Mozilla student projects wrapping up in India

Chofmann and I returned from India last July with a few opportunities to work with various campuses where students had shown interest in doing “something” for Mozilla.  I took a chance at setting up four different teams to do projects related to community building and market research.

As it turns out, managing student teams to do community building on the other side of the world can be difficult.  But, I suspected that going in.  It was best to keep my expectations fairly realistic while setting goals for the students.  We accomplished some stuff with our projects, and I am still gathering final write-ups from a few of the teams.  Today, I’ll focus on Team 21 from the Indian Institute of Managemenet, Ahmadebad.

Team 21, led by Vijay Haryal, jumped right into a fairly comprehensive market research plan for Mozilla.  We’re going to post their final report to Spread Firefox, in the Firefox in India Group. Once we have listed the report there, please download it and read for your enjoyment.

The initial goal of the team:

To develop a marketing plan for the launch of Firefox 3 customized to the needs of the Indian community.

This was an ambitious goal, and I can say that we did not quite create a marketing plan for the launch of Firefox 3, but we learned a great deal from the students about the Web and Internet culture in India.

The team started by addressing the language issue in India.  I’ve blogged about this before, but a crucial aspect to understand about the Indian Internet culture that is different from other countries is the existence of over 20 languages spoken regularly by different groups within the country.   The team looked at the pros and cons of localizing Firefox in multiple languages and later surveyed users about this issue.

Additionally, the team created a plan for their market research.  It was fairly straightforward:

• Research frequent user behavior to identify some key attributes of Indian Web users through in-depth interviews and focus groups
• Validate what we learn about the attributes by looking at the demographics of those surveyed and interviewed
• Analyze the data
• Present the findings

All of this is explained in further detail in the forthcoming report we’ll post on Spread Firefox.  When it is loaded there, I’ll link to it.  (If you want an advance copy, email me or comment here and I will send you a .PDF)

Here are some main findings from Team 21:

• Position Mozilla as a more secure browser. To back it up, reach out to various financial institutions, encouraging them to enable their sites to allow secure banking transactions.  According to what Team 21 found, Indian users can only use IE to complete their banking transactions.
• Also, in order to make Firefox look and feel “more Indian”, in addition to the en-IN version proposed, Firefox should ensure that Hindi and Tamil fonts render properly
• Factor analysis shows that the users can be categorized into two main segments – one which is seeking technical features like compatibility & security, and the other which is seeking a browser with a more “Indian feel”
• Mozilla should start an evangelism campaign to convince Indian web and content developers to make their sites compatible
• India-specific user preferences, like addons for travel websites, should be promoted or included in some bundled download

I thought these were particularly helpful action points to learn about users in India.

In closing, this was a great project to do with the student team.  They did many things that got them involved quickly in the Mozilla community.  They took time to understand how we work by doing simple tasks like logging into Bugzilla and commenting on bugs.  They hosted regular calls with us via VoIP software.  They wrote many progress reports and sent them to us, copying their advisers.  Thanks, Team 21, for making the 13 hour time zone difference seamless.

Vijay has indicated that he would like to stay involved in some capacity.  As an engineering student who returned to business school, I hope he does because he has both the technical background and the business acumen to help spread Mozilla in India.  Thanks for leading the project, Vijay!