Firefox/Aurora/UserResearch

Goals

• User research to figure out what users on each channel expect with update frequency

Background Information

• Nightly: Updates every day
• Aurora: Updates every time there is a change, which ends up being virtually every day
• Beta: Updates once a week, every week
• Release: Updates every 6 weeks

Our current thinking is that the Beta audience may not know they are on beta (due to an elongated Firefox 4 beta period) and may be annoyed by weekly updates. If we find this is the case we can take steps like adding the "beta" sash to the icon and have better messaging about being on Beta and how to get off.

Additionally, we know people opted into Aurora with certain expectations. We'd like to know if they like seeing more updates as it reinforces the fact there are changes they are testing or if they don't see any changes so just find them annoying.

For Nightly, we expect users to care / want daily updates (and indeed, they generally file bugs if ones were missed).

Also, some updates bring more visible changes...it'd be interesting to see if that helps / hurts users on the various channels. For example, going from Firefox 6 → Firefox 7 on beta will be more noticeable than Firefox 7 beta 1 → Firefox 7 beta 2 the following week.

We believe update fatigue / expectations are also impacted by frequency of Firefox use. For example, if someone is on Beta but uses their browser once a week, it may feel like they are getting an update "every day", causing annoyance / fatigue.

Tools

• Survey
  • we can get data right away (will take 1-2 weeks to compile all data)
• User Testing
  • will take about a month to perform user testing and compile data