Bump Uses Intridea CrowdSound To Gain Beta Users' Feedback
User Comments Via Intridea's Social Feedback Widget Provide Unexpected Insights Into Customer Priorities and BumpTop Product Feature Preferences
Intridea, Inc., the agile enterprise Web 2.0 company, today announced that Bump Inc. has successfully implemented Intridea CrowdSound, the social feedback widget, to gather user suggestions on its beta software. Bump has developed the groundbreaking BumpTop three-dimensional graphical user interface, which mimics the behavior of a real-world desk.
Through CrowdSound, Bump has gained valuable -- and sometimes unexpected user insight -- into the BumpTop beta product. The customer feedback on feature preferences and priorities has helped Bump to focus its development efforts on the functionality that will offer the highest customer satisfaction when BumpTop launches.
"We are committed to changing the way users experience their computer desktops with BumpTop, and it's a top priority to deliver a stellar product right out the gate," said Anand Agarawala, founder and CEO of BumpTop. "With CrowdSound, Intridea has provided a fantastic tool to help us deliver the product users want."
Agarawala has actively sought user feedback since BumpTop began as his master's thesis defining a user interface that let people stack, bump or toss files on their computer desktops to simulate a physical desk-like experience. Initially Bump used email groups and Web-based forums to solicit input, but those channels provided few responses, and Agarawala realized the need for a social feedback tool.
After evaluating multiple feedback products, Bump has implemented Intridea CrowdSound because it offers several advantages over other solutions. At the top of the list is the low investment CrowdSound demands of users; they can choose to craft a comment or simply contribute to an existing one.
"Users tend to get deterred from contributing their opinions if they have to make the effort of formulating an email or posting on a forum," said Agarawala. "CrowdSound makes giving feedback easy for our users. They don't have to worry about navigating pages; they just click once to offer a suggestion or cast a vote."
Other key factors in Bump's decision to use CrowdSound for feedback on BumpTop are the:
-- Ease of adding users with CrowdSound, which contrasts with other account-based solutions that require more effort to set up and manage;
-- Split view showing both the most recent comments and the most popular ones; and
-- CrowdSound's ease of implementation and ability to seamlessly integrate with the BumpTop product website.
"It took me 15 minutes at most to create our CrowdSound account and set it up, and most of that time was inputting the initial entries," said Agarawala.
Once Bump had CrowdSound running on its site, the company saw a surge in user feedback -- up to five times higher than previous response levels. More importantly, the company gained much greater insight into what BumpTop features customers considered to be top priorities.
"Initially, we posted on CrowdSound the top 12 features we were thinking of building into BumpTop, including some that were pie in the sky," Agarawala recalled. "It was easy to identify the top few priorities because they each received 40-50 votes versus less than 20. Interestingly, we thought we knew what users would choose, but we were surprised by some of the features that were voted to the top. There were also valuable user suggestions. CrowdSound has definitely helped us to focus our development priorities to give users what they want."
Agarawala adds, "With CrowdSound, we are also able to update the status of a suggestion to indicated we've implemented it. This lets our users know we are listening and working to deliver a product they will love."
"Bump is pioneering a completely new way to experience the computer desktop, and we're excited to see the company's success in using CrowdSound to tune BumpTop to real-world user demands," said Dave Naffis, president, products at Intridea. "It is a great example of CrowdSound's power as a social feedback tool for engaging customers as collaborators to bring groundbreaking products to market."
Bump Inc., headquartered in Toronto, Canada, offers a fresh and engaging new way to interact with the computer desktop through BumpTop. Pile and toss documents like on a real desk, and interact by pushing, pulling and piling documents with elegant, self-revealing gestures, breaking free from the rigid and mechanical style of standard point-and-click desktops. BumpTop's stunning interface makes clever use of 3D presentation and smooth physics-based animations for an engaging, vivid user experience. For more information, please visit http://bumptop.com.
Intridea, Inc. develops high-performance Web 2.0 applications and services to help enterprises realize the power of cloud computing and social networking. They include Present.ly for enterprise microblogging, the SocialSpring social networking platform, MediaPlug media appliance server, and the CrowdSound social feedback widget. Intridea solutions are based on Ruby on Rails for agile development. Intridea actively contributes to Rails directly and through open source plug-ins, and it hosts the Acts As Community social network for Ruby developers. Intridea is headquartered in Washington, DC. For more information, visit www.intridea.com.
