Adding a Feature with Basecamp
Basecamp is a well established and very popular project management solution with a unique design culture.
For this project, I worked with Chase Clemmons, the customer support lead at 37 signals, Basecamp’s parent company, to define, research, and design a solution for a popular feature request.
Methodology
Understand
Research Basecamp’s techniques and company ethos
Understand “Jobs to be Done” Methodology
Interview Chase, Basecamp’s Customer Service Lead and my collaborator on this project
Competitive Analysis
Research
Survey
Cognitive Test
1:1 User Interviews
Analyze
Research Synthesis
Existing User Journey Map
Design
Fat Marker Sketches
Prioritization
Wireframing
Understand
Basecamp’s Unique Company Ethos
The majority of Basecamp’s features are developed in 6 week cycles, type of agile environment that shapes their work in strict boundaries. A cycle includes research to narrow down a problem and designing the outline of a solution to pitch at the next “betting table”.
Jobs To Be Done
They use JTBD to help them understand a user’s mental model and language during 1:1 interviews.
Restraints
It’s important to note that I was not operating as a Basecamp employee in this scenario. I do not have access to all of the stakeholders or official business goals and metrics of Basecamp or 37signals.
Guidelines
The guiding principles for design at Basecamp are:
“Fisher Price Easy”
Speed over aesthetics
Goals
The goal of this project is to present a shaped project idea to solve a common theme in feature requests. This means solving a particular problem in a relatively low fidelity way (to allow for ideation) but zoomed in enough to stay within the scope of the problem (Singer).
Background:
At Basecamp, the customer support team is responsible for identifying opportunities to enhance their product by tracking feedback reporting issues that are trending with their users.
“Recently we’ve seen an uptick in feature requests around a ‘quick add’ feature,” Chase said during our talk. “We’ve looked at the problem before, but when we tried a quick-add button, it resulted in as many steps as the current user flow.”
Chase presented six different feature request themes based on which ones had received the highest amount of support tickets recently.
We decided to look at the request for a quick add feature because:
Frequency of request
I had experienced this frustration myself after having recently began using the product
Basecamp had taken a look at this before and was unable to find a suitable solution
History
Basecamp has tackled this request before, but been unable to solve the problem. They’ve experimented with solutions such as a quick add button, which did not work because the user would still have to assign each thing it’s appropriate place and audience, resulting in no less clicks for the user, and a drawer for quick notes (assuming the job was to get an idea out of the user’s brain quickly.
Scope
Basecamp’s users are frustrated with the time it takes to add something to a to-do list, as evidenced by the many requests for a “quick add” feature.
Chase reports Basecamp’s biggest competitor is pen and paper, as it can be quicker to jot down a note, but having notes all over the place is difficult to manage.
Basecamp has tagged their user’s needs with “get us organized so we don’t break”, so we decided to interview only users who add things to their to-do lists frequently during their work day.
Research
Cognitive Interview
This research allowed me to clarify and refine the survey before sending it to 30 “power users”
Survey
Based on 100+ feature requests for a “quick add feature” I created a survey to validate with 30 “power users,” 14 of which replied.
1:1 Interviews
Methodology: Basecamp utilizes the JTBD methodology, anchoring the user to a point in time (when they felt like they needed a quick add feature) and exploring their story including
how they were feeling in that moment
where were they?
were they working with anyone else?
what they did to work around their problem
We completed 6 interviews, each with unique ways of utilizing Basecamp’s project management system
When we began these interviews, we thought the problem was that users were frustrated with the time it takes to add a to-do item to a list- sometimes nested 5 or 6 clicks deep.
Insights
Originally, our hypothesis was that users were frustrated with the time it takes to add a to-do item to a list- sometimes nested 5 or 6 clicks deep.
My research revealed a new insight.
Turns out, whether they were accessing personal lists, creating new ones in projects, or referencing an existing list:
it is less about the action of adding or editing, and more about the ease of access.
User Flow
During the week the survey was live, I analyzed the existing user flow.
Synthesys
Results
We spoke with 7 users and here’s what we learned:
Users want a solution that works as fast as keeping another tab open in their browser
They want to reference or edit a selected tool quickly without interrupting their workflow
This problem connects all of the use cases into one job to be done: let me access another resource without losing my place in my work.
Problem
Current Workaround
There’s no easy way to quickly access another page in Basecamp.
Maybe you want to add notes to a text document during a meeting. Or add to-dos that are coming out of a client call. By the time you find the right page, the moment has passed on to other just-as-important pieces of information.
You could try using the Jump Menu - but that only works if you've recently visited that particular page. You could bookmark a page - but it's too many clicks/steps to get there via the My Bookmarks page. You could even keep another product open all day.
Ideation
The Pitch*
*This pitch was co-authored by myself and Chase Clemmons in the style that best suited Basecamp. If you’re interested in the initial version created completely by me, it can be found here
Fat Marker Sketches
By following Basecamp’s design methodology, I created these very low fidelity wireframes and put together a limited prototype.
Mobile
For the job “let me reference my stuff without breaking my flow” the solution is a customizable hotkey (for desktop) or gesture (for mobile).
The hotkey Ctrl+B is unused in this product, so a user would have a dedicated place in settings enter a URL that would pop up that exact destination for reference or editing while keeping the user’s place in the current workflow.
We're adding a customizable hotkey that takes customers to a page they've set. On mobile, we'll use a custom gesture.
Here’s how it works.
Desktop
First, users will set a destination for their hotkey popup in the settings menu.
Say they’re about to go into an important meeting and know they may need to reference a to-do list for that client while working on a document.
While in Basecamp, users can use [ctrl+B] to access their link, while their page and scroll position are preserved on the previous screen behind the popup.
When they are finished working within this screen, they can easily close the popup, their changes are saved, and they can go back to working on the previous task without interruption.
This solution can work for mobile as well, as a swipe gesture. Currently, when using the app, swiping right will go back, but there is no swipe left destination. By using the custom hotkey concept, we can translate it to mobile by setting this bookmark as the swipe left gesture.
A common workaround quickly adding something in Basecamp is to have a personal project with a to-do list inside. Say our user is mid-conversation and she wants to jot down some notes on the topic without distracting from the chat. She can open the Basecamp app- swipe left from any screen, and access her personal document to capture her ideas quickly.
Wireframes
The pitch concludes my work with Chase and Basecamp. From there, It will be added to the betting table and they will work internally to decide if and when our solution becomes a reality.
For my own work, I decided to see this out and take my designs into higher fidelity, and then create a working prototype. I wanted to practice designing within the existing structure both for visual design as well as copy.
Final Designs
Task Flows
To guide my design, I worked through the task flows relevant to this solution. I decided to test the two most important functions.
Validation
Due to Basecamp’s requirements, I was unable to validate the final designs through user testing. I did have Chase test the prototype for me to give me a sense of how it might fit into the overall product.
If I were to move forward myself, my next step would be to user testing. If Basecamp decides to move forward with my designs, they will utilize beta testing as the primary validation method.
Final Design
Conclusion
I followed Basecamp’s unique design methodology and produced a feature that would take under 6 weeks to design, code, and launch.
To do this, I worked directly with Basecamp users to solve a common feature request and it has now gone on to their betting table, the meeting in between each cycle where they prioritize and make decisions on what to develop during the next sprint.
Personal Reflection
What I enjoyed
The best thing about this project was the opportunity to work get real world experience and got an inside look at the design culture of a major player in the SAAS market. Working with Chase and the Basecamp users was an incredible opportunity to put my UX skills to the test while challenging my theoretical knowledge with practical experiences.
What I learned
I learned to work with stakeholders, and got real experience interviewing users with Basecamp, and practiced narrowing a project down into its most essential, actionable form. Looking at tasks as jobs the user needs to do felt like unlocking a secret to empathy and user centered design. I learned how the “jobs to be done” framework guides product development in the right direction.
What I would do differently
Next time I work with Basecamp, I’ll develop a rough prototype of my ideas for solutions to test with users during their 1:1 interviews. This would save time and allow for some validation to be done on the front end. Basecamp does user testing by rolling out new features in beta form, so having a hypothesis to test during the interviews might have allowed me to complete some validation work even though user testing was not on the table.