Opera
Year
2025
Industry
Mobile browser
Role
Research, strategy, product design
Stages
Find, shape, cut, launch
-20%
Time to market
+4%
Searches
+0.9
Rating
A nugget of insight is found through research. A quantitative study asked why people chose Opera at all, and search vocabulary analysis told us what they did once they arrived.
Why Opera?
47% traffic, 24% speed, 17% habit, 12% other. The interface had to emphasise compression and speed for new users.
Search vocabulary
57% social networks, 28% news, 9% sports. The app needed social networks and news integrated far deeper into the interface.
Open data sharpened the picture. Each finding became a design decision rather than a slide.
Customer journey map
The future product is shaped in close collaboration with the client. Research covered a bus stop study, user interviews, user testing, Kano model analysis, a Treacy and Wiersema competitor matrix, and big and open data analysis.
Long-term goal
In two years time Opera becomes the go-to app for finding any information online, with a perception that it works faster and more efficiently than any of the competition.
Facets polished to shine bright. The product is ready to go live.
Quality night mode
We made Opera the first system with a sepia-tint night mode across the whole experience. Other browsers and operating systems followed within six to nine months.
First ever Paste & Go
Opera became the first browser with the smoothest version of a very common case, paste and go, by bringing the key information all the way up into sight. Other large browsers implemented the same solution in three to six months.
More search, more money
Tweaks to the omnibox drew more attention to it, generating more searches and lifting the main revenue stream.
R&D concept
To push the experience further, a research concept for novel search was developed from the product strategy, bringing more relevant information to the fingertips.
Key milestones
User testing
Facilitation
Strategy
Vision
Value based roadmap
Prototype
Design principles
Design
Full cycle
Final user test
Strategic insights shown here are skewed for presentation purposes, and results may differ from the client’s official stance.