EXPERIMENTS

#002 Chrome Extension User Research
    Research
by Pavan, 12/14/22

At dubdubdub, we want to help users get things done on the web in the best way possible.

This week, I sat down with a wide range of college students to uncover how they were using their browser.

Breaking it down into a list of popular clusters (in no particular order)

  1. Tab Management
  2. Bookmarking
  3. Alternative Content
  4. Multiplayer Browsing
  5. Account Management
  6. Ad Blockers
  7. Website-specifc enhancements
  8. Website Insights
  9. Productivity Tools
  10. Language related
  11. Fun
  12. Classwork related
  13. Saving Money
  14. CRM
  15. Media Enhancements

More analysis on the chrome extensions is in this figjam: Chrome Extension User Research

What I’m starting to see is that extensions are superpowers for users and a moat for chrome. But they are also bandaid fixes to the core problem that people’s relationships to computing is evolving, and no new extension is going to solve it. A new paradigm has to be created.