Topic: Patterns in everyday life and the role of Design

Globalization has made life easy for a large group of population. People have more disposable income and also have more access to new technologies. Design is helping technology to cater to the mass. Today’s consumers are the new age consumers who could be enticed only by intelligent marketing gimmicks.

With growing disposable income, people also have a myriad number of options to spend on which takes a toll on their expenditures and personal budgeting.

Technology is adapting itself to cater to this large group, with higher disposable income, by coming up with new apps. A lot of applications are floating in the market that helps one keep a check on the day-to-day expenses and also give one an understanding about the expenditure patterns in the due course of time.

A good example is MINT, which is an interesting and popular online financial tool, which helps consumers to track their spending patterns without the chore of budgeting. It also gives the qualitative data by comparing the consumers spending patterns with the rest of the people of the same age group on an average basis.

Another example is a mobile app, known as, “My Budget Free”, which lets one make a list head of common expenses. At the end of the month, it gives a bar graph representation of one’s expenses and also the heads, whose expenses could be controlled.

The idea is to make people more mature and responsible about their decisions.

And this leads to the question:

How could we, with the aid of design and technology, reveal a big picture to the consumers and help them be more proactive and informed decision makers?

A little more pro-activeness and things would change and design could certainly bring a big change.

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