View article

In this paper, we aim to relate the design of WhatsApp with its adoption in developing countries and inform the design of future products. In the last two and a half years, a large number of 'emergent users' in India, have adopted WhatsApp. They have been able to do 'account holding' tasks with a greater ease, which means they establish social online identities, manage off-line communication, share and forward content, and create and join groups with less difficulty. WhatsApp has certain design based advantages over the conventional account holding applications whose adoption is not easy by the emergent users because ofcertain barriers. These barriers arise due to user characteristics like lack of technology exposure andlow levels of education and income. We used User-Usage model as a theoretical lens to understand how design features of WhatsApp may have helped the emergent users overcome the …