Outliers

Amid India’s smartphone boom and the rise of large consumer internet companies such as Flipkart, Myntra and several others, profitability and funding rounds have dominated the narratives. Designing these consumer products, creating engaging user interfaces hasn’t really made any big headlines, though. Cleartrip, with its simple, uncluttered mobile web interface, has been an outlier on the design front. When most rival travel websites were busy packing their sites with innumerable features and deals, Cleartrip chose to doggedly keep its focus on a simple user interface when it launched in 2006. “We said, 'Who is on mobile, and who are we designing for?’,” recalls Sunit Singh, design head of Cleartrip until August 2015. “That helped us with a razor-focused design approach. In terms of the complexity of the interface, we cut it down to quite a extent.” Singh adds: “That’s where I first learned the value of being razor-focused.” So, how does a product balance ease of use and user convenience with this qu