Basecamp Preview

The larger-than-life folks at 37signals have bestowed upon me the "golden ticket" (their term) — a special invite to preview Basecamp, their new web-based project management app.

I'm not sure if I can post any screenshots of it yet, but what I can say, is that it is very thoughtfully designed and well-done. I signed up for the Free 1-Project version of it, and I think that I'm going to use it to manage academic projects that I have going on from time to time. We'll see how it turns out :)

Update (1/31): I've been working with my Basecamp site a little more, and the more I look at the interface, the more I find little tidbits really impress me.

The "yellow fade" technique is so nice! It thoughtfully reminds the user what just changed on the page, and that once the yellow fades to the background color, the data is updated and ready to go. No constant reloads needed. No obtrusive box around the changed element saying, "Hey user! You just updated this! Check it out, no really! Its updated!", which is just so unnecessary.

I love the dashboard screen (view an image here) — architecturally, its the calm before the storm. If a client is only associated with one project, they only see that one project. However if they login and have multiple projects to look at, they are redirected to the Dashboard where they can pick and choose which project to look at, upcoming milestones, recent posts, etc. From a user experience point of view, I'm so glad they decided to have a main-page for administrators, instead of dumping them right into the projects and having them work there way backwards in order to change important site settings.

Okay, now for the geek in me. The CSS file that controls the style and layout of the site is fantastic. They truly took the time to say, "Let's not use padding here because I don't want to hack around the box model that much", and then changed their CSS accordingly. That is what I think web designers are starting to do as of late — we understand which browsers butcher our designs, and which don't, and that knowledge inherently works its way into our designs. We don't need to hack as much anymore, because our deep understanding of CSS browser issues lets us design intelligently off the bat.

And they used Lucida Grande for the text — the most readable font on the web right now. They're not called the "masters of simplicity and usability" for nothin'.

Go give your money to 37signals!

Comments

[Nigel Goodfellow]

Lucida is so hot- gawd.

As for the rest, I'm really impressed. It looks like an amazing system. Mike's extreme excitement over it is definitely justified.

[ilen]

i love the design, Mike. Excellent work! =)