TITAN - USERS & NON-USERS
“As long as you have visibility of the end user, you can chalk out a plan of action for design.” Mahendra Chauhan, Design Head, Titan Company Limited User profiling is perhaps the strongest design differentiator. In the last chapter, we explored how a product can change entirely based on the user it is designer for. As a mass brand, Titan has created several sub brands and collections to cater to all user segments under the sun. However, who are the people that really pick a Titan watch off the websites and stores?To be able to do justice to answering that question, one needed to be able to look at how the design of watches at Titan found a home outside the company’s walls. The first method used to address this question was to visit stores of varying scale. By going to the
stores, one could see for themselves as to who the end user was. Titan’s distribution system ensured that there were a handful of avenues through which a user could come into contact with the Titan Brand and its products. Smaller stores were in abundance on the outskirts of the city, while the bigger stores and mall kiosks could be found at the heart of town. During this process, one ended up visiting many stores that sold more than one brand and this brought about a sense of clarity with respect to which brands were competing directly with Titan. Earlier in the process, it seemed as though the users who frequented the smaller stores on the outskirts had very little in common with those who visit the larger stores but later it became clear that the individuals who were picking up a Titan watch for themselves were mostly above 30 years old.
At the smaller shops, younger customers walked into the store looking for chunky multi-function watches. When asked if they would consider a Titan, they quickly reacted by calling Titan an ‘Uncle’s Watch’. Shopkeepers of Smaller stores mentioned at they do not store many iconic edge watches because the shapes that come for a more a more affordable price do not excite the younger buyers who come looking for watches. When interacting with users at the bigger stores, something interesting came up. A lot of the people coming to buy watches from Titan were buying watches for someone else as a gift. This meant that in a lot of cases, the user and consumer were not the same person. Younger women would come to buy Raga watches for their mothers rather than anything for themselves.
Graduation Project | Titan Vision Next: Explorations in Recrafting the Watch Proposition | 73
