Summary
Research is about meeting users where they are. But what if we're building products for customers who don’t spend their lives on Zoom and Google calendar? How do you reach users who are hard to reach in the post-pandemic world? Join Prayag Narula, CEO & CO-Founder of Marvin, and Abhinav Krishna, Design Manager at Razorpay, the $7.5 Billion fintech behemoth, as they discuss how Razorpay is operationalizing user research at scale in the Indian SMB sector and applying it to their product design process.
Key Insights
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Designers at Razorpay are responsible for most user research, enabling greater autonomy and context retention.
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Razorpay hires designers based on first principles thinking rather than classical design process expertise.
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The Indian small business market often lacks digital readiness, making phone calls a crucial research medium.
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Razorpay transforms support and NPS feedback calls into research opportunities to deepen user insights.
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Rigid research processes were replaced by flexible checklists and prompts that encourage designer ownership.
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Design culture emphasizes humility and self-awareness about unknowns to drive better problem framing.
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Research guidelines focus on exploring user problem breadth, existing solutions, and potential risks.
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Direct phone calls last from a few minutes to over an hour depending on user engagement and context.
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This hands-on research approach is feasible mostly for early-stage or smaller user bases due to scalability limits.
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Collaboration and shared visibility of research across product and design teams strengthens decision-making.
Notable Quotes
"If you are building a product for someone, context loss happens when problem identification and solutioning are done by separate teams."
"We prefer candidates who think from first principles over those who only know the design vocabulary."
"Most small businesses in India are not internet ready and often conduct communication through WhatsApp or phone."
"We started with strict processes but realized one size doesn't fit all, so now we use checklists as prompts."
"Our research scaffolding acts more like a list of perspectives to consider rather than strict guidelines."
"A lot of our research calls come after bad NPS scores where we reach out directly to understand the problem."
"We transition phone support calls to more open-ended research calls once immediate issues are addressed."
"This approach builds deep customer advocacy since founders feel their problems are heard and solved."
"The core focus should be on enabling people to take better decisions rather than handholding them through process."
"This model works especially well for zero-to-one products but is challenging to scale for large user bases."
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