Last week we launched a new feature in Highrise called Public Contact Cards.
The idea
Public contact cards make it easy to share someone’s contact information with anyone who needs it. For example, if a friend asks if you can recommend a plumber, and you have one you’d recommend in your Highrise account, you can share that plumber’s public card with your friend — even if they don’t have their own Highrise account. Now your friend has all the information they need to get in touch with the plumber.
The feature that could have been
As we thought about how to implement public contact cards we started thinking about all the possible options we could offer.
- One-click to import the data into your own Highrise account
- hCard support
- Email this contact info to someone
- Subscribing to the data so you’ll get updates if it changes
- And the list goes on…
The feature that is
When you face a long list of possible add-on features you need to step back and ask yourself: “What’s the core value? Why are we building this core feature?” In the case of public contact cards, the core value was being able to quickly share someone’s contact information over the web with anyone you want. It wasn’t hCard support, it wasn’t subscriptions to contact information, it wasn’t one-click import into your own Highrise account, etc. Those things might be nice, but they aren’t part of the core value. The core value is the simple display of the contact information. That’s 90% of the value.
48 hours
Because we said no to all the stuff public cards could be, we were able to go from an idea over dinner, to design, to coding, to testing, to implementation, to launch in about 48 hours. Had we said yes to some or all of the other stuff we could have done, we likely wouldn’t have launched the feature yet. And we’d probably never get to it because there are more important things to spend 2 weeks on. For 48 hours worth of work it was worth it. For 2 weeks of work it wasn’t.
So keep core value in mind. Execute on the basics beautifully and leave the “it would be nice” and “wouldn’t it be cool if” extra features for another time. Get 90% of the value out the door as quickly as you can. The remaining 10% often sucks up far more development time than it’s worth.
Luis
on 02 Apr 07I like the idea and execution of the feature, but I could simply have copied and pasted the info into an email as well in pretty much the same amount of time.
JF
on 02 Apr 07Luis: Yes you could. That remains an option of course.
James
on 02 Apr 07I’m interested to know why hCard support would have added to the length of time. Surely adding a few class names into your HTML isn’t that time consuming?
Regardless, it’d be good to see that added soon as it would definitely add value for quite a few of us who are already using the various microformat-supporting browser extensions.
Karl N
on 02 Apr 07I’m still wondering where people will get photos of their contacts.
This is like the mp3 browser I’m working on where everyone here is assuming people have cover art of their albums…
It certainly looks cool when you have it, anyway.
Steve T
on 02 Apr 07I suppose another reason you don’t mind that this feature is so basic – and with big privacy concerns – is that it’s viral style marketing for 37signals and Highrise, with the logo and link in the footer. Share your contact and everyone gets to know about Highrise.
Ted
on 02 Apr 07I really don’t get the point of this feature. Maybe it’s just me.
Jamie Tibbetts
on 02 Apr 07Without being able to import a public contact into your own Highrise account, I think the feature is missing the whole point.
Using your example, if Person A asks Person B for the name and number of a good plumber, Person A can easily do so by creating a Public Contact Card and sending Person B the link to it. But if Person B can’t then easily import that info into his/her account, what’s the point? Why wouldn’t Person A just copy and paste the info into an email like Luis said?
IMO, the Public Contact Card feature becomes useful if Person B is given the ability to import that conact. That way Person B is saved the time of having to manually copy and paste all the contact info into his/her Highrise account.
DHH
on 02 Apr 07Jamie, the public pages include a link to a vcard. If you need that person in Highrise or Address Book or Outlook, you just grab the vcard.
Thijs van der Vossen
on 02 Apr 07Please add hCard support; I’ve just added it in under 5 minutes and I don’t see why it would have to take more time for you guys. :)
You’re really in a great position to push broader use of microformats. Please consider doing so.
Jamie Tibbetts
on 02 Apr 07Jamie, the public pages include a link to a vcard. If you need that person in Highrise or Address Book or Outlook, you just grab the vcard.
That’s certainly better than copying and pasting, but you’re still making someone jump through a few extra hoops unnecessarily IMO.
JF
on 02 Apr 07Another reason why quick launches are a good idea. We don’t know how well this feature will go over. So we spent less than 2 days on it and we put it out there. If it doesn’t fly it’s not that big of a deal. If we spent 2 weeks on it and it didn’t fly it would have been a big deal.
some guy
on 02 Apr 07I admire your courage in deciding what really matters and what doesn’t, and acting on your judgment call.
Remember when you guys used to do mockups of improved versions of typical websites, like online banking? I would love for you guys to redo “a social networking site” or some other kind of site that tends to have poor interaction design.
I realize that now that you’re a product company you can make real applications that implicitly constitute your opinion of what a good online biz app should be.
Kenn Christ
on 02 Apr 07Jamie: The vast majority of people out there are not Highrise users but I bet most of them are able to import a vCard. Offering a vCard makes it easy for everyone to get contact info locally, while requiring just one additional step for HR users.
Jamie Tibbetts
on 02 Apr 07Jamie: The vast majority of people out there are not Highrise users but I bet most of them are able to import a vCard. Offering a vCard makes it easy for everyone to get contact info locally, while requiring just one additional step for HR users.
Right. The vCard feature is integral for non-Highrise users, but I was speaking mainly of a feature for Highrise users. It seems silly to make a Highrise user download the information from Highrise onto his/her computer and then fill out a form just to upload it to Highrise again.
eduardo
on 02 Apr 07A more useful feature (which might take more than 48 hours) is to allow users to see other peopl’s tasks.
For small organizations that feature is a must.
Scott Hughes
on 02 Apr 07James,
I think the reason that 37s went with vCard vs. hCard is that vCard is a file format standard for personal data interchange and the hCard microformat, is a 1:1 representation of vCard in semantic XHTML.
hCard is nice to have but how useful is it given the context and intent within Highrise?
cmv
on 02 Apr 07I agree with Jamie, hCard is simple to implement and the rewards are big. I wouldn’t consider hCard a feature, but rather a requirement when marking up contact information.
sshefer
on 02 Apr 07I have to agree with Luis…
If a friend it looking for a recommended plumber I would probably email him the information directly, not just a link to click.
The email could contain the vcard as an attachment, but why create a page to display this?
I would argue that the core value is not displaying the information, it’s getting it to that person quickly – something better suited for email.
Des Traynor
on 02 Apr 07I never realise why people get so nutty over hCards. I can barely see the point of them. They just don’t seem to be catching on.
If they had added hCard support, what extra could I do. I could install the Tails plugin for Firefox, and then what? I can click on it, and what will it do? “A hCard Microformat hasbeen detected on this page…Would you like to download this information as a vCard?”
I’d love to see them take off, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening. And 37Signals is a company who, like any good company, care more for profitable work that their customers can use than they do for crusades for web standard data exchange formats.
brandon
on 02 Apr 07Jason and the rest of 37s:
I really appreciate your transparency and willingness to share your thoughts on process. I continue to learn from you all the time.
Does this little sendoff to my buddy include a reference to highrise? Basically, is this a way to increase your visibility through some free marketing?
What about if it isn’t getting a lot of use after a while? Do you guys go back and evaluate how you could have seen that before or do you just let it live at whatever usage level it gets because its useful to you?
something orange
on 02 Apr 07I think its good idea. It replaces maintaining business cards. It’ll depend to a whole lot on the number of users actually using the card.
Matt
on 03 Apr 07There’s a typo in the confirmation screen for the cards. It says in the last paragraph, “If you want to share Matt information”, when it should probably say “Matt’s”
FredS
on 03 Apr 07Anyone else slightly worried about their email address being hotlinked and public?
JF
on 03 Apr 07Fred, the email address is encoded and truncated so it’s as safe as is reasonably possible from spam capture and spam screen scrapers. Having your email on a public contact card is a whole lot safer than just having it in someone else’s address book.
Nic
on 03 Apr 07Reminds me of Tom Cargill’s Ninety-ninety Law: The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.
Mark
on 03 Apr 07A xml feed of your contact page would be very useful.
JF
on 03 Apr 07A xml feed of your contact page would be very useful.
It already exists. Just add .xml to the end of the URL on a person’s page. Each person’s page also has an RSS feed (link at the bottom).
BradM
on 03 Apr 07@Steve T “is that it’s viral style marketing for 37signals and Highrise” That’s the genious behind it. If you do not wish to advertise the product, then send it in an email. I do something similiar in my product as well. If you have the power, use it!
BradM
on 03 Apr 07Wow does Steve Malvin look like DHH. Is that even real or was Steve test data?
FredS
on 03 Apr 07@Jason: That makes me feel a little better. Thx.
P. from Weston MA
on 03 Apr 07How do the updates/changes to the public contact work exactly? Is whoever first created it the only one who can change it?
JF
on 03 Apr 07P: Anyone who is a user in your Highrise account can update someone’s contact information.
Frank
on 04 Apr 07I’m not sure what to make of the actual feature. It seems to have limited usefulness beyond the ctrl+c keyboard command but speed with which you decide and implement features is impressive. Good work.
Hwang
on 04 Apr 07I don’t get the point of this feature.
Jake
on 04 Apr 07Ruby god by day – insurance salesman by night! Living the dream
This discussion is closed.