Genuine Users & Fraud | Stories of Asir

Genuine Users & Fraud · Behavioural Research

OLX faces a critical challenge of trust due to rising fraudulent activities, impacting the user experience and brand reputation. To address this, extensive research involving interviews, data collection, and user insights was conducted. Sacrificial concepts were explored to understand user responses, leading to the development and testing of solution concepts. The aim is to improve trust, retain users, and maintain the platform's reputation.

✦ The Problem

OLX, a prominent online marketplace specializing in classified ads, has been a cornerstone of India's used goods market, commanding a dominant 90% share. It provides users a platform to buy and sell goods across diverse categories on a large scale. Despite its widespread success, OLX has faced challenges, particularly concerning fraudulent activities within its ecosystem.

As the platform has grown exponentially, so too have instances of fraud, leading to increased concerns among users about the safety and reliability of transactions. Despite OLX's efforts to maintain its reputation as a trusted destination for pre-owned goods exchanges, the rise in fraud cases has been a growing issue. Users have become more wary due to various fraudulent schemes that have emerged over the years, tarnishing the platform's image in the eyes of some consumers.

As OLX continues to expand its network and aims to reach even more users in India, addressing these challenges remains crucial to sustain trust and ensure the integrity of transactions on its platform.

✦ Research Brief

Trust Being Crucial for any brand to sustain, this design research seeks to understand and analyse the user behaviours of fraudulent activity and trustable deal transactions, uncover insights that will help identify opportunities and design user-centric solutions to improve trust in the platform, enhancing the experience for both buyers and sellers, also retain the users.

✦ Objectives

✦ Research Plan

Methodology

Qualitative Primary Research - 1:1 Remote In-depth Interviews based on a discussion guide & use sacrificial test concepts as a stimulus for more open discussion > Collect data for analysis & synthesis of observed behaviours, pain points, and insights

Mode : Google Meet Video Call
Duration : 60 Minutes
Requirements : Mobile & Internet Connection

(Due to covid 19 restrictions, this research has to be carried out completely by online mediums)

Research Sample

Primary Criteria : Users who are active members of the OLX platform & completed multiple purchases & sales

Buyers : Actively looking to buy any used good and faced fraud

Sellers : Actively looking to sell any used good and faced fraud
Cities : Lucknow, Bangalore

(Random sampling organised by a third-party research agency)

Sacrificial Concepts

✦ Data Collection

Primary Research Interviews · Stage 1

Execution : Moderated interviews are conduced as per the logistics provided by the third party research agency

Data Collection : Actively collected the data as users responds to the questions

✦ Analysis & Synthesis

Qualitative Data Analysis Process

Structuring Data : Transcribing Interviews > Coding The Data > Identify Key Words & Categories

Interpreting Data : Identifying Recurring Themes And Patterns > Insights Into User Needs & Pain Points

User Journey Map : Narrative Analysis (Interpret Events) > Mapping Observed User Behaviours with Events And Experiences

Genuine & Ingenuine Traits

What traits do the user look for in the person they deal with?

1/3

✦ Insights

✦ Validate Findings

✦ User Testing

Concepts & Feedback

The proposed concepts were prototyped as design concepts for testing their efficiency, use cases, positives & negatives with users to collect feedback for validating the findings.

A sample of six users was involved in this study and given the prototypes to test themselves and feedback was collected under a moderated session

✦ Next Steps

Given the time for explorative research and the resources available, we have identified key pain points, insights, and conceptual directions to enhance the product information exchange experience for OLX Autos

For future implementation, OLX Autos can focus on the following designer-led initiatives:

Addressing Pain Points: Leverage the identified pain points and insights to design innovative solutions that address user challenges effectively.
Validating Research Findings: Support the qualitative findings with quantitative data to ensure a robust foundation for design decisions.
In-depth Research: Dive deeper into the proposed directions to uncover additional opportunities and refine the approach.
Prototyping and Testing: Develop working prototypes or conduct experiments like fake door tests to validate the concepts and gather actionable user feedback.

✦ Credits

Lead Researcher

Induja Menon

UX Researcher - Emerging Markets, OLX Autos

Mentor

Prachi Shrivastava

UX Researcher III - Emerging Markets, OLX Autos