I’m a big fan of 37Signals and what they stand for so I know my feature request has a 99.9999% chance of never getting implemented but I’ve got to make these requests for BaseCamp.

REQUEST #1
Apply to All
When creating 10 or more Milestones, please give me the ability to apply my dropdown selection to the other 9 Milestones. For instance, if I’m selecting USER A for who is responsible, why do I have to select that multiple times?

REQUEST #2
JavaScript Calendar
Why is it when I add 1 Milestone I’m given a nice visual calendar to select a date but when I’m adding multiple Milestones I’m given a date drop down for both year, month and date. It seems as though this design choice is making me work too much.

REQUEST #3
Hasn’t Logged in Recently
This use to work really well but it changed a few months back. Now I can’t tell the difference from a user who hasn’t logged in verses a user who has never logged in. Perhaps a simple variation call “has never logged in” might help here.

Otherwise this is a great product, I continue to recommend it to my clients and associates but these few changes sure would be real nice additions. At least in my book.

This weekend I played around with my Mint account and part of the setup included me tying in my 401k program which is managed by Paychex. Mint just couldn’t connect to Paychex so I decided to visit the site to find out what’s the deal.

I was greeted by this atrocity.

I partly want to commend the designers for trying something new, but this isn’t the site to try that on. The audience here isn’t likely to be tech savvy or frequent visitors; two criteria I would look for when trying out a new interface direction.

Users are familiar with entering a username and password but an image is pushing it. 6 hours after selecting my image I came back to the site to write this post and I forgot my image already. Who has a favorite image? My question to Paychex; why not just use a CAPTCHA here? They are becoming widely used and more and more people are becoming familiar with them.

Here’s a suggestion. Use reCAPTCHA if you don’t want to create this yourselves, but please get rid of this image option for “added security.” While you are at it, make the whole UI of the benefits section more usable.

As an interactive agency we pride ourselves in our ability to keep in the forefront of the latest trends and techniques. We get so wrapped up in keeping up with the techno-Joneses that we often don’t realize that there is a huge line behind us of others struggling to keep up with just the basics of what we take for granted.

FTP
I’d like to assume we’ve all used FTP software before and we all understand how to login and send a file to a remote server, but this isn’t yet the case. In just this year alone I’ve ran into several clients and friends who aren’t familiar with FTP services. I’m sure there are several of you out there who can relate to people trying to send you multiple 10 Mb files via email only to wonder why they are bouncing back. That same person is often likely lost when you go on explaining how to FTP rather then emailing them.

The HOME button
Clicking on the logo takes you back to the homepage, right? No, not according to many we’ve spoken to. Many times either during the initial homepage design or just prior to launching someone always asks “How do you get to the homepage?” Often, I have to be the home-button-Nazi and say “No Home button for you” but is that correct? Certainly it depends on the site, information rich CNN uses the HOME button but product based Amazon uses the logo. Can we get a standard here?

New Browser Windows
OK, this one is a tough one to justify to a client. I for one hate the idea of a site opening new windows unless I asked for it. I’ll CTRL-Click or Apple-T my way to a new window but countless clients demand that we pop open their externally linking content in a new browser window. Their logic is “if someone comes to my site and I offer them links, then they might leave my site”…. yes… exactly! That is what browsing the Web is all about. Can you imagine how awful the browsing experience would become if every click of a URL spawned a new window?

The Web is not Word
Granted, the Web-based WYSIWYG editors have come a long, long way over the years but due to CSS and inherit limitation these editors aren’t as feature rich or flexible as word-processing applications for the desktop. To the chagrin of many designers / developers clients love to use all sorts of colors, fonts and sizes in their copy. This is evident in a short reviewal of all the PowerPoint presentations out there. How do you explain to a client that an online Web-based editor is going to give them what they need to make changes, but there are inevitable some changes which will need to be done by a trained developer?

Sometimes You Have to Scroll
At some point long ago the idea of a scrolling pages of content was seen as the 8th deadly sin. I believe those days are long gone. This concept was replaced by the notion of developing layouts which cater to varying browser / display settings. For instance, you still want to have the important content fit into an 800 x 600 display but even those dimensions are going the way of the Dodo bird. Let’s go back to CNN, here is a site where you aren’t going to see the full content in 800 x 600, you’ll need to be at 1024 x 768 and even then you’ll scroll vertically and that is OK. I don’t subscribe to the notion that people are too lazy to scroll… get real, if they are too lazy to scroll then they are likely to lazy to move a mouse in which case you are marketing to a vegetable.

The bottom-line is we have to do a better job at educating the public, our clients, and our friends. It’s always good to remember that many people aren’t in this industry and many just don’t care about most of the things we designers / developers and programmers are passionate about.

I’ll append this list again in the future but for now I’ll end my rant.

In the beginning we loved working with Basecamp. We were early adopters and Basecamp served as a point of differentiation between us and our competitors. Most of our clients loved the system purely out of the simplicity of the overall experience; however there has always been a small undercurrent of our clients who either are confused by it, find it to simplistic or hate something about the system.

… and this is OK, according to 37Signals.

37Signals has made it clear over the years that their products aren’t meant for everyone and some people will eventually outgrow their system, we’ll I guess we are heading down that path. Let me explain our experience with Basecamp, and I’d be interested in hearing who else has outgrown the software and why.

The Good

• The simplicity of use. I guess I can’t see why customers are confused by the system, it’s pretty easy to use.
• Lack of clutter. Visually, Basecamp is easy on the eyes which makes it more likely to stay up on my screen all day.
• I find the FTP integration useful because it allows us to store customer data on our own server where it’s backed up and portable.

Critiques which fall on deaf ears.

I would submit these ideas to 37Signals but after reading "Getting Real" I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to give a damn about what I have to say.

• The Dashboard. Interesting idea but it really falls short when you have multiple projects. Especially if your projects all follow the same general outline. For instance, if we have a Web site redesign project going for 4 clients then my Dashboard calendar is useless because it doesn’t clearly tell me which project a milestone is due for.
• Email flow and usage. I can’t tell you how many clients reply to the email which says "DO NOT REPLY". However, can’t 37Signals modify Basecamp to track and thread my messages. For instance, if I send an email to a client and cc a unique email such as myaccountid@basecamphq.com then Basecamp would permit us, and our clients the freedom to work from our email accounts, while Basecamp tracks the volley.
• The Calendar. Why on Earth does the calendar slide to the current day? To me this is a big break from common usage. My iCal on my computer doesn’t shift me to the current day, it stays on the week and highlights today’s date. Basecamp just removes the previous day and starts the 2 week calendar on the current date and time. Uh?
• Templates. If I have a new project I’d sure like to be able to apply a milestone template which dropped in default project goals. For us, the current "to-do" template is entirely useless.
• Milestones. If I set a milestone to be completed on Feb 7th, 2008 and it isn’t completed until Feb 14th, 2008 then why doesn’t Basecamp track the date it was completed and who checked it complete?
• To-dos. Where is the functionality of "Ta-Da-List" and why isn’t it used here?

I can keep going but I’ll stop here.

Now, the things which are a huge turn off.

• The lack of support and the general F-U attitude of 37Signals. We wanted to build a Basecamp Hours Widget and we found that the 37Signals team was both unresponsive and kind-of unfriendly when we tried to use their API.
• Their general attitude towards new features. Why not encourage feedback from the customers? I’d love to see the top 10 most requested features and 37Signals’ stance on why or why not those features would be integrated.

That’s the extent of my rant. I think 37Signals has also done alot of good for the Web-based software movement, and I don’t want to minimize that contribution. We are still using Basecamp as of today but the plans are in the works for a new system to replace it before the end of the year. I’m interested in hearing the experiences of other Basecamp users out there.

Usually I don’t post two items around the same topic so close together, but I didn’t see this coming either. Today LinkedIN launched a facelift to the popular business networking site. The new design has a cleaner flow and appearance and a much more simplified navigational system.

The homepage (assuming you sign-in) contains all the content of the previous iteration but they also have made advertising a more prominent aspect of the site. In the top right corner there is now a commercial which certainly grabs my attention much more. LinkedIN did a nice job implementing this commercial for the following reasons:

• The audio is off by default. This is something that ESPN, NFL and many other sites should learn from. My primary reason for going to the site is to network, which requires me to read. I’m A.D.D enough and I appreciate that LinkedIN recognizes that the commercial can still work minus the audio. Thank you!
• 2. It doesn’t loop. It runs for X seconds and then stops. A new commercial doesn’t load, it doesn’t repeat and it doesn’t blink and flash at me. Again, thank you!

LinkedIN has also added modules to the homepage, which are akin to most portal sites. The modules let me select and customize content for my homepage which is most relevant to me. Given these latest improvements I’ll be sure to spend more time in LinkedIN.