| |December 20188WHY DESIGN THINKING AND DESIGN DOING ARE CRITICAL FOR THE SUCCESS OF MOBILE APP COMPANIESBy Sahil Karkhanis, Head- Product Design, CleartripCleartrip is a travel tech company to offer travelers an opportunity to discover and engage in hyperlocal leisure activities. Launched in July 2006, Cleartrip ushers in a refreshingly simple approach to travel, by offering its customers seamless travel experience through its award-winning Mobile and Desktop solutions.M obile apps have be-come the face of businesses in the digitally-focused world of today. De-signed to run on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, apps are the play-ground of modern-day commerce, serving as the most powerful and immediate bridge between brands and consumers. By 2020, mobile apps are forecasted to generate around 189 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, through in-app advertising etc. However, the competition among apps is huge. Till Q1 2018, Android users could choose between 3.8 million apps while App Store listed 2 million available apps. That's a lot of apps.Design is the critical lever that can help brands build differenti-ated apps that stand out. However, aesthetics, usability and mobili-ty needs often seem at odds with each other and design thinking is necessary to achieve the balance.Design thinking starts with building empathy towards the user and visualizing a hierarchy of needs as they exist in the user's life. The picture then expands to include the needs of other stake-holders in the product- business and technology. This systematic approach of building a holistic understanding of what the prod-uct needs to achieve, with user al-ways coming first and in the cen-tre, is at the heart of what design thinking helps to do.The difference between an ap-pealing app and an app that gen-erates sustained user engagement over a long period of time lies in how well the target audience need has been evaluated. While per-formance issues, long load times, unresponsive UI, etc. are often cit-ed as the usual offenders behind app failure, there are several, far more fundamental reasons for non-adoption- not being useful, differentiated or personal to the user, for example.Most often, the innovative ideas and breakthroughs come from following the design think-ing process- building something useful, differentiated and per-sonal instead of something inno-vative for innovations' sake. For Sahil Karkhanisexpert opinion
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