Vividh
A hyper-localized online marketplace for designers, with curated images that capture both everyday and extraordinary life in India, clicked by ordinary users from the country.
The platform allows designers to search by location, and save and purchase images sourced from Instagram through its wide base of regional content partners.
My role - Researcher and Designer
Timeframe
Processes
Tools
Mentors
Figma
Maze
Google Meet
Voice Recorder
Krissi Xenakis
Kristine Mudd
Bill Cromie
UX Design
Service Design
Design Research
7 weeks
This project is part of a year-long MFA thesis titled, "How India Looks: Localizing Design Tools for a Billion People". Conceptualized and developed at the School of Visual Arts, New York City. You can watch the final presentation here.
Context
Atul Loke for The New York Times
The pandemic forced businesses in India to go digital and begin catering to an audience base of over 900 million internet users, leading to an increase in demand for digital design services. To cater to this rapidly increasing user base, designers in India constantly need to find localised content for their designs.
Problem
“When I want to find images related to Indian people, I find any brown-looking people across races, since it's easier to find higher quality photos that way. With places and spaces, I try using Google's Creative Commons or Wiki Commons. They're not ideal at all, since majority of the images over there are through a very distant, touristy gaze.”
Dhruv J, Visual Designer
Due to the lack of geo-specific content from India on popular image banks such as Unsplash, Getty, and Pexels, visual designers in India spend lots of time for finding the right image and make compromises with their designs.
Workarounds
“We often reach out to small creators on Instagram who are already making images that fit into the brand language to request for reposting or enquire for a bundle shoot.”
Kritika T, Founder , Studio Ping Pong
Many designers even use Instagram to directly source images from creators in the absence of regionally diverse content on popular image bank.
Instagram pain points
Not an easily searchable platform
Ruled by an unpredictable algorithm
Easy to drown in a sea of content
How might we make it easier for designers to access diverse user-generated content to meet the rapidly evolving content and digital design needs in India?
Vividh is an online marketplace that allows designers to search by location, save and purchase user-generated images from Instagram through its wide base of regional content partners.
Localization can not be an afterthought
Location-based search is a critical intervention. Especially in a country where the same image can be interpreted differently, and the result can vary based on your search term.
Instead of a centralised headquarters, Vividh operates through 6 different regional teams that interpret each entry and help pluralise search term results.
Image not found
But this is a monumental undertaking, and there are still lots of gaps in representation. Sometimes, despite this localized, responsive, and collaborative model, Vividh might not have the image you need.
Bridging the Gap
To bridge that gap, Vividh would take your failed search term results and turn them into incentivised prompts for its growing community of content creators.
Business Model
It operates through a co-op model that is designed for sharing profits with the creators. Along with the fixed percentage of profits, creators would also receive bonuses for addressing the visual gaps.
The aim is to pluralise, localize and optimize, responsibly.