - Women in Product

Women in Product and Flipkart got together a diverse group of product managers, designers, and engineers to talk about the importance of product management and learn about the challenges of building products that satisfy the unique needs and demands of a young and tech-savvy India. This workshop was an opportunity to bring together individuals from various backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, to collaborate and work towards understanding the nuances of the problem statement. Tejasvita, a product manager I was working with, and I partnered together to conduct a workshop during this event. Our goal was to work with fintech enthusiasts and help them learn about the problems in making fintech products accessible for a diverse set of users with various demographics, socio-economic backgrounds, and behavioral patterns. The challenge we put forward to the participants was:

How can we create digital experiences that build trust and make financial services accessible and simpler in an Indian context?

We wanted the participants to understand the target audience for whom they would be solving the challenge and to immerse the audience's mindset to think in terms of trust and accessibility in their context. To do this, we provided them with two user personas to help them better conceptualize the problem. The teams were then tasked to design innovative yet practical experiences that explained how to bring trust and accessibility in fintech products, thereby contributing to financial inclusion. Tejasvita and I, as the facilitators, set brainstorming rules and introduced the teams to sketching ideas. Each team worked on a presentation to paper presentation, telling the story of their solutions and receiving feedback from us at the end of the day. This workshop was especially enlightening for me, primarily because it was my first public workshop that I had organized. It was an opportunity to meet fellow builders who were passionate about the problem statement, and to witness the expression of daring ideas that can potentially shape the future of one's work. It was an empowering experience to see the immense potential of collaboration between individuals from various backgrounds. Read the story here. The workshop truly opened my eyes to the possibilities of creative problem-solving and I am grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of it.