Meet the New Test Pilot
Effective immediately, we’ve renamed the Idea Town program to Test Pilot.
The original Test Pilot was an opt-in “labs” project around measuring what people actually did with the browser in small experiments, but hasn’t been used in over a year and has no future plans. We’ll be using the name and some of the assets to accelerate our original Idea Town plans.
At first glance the two projects appear similar but have key differences. I originally wrote a list to clarify what the new Test Pilot program was but decided it would be most useful if everyone could see it. Below is a rough description of the new Test Pilot.
- Test Pilot is an evolving set of stepping stones for getting an idea from a concept stage to landing in Firefox itself in an expedient way, being measured and verified along that path.
- Test Pilot is not a prototyping team.
- Test Pilot team members are amplifiers of people participating in the program. When a person or group submits an idea to Test Pilot they are starting a process in which they should expect to be involved until a conclusion is reached.
- Test Pilot team members help participants progress through the Test Pilot process in whichever ways are needed - from boiling an idea down to get at a measurable core concept, documenting an idea thoroughly, iterating on designs and prototypes, assisting with coding, communicating with appropriate teams around Mozilla, and helping uplift a successful idea to its next stage in life. An analogy could be made between Test Pilot team members and consultants.
- Test Pilot’s intention is to facilitate providing decision-makers with quality, focused data in a short period of time.
- Test Pilot works very closely with the Mozilla community (including paid staff).
I’m working on our migration plan but the Test Pilot wiki page is up and contains links to getting involved and staying up to date on further changes.
Long live Test Pilot. Again.