Hello, Habr!
Currently, we all live in a world of consumption, when a manufacturer of whatever is trying to convince a client to buy exactly his products or use his services, and in fact the consumer carefully chooses the most suitable from the options offered to him. All sorts of marketing gimmicks and advertising creativity are used, but every year it is harder to work in this paradigm: advertising budgets are not rubber, and consumers are becoming more and more capricious in their preferences and requirements for the manufacturer. Can this problem be solved? Quite. Moreover, for small companies it is the alternative approach to working with the consumer that turns out to be the most effective. We will talk about this in a little more detail in this article using the example of creating the Vivaldi web browser.
Quantity turning into quality
So, we need to start with a basic understanding of what we are planning to do. A web browser is an application in which the user will spend several hours every day performing various tasks, both work and personal. This means that the browser must be powerful and functional, at the same time convenient and comfortable to use, and also must have good personalization and customizability for user preferences.
And here we are faced with the first problem: all people are individual and their preferences can be quite far from what the developer imagines. And even if the actual programmers of the company have a certain list of functions for subsequent implementation in the product - how can they understand which functions are more in demand, and which ones can wait a bit? After all, it is obvious that there is no way to do everything at once. However, the solution to this problem lies on the surface - you need to structure the company's work so that the users themselves help the developers in setting priorities for the implementation of certain functions.
In our case, we organized the development process in such a way that the feedback from the community was most effective. First of all, we created a group of Sopranos volunteers from among the most active and tech-savvy browser users, who have access to a closed bug tracking system and are in direct contact with the browser developers. These are several dozen people from all over the world who, in their free time, help us test new functions and fix bugs even at the stage of internal product testing. For example, in August, our Sopranos processed more than a thousand error messages, and also identified about a hundred shortcomings in the browser testing process. Thus, a higher-quality version goes to the public assembly,and the most active part of Vivaldi users starts testing it.
We have two public branches - test and stable. A certain part of users striving to be the first to try out all the new items in their work is the main "testing department" already in the field - it is they who install test assemblies and run them in working mode, helping us to find and eliminate defects that are very difficult to detect. And only then, after many weeks of testing and debugging, we release a new stable version, which is already installed by all browser users.
Ideas from all over the world
Thus, the user community helps us to release a better product, in which the users themselves then work. But this is only part of the process - no less important for us is the community's help in the development of the browser itself: it is at the requests and suggestions of Vivaldi users that we add the lion's share of all functions and improvements to the browser. Who, if not users, know better what they lack in their daily work? Therefore, it is logical to ask them themselves what they want first.
We collect user requests in different ways - it can be a regular request through the bug reporting form, it can be a poll on numerous forums or social networks, and, of course, on the official Vivaldi forum there is a whole section dedicated to collecting wishes for new functions fordesktop and mobile versions of the browser, where each user can leave their request or vote for an existing one. By the number of votes, we see how popular the request is and prioritize our work accordingly when implementing these new features.
DIY localization
Another important element of browser development aimed at the global market is product localization. Theoretically, it is possible to outsource this work to specialized translation agencies, but, in our experience, this step is the least effective. We went the other way - we offered to translate the browser into other languages by the users themselves. Anyone can register as a translator for Vivaldi and after a little check gets the opportunity to contribute to the localization of the browser.
At the moment, more than 200 people from almost 50 countries of the world help us translate the browser and all the company's services, more than 40 languages are available in the browser, and more than 20 languages are in the process of translation. And such localization is of much higher quality than that from specialized translation agencies - users themselves choose how to translate function names better and more intuitively, simplifying the process of mastering work in a browser for all other users.
Collective efficiency
Today, the development team of the Vivaldi browser is a little over 50 employees, and the active part of the user community that helps us develop and improve the browser numbers several thousand people around the world. They provide us with invaluable assistance in the development of the browser, without which we could hardly in such a short time create a truly powerful and unique in functionality browser, which is Vivaldi today. At the same time, one cannot fail to note another very important “side effect” for the project from such involvement of the community in the product development process.
The fact is that even by making a small contribution to the development of a browser, a person begins to feel his involvement in a common cause: this is not just one of the many browsers - it is a browser in the creation of which the user is directly involved. As usual, we all love to tell others about our achievements, and Vivaldi users are no exception - they become the most active distributors of the browser, recommending it to their friends and acquaintances. It's their browser too!
And even if a person did not take part in the translation or testing of the browser, they can become part of the Ambassadors team - volunteers who help us to educate others about the browser and its advantages over other similar products. This is also the user's contribution to the creation of the browser - only in the field of marketing. Thus, we try to give the user community the opportunity to take an active part in almost all areas of the company's work, from planning further development to promoting the browser market.
Time-tested experience
This way of working with the user community is nothing new - in fact, before Vivaldi, many of our developers worked to develop the once very popular Opera browser, and it was through close collaboration with users that we were able to make it popular around the world. Today, we are simply repeating this successful path, continuing to improve it and forging closer cooperation with the user community.
In the near future, we plan to launch several more projects that will help everyone to take part in the creation of a functional and convenient Vivaldi browser - a browser that is created jointly by developers and users, everyone for everyone.
Photo by Vlad Hilitanu