We’ve always valued our community’s feedback and thrived thanks to your input—whether through our annual survey or your comments on Reddit. Now we want to go a step further and involve the ProtonMail community in the testing of early stage prototypes.

June 21st Update – We have now received enough applications for testers (over 2000 people)! We want to thank everybody that applied. Your support is invaluable for making ProtonMail better and better!

Today we invite you to join our first community usability testing for some of our new prototypes. We’re looking for anyone who loves ProtonMail and wants to try out a new product. For the first stage, testers will get to meet the team in Zurich (Switzerland) this summer. For the second stage, scheduled for later this year, testers can be located anywhere in the world; we’ll send the prototypes to you. Space is limited, so apply today following the form below.

This is ProtonMail’s first hardware prototype, and it’s the first time we’ve invited our community to provide us with in-person feedback. Last year, we partnered with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), one of the leading technical universities in the world, and applied for a research grant from Innosuisse. Our proposal was accepted, and with this support we have been studying how to use hardware to secure digital communication and empower you to secure your digital identity.

After many months of research and development, we are now looking for users to test a variety of early stage prototypes and give us feedback about their impressions while using them. For this project, testing will be performed in two or more phases over the coming months, explained in more detail below.

Besides the chance to directly influence the development of our latest features and products, you will get the chance to talk to some of our team members about your hopes for future Proton Technologies products.

Stage 1: on-site usability testing

For the first phase, we would like to invite a handful of you to visit us on site in Zurich to participate in a preliminary usability test. These usability tests will take place in a lab at ETH Zurich. Each will last roughly 40-50 minutes.

On the day of the test, you will meet with one of our team members, who will guide you through the test. In the first half, we will discuss some of your habits when using our products to give us an idea what kind of user you are. Next comes the fun part: You’ll get hands-on time with some of our early stage hardware prototypes. We will ask you to complete a set of interactions and then tell us about your experience doing it. We will analyze your feedback and take it into account for later prototype iterations.

While we are not able to cover travel costs, we will give each of our first stage testers a voucher for credits equivalent to a year’s worth of our ProtonMail Plus subscription.

Stage 2: field usability testing

During this stage, scheduled for later this year, we will ask a larger group of testers to play with newer iterations of the hardware prototypes.

Testers will receive exclusive access to these devices to use in their daily lives during the testing period. Afterward, we will ask them to answer a set of questions to gather feedback about their experience. This feedback will again be used to further refine the prototype.

Again, anyone is welcome to apply for testing, though slots for Stage 2 testing are limited by the number of prototypes we will produce.

We hope you will apply to join our first-ever testing program. Please fill out the form below to submit your application, and we’ll contact you shortly with more details.

The applications limit has been reached and the sign up form has been removed.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards,

Your Proton Team