Building digital products with simple feature phones in mind

In the last five years, the mobile first approach to starting a business or building a product has been one of the most important and visible trends of the digital industry. Following the tremendous growth in mobile internet usage; entrepreneurs, publishers, designers and product managers have looked for innovative ways to deliver their products and contents through new and smaller devices.

What I learnt this summer, travelling through East Africa and meeting with many digital entrepreneurs, is that there are in many cases a lot of advantages to go one step further, and start thinking about the products we want to build with simple feature phones in mind.

If you aren’t interested in emerging markets or if all of your potential users possess a smartphone, don’t stop reading yet, as the feature phone first approach is a powerful thought experiment to re-think how we build products for any devices.

The Power of Simple Technologies

In Uganda and Rwanda, smartphones and data plans are — probably only for a few more years — something that most can’t afford. But eight out of ten adults possess a simple feature phone. In this context, it only makes sense that entrepreneurs who want to reach a large part of the population focus on developing digital…