Lessons from Mozilla:

How we are learning to

foster and grow participation
Pascal Finette
pfinette@mozilla.com

MIT Innovation Lab Meeting

May 24-25, 2010
Warning! Your Milage May Vary
about:Mozilla

First, some context

about:Mozilla

1. a global, open source project

2. a community of thousands of creators

3. a mission-oriented organization

4. a public benefit company and subs

5. the maker of Firefox & Thunderbird

Alternatively…
about:Mozilla

Mozilla’s Mission:
To promote choice and
innovation on the Internet
The Web is too important…

seriously.
that’s it.
about:Mozilla

• Mozilla project started in 1998 within Netscape

• Mozilla Foundation started in 2003

• approximately 250 paid staff in 20 countries

• 40% of code contributed by volunteers

• testing community of 20,000+

• current reach is more than 360 million users

• global browser market share >25%

The Strongest Open Systems are Chaords

1. distributed decision-making
2. nodal authority
3. ways to route around

http://upload.wikimedia.org/
wikipedia/en/d/d2/
Internet_map_1024.jpg
Characteristics of Chaords (coined by Dee Hock)

1. exhibit characteristics of both chaos & order

2. regularly yield surprising innovation

3. highly robust & scalable systems

Examples: the Internet, Visa, Wikipedia

Mozilla is a Chaord

1. high agreement on core values

2. decision-making rests with module owners

3. groups have distinct ways of working

4. many decision-makers outside the “official” org

5. communication is central
We are a community of creators
about:Labs

“Laboratories are where science and

creativity meet to develop, research,
and explore new ideas.
Mozilla Labs embraces this great
tradition - a virtual lab where people
come together to create, experiment,
and play with new Web innovations
and technologies.”
Structure

Projects Platforms Programs

Mozilla Labs so far

• 17 major projects (and many more explorations)

• 1,000+ participants

• 3,000+ submissions, ideas & concepts

• 40+ schools & universities world-wide participate

Crowd Sourcing: Concept Series
Crowd Sourcing: Design Challenge
Lessons from Mozilla
Challenge #1

Increase participation
from non-developers
Challenge #1:
Increase participation from non-developers

Situation
• The Mozilla project traditionally has strong participation from
developers (and related areas) but lacks participants in fields
such as UI/UX/HCI designers

Hypothesis
• Targeted outreach (e.g. universities and UX user groups) and
programs geared specifically to the target group introduce
participants to Mozilla, get them involved and turn some of
them into long-term contributors
Challenge #1:
Increase participation from non-developers

Experiment
• Targeted outreach to 50+ universities with UX/HCI programs
around the world as well as IxDA (large UX user group)
• Setup of initial Design Challenge around “Chromeless
Browsing” w/ video sessions, lessons, multiple phases
Results & Findings
• 15+ participating universities (on different levels) / 40+
participants / 18 submitted prototypes
• Scalability issues around program
• Prototype requirement was a mismatch to skill set (designers
vs developers)
Challenge #1:
Increase participation from non-developers

Refinement

• 6 additional Design Challenges

• Increased outreach to both universities & user groups

• Average participation: 100+ submissions (video/mockup)

• Parallelization of challenges problematic

• Still struggling with scalability issues

Challenge #2

Create the right

incentives & motivations
Challenge #2:
Create the right incentives & motivations

Situation
• Participants in Open Source projects are primarily motivated
by the desire to “scratch an itch”, social recognition, as well as
learning new and expanding existing skills
Hypothesis
• Participating designers are more motivated by (formal)
recognition (e.g. for CV building)
• Further: Sharing and open collaboration is much less
common among designers than developers (where code
sharing is common practice)
• Designers enjoy challenges which they can directly relate to
Challenge #2:
Create the right incentives & motivations

Experiment
• Design Challenges have an element of formal recognition by
showcasing all submissions and bestowing “Best in Class”
honors (without monetary prizes)
• Design Challenges explore different topics - ranging from
major Firefox features to very specific and “niche” problems
Results & Findings
• Participants react extremely positive to recognition
mechanism, lack of monetary prizes doesn’t seem to make a
difference
• Specialized Design Challenges result in low participation
Challenge #2:
Create the right incentives & motivations

Refinement

• Careful topic selection and “dressing up”

• Expansion of public recognition element (hi-fi showcases)

• For “niche” topics: Pre-selection of relevant target groups,

higher touch outreach

• Problem: Fatigue amongst participating designers

Challenge #3

Ideas don’t (automatically)

result in collaboration
Challenge #3:
Ideas don’t (automatically) result in collaboration

Situation
• Participants in the Concept Series often simply submit ideas
directed to the Firefox team (similar to Dell’s IdeaStorm) and
don’t develop them further

Hypothesis
• Participants often lack specific skills to develop an idea
further
• Collaboration across strangers is hard
• Main challenge: Lack of incentives to drive an idea forward
Challenge #3:
Ideas don’t (automatically) result in collaboration

Experiment
• High-touch support of participants and their ideas within the
Concept Series by Mozilla staff
• Teams of students (with complimentary skills) from
participating universities, working together on single idea
Results & Findings
• Ideas overcome initial inertia after receiving input & support
by Mozilla but fizzle out after support stopped
• Excellent results from student teams - though project
development stops after students turn their focus onto
something else
Challenge #3:
Ideas don’t (automatically) result in collaboration

Refinement

• Highlighting relevant projects/ideas to turn the community

focus onto them (with specific tasks)

• Potential to empower community members to take up

mentorship roles (train the trainer)

• High-touch outreach has strong scalability issues

Challenge #4

Tooling
Challenge #4:
Tooling

Situation
• Few existing tools which don’t fully fit the specific workflow
of our initiatives and are usually designed for closed
communities

Hypothesis
• A good tool can lower the barrier for collaboration
significantly and make collaboration much easier
• Good tools create incentives for participation & collaboration
(e.g. personal profiles)
Challenge #4:
Tooling

Experiment
• Tested a couple of available tools (with different focus - e.g.
StackExchange, IdeaScale, Elgg)
• Tried to build own tool
Results & Findings
• Existing tools mainly don’t work for Mozilla - openness and
specific UI/UX workflow prove to be main issues
• Building your own tool is hard - especially if you don’t exactly
know what you need to build
Challenge #4:
Tooling

Refinement

• Currently looking into Intuit Brainstorm (which seems to fit

the bill quite nicely)

• Lots of discussions with tool vendors to share learnings and

evangelize the open nature of these tools
Challenge #5

Filter & voting mechanisms

Challenge #5:
Filter & voting mechanisms

Situation
• Simple voting and filter mechanisms (e.g. Digg-style thumbs
up/down) have known limitations and can easily be gamed

Hypothesis
• A robust voting mechanism needs to limit gaming and allow
creation of a robust average from participants with different
backgrounds
Challenge #5:
Filter & voting mechanisms

Experiment
• Test with simple voting mechanism (all participants could
vote on all submissions and leave a vote up)
• Second test with mechanism based on innovation
tournaments (participants can only vote on 5 randomly
selected submissions, vote on different criteria from 1 to 5)
Results & Findings
• Initial test was immediately gamed and produced
meaningless results
• Innovation tournament voting very robust, yet hard to
implement on an ongoing basis (voter fatigue)
Challenge #5:
Filter & voting mechanisms

Refinement

• All Design Challenges will be run with an innovation

tournament style voting

• Still looking for easy to implement and use mechanism for

robust filtering/bubbling up of good ideas
Postscript

Some thoughts about the future

Some thoughts about the future

More experimentation

• We’re currently staffing for a role around the Concept Series

& Design Challenges

• Continued experimentation w/ university collaboration

• Still on the quest to find the (mostly) right tool

• Starting to act more like a catalyst -- which fits nicely with

our overall model of openess
Questions & Discussion

pfinette@mozilla.com
finette.co.uk
@pfinette

All content CC-Attribution

Thanks & apologies & materials borrowed from:

John Lilly, Chris Beard and the Mozilla Community