blackbear V1.0.0 Changelog — What's new?

We are thrilled to announce that our newest product version is now live, and we couldn't be more excited to share it with you.

Below is a comprehensive overview of new terminology and features, process changes, bug fixes and features we removed, for blackbear Solvers and customers.

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For Solvers

New Terminology

We have made important changes to our terminology. Here are the main updates:

• The term ‘Challenge’ will now be referred to as ‘Assignment’
• The term ‘Solution’ will now be referred to as ‘Deliverable’
• The term ‘Motivation’ will now be referred to as ‘Proposal’
• ‘Spots’ are no longer in use. To increase clarity on assignment participation options, we have replaced the concept of ‘open spots’ with two new statuses:
  • Open for Proposals: refers to all Assignments where participation is still possible and where we are still accepting Proposals.
  • Closed for Proposals: refers to all Assignments where participation is no longer possible and no further Proposals will be accepted.

New Features

Open an Assignment in a new tab

Sometimes the small things hurt the most. Thank you for hanging in there. You can now right-click on Assignments and open them in a new tab.

New filtering & sorting

Finally, an easier way to find what you are looking for. For now, we have introduced filtering by "Proposal status", "language" and "category". We will keep improving this going forward.

View your submitted Deliverables

We want to offer you full visibility of your work and contributions. You can now view the Deliverables submitted by you or your team on the Assignment page.

View the latest feedback on your Deliverables

You can now view the feedback received on your Draft Deliverables and the latest update on the final Deliverables on the Assignment page.

Submit a Draft Deliverable to get feedback early on

This feature allows a Solver or team to obtain customer feedback early in the process by submitting a draft of their work halfway through. This helps you ensure that the work you're doing is aligned with the customer's expectations.

Blind rating system to facilitate fair rating

The blind rating system is a feature that we introduced to ensure fair ratings throughout our process. Reviews for Solvers or organisations only become visible when both parties submit their feedback. This means that you will only be able to view your rating and feedback if you have provided a rating in return.

Rating approval by blackbear

We take pride in ensuring a fair rating process that benefits both our Solvers and customers. To ensure a fair rating and payment process and to support our customers in providing constructive and relevant feedback, the blackbear team will review all ratings before they become visible on your profile and before they trigger the payment of the reward.

Introducing: the blackbear Help Centre

We are excited to share that we're launching our blackbear Help Centre. Our team is here to answer all your questions or provide assistance wherever necessary. We hope that this will allow us to always offer you the right level of support throughout your blackbear journey.

Track your activity to stay up-to-date

You can now track your current activity using the 'My Activity' page. This page will display your most recent Assignments, their current status, and all of your completed work — who doesn't love a bit oversight?

Submit an improved final Deliverable

An extra pair of eyes to produce world-class results! After you've submitted a final Deliverable, our team will review it before delivering it to the customer. If we identify opportunities to improve your deliverable, we will provide feedback and allow you to make changes and resubmit.

Feature Improvements, Process Changes and Bug Fixes

New Assignment dashboard

We have added a 'Discovery' page — your go-to destination for the most recent and highest-priority assignments. Additionally, we have revamped our Assignment dashboard, giving it a fresh look and displaying the most relevant information on the Assignment cards.

Reward (payout) system changes

Moving forward, the reward listed for an assignment will represent either the maximum reward that a Solver can earn when working alone or the total reward that a team of Solvers can receive for the final Deliverable when working together. When working as a team, the listed reward will be divided equally among all team members.

Take on an Assignment alone or as a team? It is up to you!

We trust our Solvers to be subject matter experts and believe they are best positioned to determine whether they can handle an Assignment alone or prefer to work on it as a team. Going forward, the blackbear team will no longer enforce any specific way of working on an Assignment. It is completely up to you how and with whom you wish to work on Assignments!

Increase responsibility for Lead Solvers

When working on an Assignment as a team, the Lead Solver is responsible for submitting all the Deliverables and the final rating on behalf of their team. Moving forward, individual team members will no longer be able to submit their own ratings. Instead, they should align with the Lead Solver to submit a rating that reflects ever member's input.

Introducing new rating criteria for clearer context

We introduced new rating criteria for providing and receiving ratings. This is in an effort to facilitate a fair rating system that provides clear context and considers the most relevant aspects when completing an Assignment.

Enhanced rating precision

Every decimal point counts and every contribution you make will now be accurately reflected in your ratings. Previously, we rounded up all ratings to 0.5 or 0.0 decimals, which sometimes resulted in a less precise representation of your performance. Moving forward, we will round up to the closest decimal point, ensuring a closer match to your average rating.

Work on more than two Assignments simultaneously

We now allow you to take on more than two Assignments at the same time. This means more opportunities to showcase your skills, collaborate with different customers, and maximise your earning potential.

Stay ahead of the game with clear Assignment deadlines

We understand the importance of timely submission when it comes to delivering exceptional results. Collaborating with the client, we establish deadlines that will now be visible on the Assignment page but also communicated to you effectively.

Get more flexibility with Assignment deadline extension

We recognise that you might need a little extra time sometimes to ensure your Deliverables shine with 5-star quality. That's why we've introduced a flexible solution that allows you to request a deadline extension when needed. Simply reach out to your dedicated Project Consultant in advance, and together we can extend the deadline in agreement with the client.

Late Deliverables are now accepted

Some of you might have experienced being completely kicked out of the Assignment if you missed the Deliverable deadline. We understand that sometimes, unexpected circumstances can cause delays in your work. That's why we've made an important update to our policy: you now have the opportunity to submit your Deliverables even if you're running a little late.

Important: Even though we now offer this flexibility, we highly encourage you to avoid this situation whenever possible. Submitting Deliverables on time and, if not possible, requesting a deadline extension is the key to ensuring customer satisfaction and maintaining an excellent rating.

Simplified payout verification process

We've streamlined your payout method selection experience, ensuring a faster, more secure, and hassle-free verification journey.

New user onboarding checklist

We want to make it easy for all our new Solvers to find their way around and quickly set new users up for success. Therefore, we've built a new onboarding guideline — we'll take you by the hand on the first steps of your blackbear journey!

Improved notifications system

We have revamped our notifications and notification settings to provide you with an even better user experience. Our goal is to ensure that you receive the most relevant updates and enhance the overall communication and clarity on our platform.

Improved account deletion

We never want to part ways but at times, it happens. We've revamped our account deletion process to ensure that your departure doesn't go unnoticed and that your feedback helps us shape a better platform for future users.

General Improvements:

General UX Improvements: We improved the navigation, pagination, loading states, navigation and colour contrasts, error and empty states.

UI tweaks for your liking: new look and feel.

Cookie policy: your privacy is important to us. For that reason we have improved our cookie policy.

Bug fixes: we have solved bugs all across the application to make room for new ones. We are only human!

We Had to Say Goodbye to Some Features:

We learned that the below features were not as valuable to you as we would have liked (we might bring them back with your help in a way that benefits you).

• Earnings: For now, you will not be able to view the list of your earnings and deposits. We apologise for any inconveniences. We will bring it back soon — new and improved.
• Gamification: skill classes, achievements and levels
• WhatsApp notifications
• Desktop notifications
• Browser notifications

What Do We Need From You?

Action required for all Solvers — reselect your preferred payout method

As part of this update, we have reintegrated Stripe, our payment provider. To ensure uninterrupted payment processing, once the new version is released, you will have to reselect your payout method via Stripe. After we transition to the new platform, any expected or pending payout on completed assignments can only be processed after your Stripe payout method is selected.

Payouts towards Non-EU countries are no longer supported.

We have some sad news for existing Solvers that operate out of non-EU countries. We regret to inform you that we are currently unable to operate in your country due to local requirements and Stripe payment restrictions. As a result, you will no longer be able to participate in assignments for the time being. We are working hard to resolve this issue and hope to be back soon. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

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For Organisations

New Terminology

We have made important changes to our terminology. Here are the main updates:

• The term ‘Challenge’ will now be referred to as ‘Assignment’
• The term ‘Solution’ will now be referred to as ‘Deliverable’
• The term ‘Motivation’ will now be referred to as ‘Proposal’

New Features

Keep a backlog of Assignment ideas

With the Assignment Backlog, you can easily save your Assignment idea to your backlog and get back to it later. You can choose to share it with blackbear when you are ready. No more scattered to-do lists or Miro boards.

Simplified Assignment statuses for seamless progress tracking

We have created a simple Assignment journey to help you track the progress of each Assignment. Each Assignment will go through the following main statuses: Backlog, Planning, Sourcing, Delivery, and Completed. You can easily see where in the process each Assignment is by tracking its status.

New filtering & sorting

Finally, an easier way to find what you are looking for. For now, we have introduced filtering by "status", "Assignment owner", "language" and "category". We will enhance this as we go.

Introducing: draft Deliverables feature

This feature unlocks a Solver’s or team’s ability to submit a draft Deliverable and get your feedback early into the process to ensure that what you they're working on is aligned with your expectations. We hope that this will help you achieve desired outcomes.

Blind rating system to facilitate fair rating

The blind rating system is a feature that we introduced to ensure fair ratings throughout our process. Reviews for Solvers or organisations only become visible when both parties submit their feedback. This means that you will only be able to view your rating and feedback if you have provided a rating in return.

Rating approval by blackbear

We take pride in ensuring a fair rating process that benefits both our Solvers and customers. To ensure a fair rating and payment process and to support our customers in providing constructive and relevant feedback, the blackbear team will review all ratings before they become visible on your profile and before they trigger the payment of the reward.

Open an Assignment in a new tab

Sometimes the small things hurt the most. Thank you for hanging in there. You can now right-click on Assignments and open them in a new tab.

Roles & permissions for increased security

We have created a set of permissions and hierarchy in the roles, currently split between "Company Admin", "Assignment Owner" and "View only".

Manage your team in one place

You can now view and invite users from your company to join blackbear. Depending on your permissions, you can also edit and delete users or assign roles.

Increased support with our new blackbear Help Centre

We are excited to share that we're launching our blackbear Help Centre. Our team is here to answer all your questions or provide assistance wherever necessary. We hope that this will allow us to always offer you the right level of support throughout your blackbear journey.

Feature Improvements and Bug Fixes

New Assignment dashboard

We have revamped our Assignment dashboard, giving it a fresh look and displaying the most pertinent information on the Assignment cards.

My Assignments and Company Assignments

We understand the importance of maintaining a clear distinction between your personal Assignments and the collective efforts of your company. That's why we have created a simplified view to find your work versus the work that your company is doing: "My Assignments" and "Company Assignments".

Creating an Assignment has never been easier

We want to make it easy for you to get your needs out there as quickly and pain-free as possible. Inspired by our "Instant Intake", you can now create an assignment outline by answering a few quick questions and then submit it to our team. We will do the heavy work from there — we will analyse the information and schedule an intake to review it together.

Edit your Assignment and set your own budget

Once our team is done with drafting your Assignment, they will send it your way for a final review. At this stage, you can edit any information regarding the Assignment yourself, including the budget. Once you are happy, you can go ahead and request us to post the Assignment to our Solvers to kick-off the process.

Stay ahead of the game with clear Assignment deadlines

We understand the importance of timely submission when it comes to delivering exceptional results. In collaboration with you, we establish deadlines that will now be visible on the Assignment page but also communicated to you effectively.

Get more flexibility with Assignment deadline extension

We recognise that sometimes a little extra time is needed to ensure solver(s) deliver exceptional deliverables. That's why we've introduced a flexible solution that allows them to request a deadline extension when needed. In agreement with you, we can now extend their deadline.

Introducing new rating criteria for clearer context

We introduced new rating criteria for providing and receiving ratings. This is in an effort to facilitate a fair rating system that provides clear context and considers the most relevant aspects when completing an Assignment.

Enhanced rating precision

Every decimal point counts, and every contribution you make will now be accurately reflected in your ratings. Previously, we rounded-up all ratings to 0.5 or 0.0 decimals, which sometimes resulted in a less precise representation of your performance. Moving forward, we will round up to the closest decimal point, ensuring a closer match to your average rating.

Track the progress of your Assignments (Solvers, Deliverables, and ratings)

We have introduced a new way to present the progress of ongoing Assignments. Our new view provides a cleaner and better insight into the work being done, making it easier for you to keep up to date and rate a Solver or a team.

Improved notifications system

We have revamped our notifications and notification settings to provide you with an even better user experience. Our goal is to ensure that you receive the most relevant updates and enhance the overall communication and clarity on our platform.

Improved account deletion

We never want to part ways but at times it happens. We've revamped our account deletion process to ensure that your departure doesn't go unnoticed and that your feedback helps us shape a better platform for future users.

General improvements:

• General UX Improvements: we improved pagination, loading states, navigation and color contrasts, error and empty states.
• UI tweaks to your liking: new look and feel.
• Cookie policy: your privacy is important to us. For that reason we have improved our cookie policy.
• Updated terminology: to ensure we speak the same language with our clients and our Solvers, we changed some terms to be more aligned with industry standards.
• Bug fixes: we have solved bugs all across the application to make room for new ones. We are only human!

We had to say goodbye to some features:

We learned that the features below were not as valuable to you as we would have liked (we might bring them back with your help in a way that benefits you).

• WhatsApp notifications
• Desktop notifications
• Browser notifications
• Billing: Don’t worry, this is temporary. We will have this back soon!

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