On most platforms, new features are decided by product managers, executives, or a handful of people in a meeting room. Users find out about changes when they ship, and their only real feedback channel is complaining about it afterward.
Senden does this differently. Feature decisions go through a community voting system inspired by Switzerland's direct-democracy model. The same country Senden is based in. Users propose features, users vote on them, and the community has a real say in what the platform becomes.
Anyone using Senden can suggest a new feature. The process looks like this:
Sometimes a proposed feature conflicts with Senden's values, moral stance, or legal obligations. For example: a feature that would provide unbreakable encryption, allowing criminals to thrive or violate Swiss law simply can't be built, no matter how many users want it.
In those cases, the Senden team can offer a counter proposal, an alternative version that tries to addresses the same underlying need in a way that fits within Senden's principles. This is borrowed directly from Swiss politics, where parliament can attach a counter proposal to any popular initiative it disagrees with.
The community then votes on the counter proposal. It can be accepted or rejected. The team doesn't get the final word, the users do. If both the original and the counter proposal are on the table, users weigh in on both.
If most users voted for a request of change, the request goes into a second voting round.
It's about refining the original idea to fit the most users.
Many product managers are pressured into profit and therefore might not make the right decisions. Direct democracy has worked for Switzerland for a long time. We think it can work for a messaging platform too.
The team still retains a veto on anything that would cross legal or ethical lines, but the direction of the project belongs to the people who use it.