CrowdSound Blog

Intridea’s pleased to officially announce the Fall 2008 Release of CrowdSound. This release follows the Summer 2008 general release and includes several new features and enhancements, including:

• Internationalization of the CrowdSound tool
• A Popup Version of the CrowdSound tool
• Many interface improvements on the management tool
• Completely fleshed out hosted site option
• Custom branding for enterprises
• Custom enterprise integration
• On-premise/cloud hosting options

The customer-facing sections of the CrowdSound tool are now available in twelve different languages – Dutch, English, Brazilian & European Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese and Traditional & Simplified Chinese – with on-the-fly language switching within a single account. Along with the many user interface improvements for managing suggestions, multiple language support makes the CrowdSound tool a perfect solution for international websites and multilingual companies.

The much-requested popup version of the CrowdSound tool allows for unobtrusive integration of the CrowdSound widget into websites — the widget pops up whenever a user clicks on a feedback-activated link or image, with complete control in the hands of the website’s designer. CrowdSound also offers an always-visible version of the widget and a hosted website that serves as an entry-point for those companies that prefer to use the tool independently of their website.

The hosted website has undergone many changes — the most prominent of which being the new session-based authentication. If you are using the hosted site integration options, your old links will still continue to work the way you expect them to. However, users visiting your hosted site will be required to signup (or login) with CrowdSound (unless you’ve specified otherwise) in order to make suggestions and vote.

Bump, Inc. 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’s 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.”