Without feedback, any product remains a spherical craft in a vacuum, a thing living in the ideal world of its creator. From a horse carriage to a teleport in the world of quantum hyper-entanglement, a product is created for an end user who has his own vision of future features. Reviews and ideas of users - this is the fuel for the development of the service. Even if ideas are sometimes absurd. Among the hundreds of bad reviews there will definitely be one good thought that you yourself could not think of.

When you have ten users - it is easy to make a choice. But when users - millions of problems begin. Our way of accumulating all the wishes for the product, regardless of quantity, is the project Idea Mail.Ru.
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We talk about why we need new ideas and how to collect them.

Why ideas are important

This picture is already three thousand years old, but it is often cited as an example when people say that listening to users is simply dangerous. Like, you need to make the product the way you see it yourself, and any indulgence to the masses will worsen ergonomics, usability and take away your legs and arms. First, we analyze why we do not agree with this statement.

When you get another idea from a user ( “I want to be able to schedule a letter to be sent for 2145” ), you think: “what the hell, is this madness”? Well, it is, but sometimes a slight (or strong) non-standard is the only way to innovate (and profit), because if you don’t work with a true deviation from the standards, you will never be able to create any breakthrough innovations.

First, we have no right to judge whether a healthy or sick idea is in front of us. In the end, the judges themselves are the users themselves, who decide whether their product suits them or not. The idea itself does not solve anything - it can at least three times distort the concept of the norm, but if it eliminates a specific problem, then why not?

Almost all great ideas seem crazy at first glance.

How non-standard ideas are converted into profits

When the founders of Airbnb lived on mattresses and ate canned food, they dreamed of the first million dollars of investment - at least a dollar, but from an investor who would notice them. They came to Paul Graham, founder of the Y Combinator business incubator. Later, Graham will tell what he was thinking at this moment: “I thought that the idea of ​​becoming an intermediary between the landlord and the tenant is insane. Are these people really going to do what they say? I would never do that. ”



Craigslist is an example of a platform in which there is almost no design and it does not play any role. Sounds crazy? They have not changed their design for 20 years; it’s hard to believe that someone can visually like this site. Be sure, they were advised to redesign millions of times, but not less users defended a unique, to date, interface. Users here view the UX in terms of functionality and will defend their right to see the product as they like it.



The Drudge Report news resource looks like the most disgusting thing in the universe, but he likes his audience that way. Ready to argue with them?

The I Am Rich app for iOS was the craziest idea of ​​all that could come to mind about the application market. At launch, the application showed only a glowing red gem, and an icon, which, when clicked, displayed the following information:

I am rich
I deserve it
I am good
healthy &
successful

And that's all - there was no more information in it. I Am Rich could be installed from the App Store for 999.99 US dollars, 799.99 euros or 599.99 pounds sterling. Before Apple managed to remove it, the author managed to earn $ 5,600 on sales.



Pet Rock is a company based on the idea of ​​the strangest pets you know. In 1975, an ordinary sales manager Gary Dahl found a solution to get rid of his pet care problems once and for all. He decided that the stone was a great pet. Gary supplied the stones on a bed of straw in a package with small holes so that the air could get fresh air. Each set was accompanied by training instructions. Most of the teams - "sit", "lie" stone-pet was able to perform independently. Naturally it was a crazy idea, but it brought a profit to the inventor - it was sold a half million stones at the price of 4 dollars apiece. Then the company closed, but in 2012, Rosebud Entertainment resumed production under license.

How to systematize ideas

Newton allegedly slept before an apple fell on his head. Mendeleev used the dream as another tool in the work. Tom Peters, Ray Bradbury, Al Rice, Jay Conrad Levinson used freeriting to search for innovative solutions. Someone just helps a bottle of beer or a glass of strong coffee. In general, there is no shortage of ways to launch the creative part of the brain. But what to do next, how to be with your idea, where to carry it?

The usual way is as follows: write to the help desk or in social networks, send a letter to the developers, participate in a vulnerability scan program or some other company contest. With such methods, ideas are in principle easy to get, but hard to systematize. In this case, the user himself does not know whether his idea reached the addressee or was lost. When complaining about a problem or offering your own solution, you could often get a sample response, like a formal reply, without specifics or deadlines.

What we have done: with the help of the Mail.Ru Idea service, each user (in the beta version so far only Mail.Ru for Business users) can suggest how to improve a project, suggest a new feature, or point to a bug. Immediately after publication, the idea falls into consideration by the person responsible for the product. If the idea is worthwhile, it will be transferred to the status “In Work”, and in fact, it will be transferred to the status “Implemented”.

This does not mean that by sharing your insight with us, you will then remain in the silent emptiness of ignorance - you will learn about changes in the product through email notifications.

All offers are visible to other participants: this reduces the likelihood of duplication of ideas. In addition, other users may vote for the idea. If the idea is rejected for any reason, the project manager will give a detailed explanation in the comments on the reasons for the refusal. Nevertheless, we only welcome the emergence of ideas that we ourselves could not even suspect - let them be strange.

We start with the product Mail.Ru for Business: its administrators and users will be able to influence the development of the service and literally order improvements for their individual needs. However, plans to extend this practice to all projects of the company.

Good, great, different - examples of ideas and reactions

We will show a few ideas that we have already implemented or (will be realizing) in the very near future.

Notice of reading. Mail, unlike SMS, does not have a delivery report, and correspondence partners are different. Therefore, we were not surprised that users requested a reading report, and we did it.

Shared address book. Popular request of the business audience. It is so logical that when you use mail for the domain and each employee has an e-mail address with the full name associated with him, see all employees in the general contact list. And this desire of the user has been heard and taken to work.

Signature logo. The inability to put a logo in the signature causes a reasonable confusion. This is part of the corporate style, and we are still forced to use a text signature. We heard and started making, release soon.

External mailing lists. When we planned mailing lists, we constantly thought about what to limit spam. What will happen if the address flows out and gets into the database of unscrupulous mailers? Therefore, we have closed the ability to add foreign addresses to groups and were wrong. In general, here the feedback showed that we were wrong - we are sure to implement.

Password to access the link in the Cloud . Giving a link to access to your data in the Cloud, you should always remember - the link can be transferred further, stolen, remain on the clipboard in the Internet cafe. We have not often asked for this opportunity, but it seems interesting and increases the security of user data. Therefore, we have entered it into the plan and are planning to do it.

Instead of conclusion

Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. It was not his idea, but he turned it into a successful product almost 100 years after it was created.

Now you don’t have to wait so much time - you will determine which feature will lead the product to success.