Johni Brown asks:
Can you describe initial direction you took when developing Highrise, before you started over? How did it differ from today’s Highrise? What aspect of it were you unhappy with, and why?
The primary problem with the first version of Highrise was that we didn’t use it ourselves. It was built on fantasy requirements of what some people might need one day. That’s an incredibly hard way to build software. And it certainly isn’t our way of building software.
Here’s an early (ugly) screenshot from the initial direction. Lots of unstyled stuff, but hopefully it gives you an idea of the complexity we didn’t like.
The focus on “some people” lead us down the path of “they might also need this” and “it would probably be cool to have that”. Before we knew it, the create a new note screen had a barrage of options that needed to be set before you could post. It was too cumbersome, too slow, and surprisingly too rigid despite trying to be flexible. (The aha moment for us was contrasting the ease of getting data into Campfire vs Highrise at the time).
Getting too clever with language and permissions
We also got lost down the rabbit hole of cleverness a few times. We wanted categories for your notes that would align to natural language. I forget the specifics exactly, but it was akin to “David has completed a phone call with Jason”. Where “phone call” would be the category. But how do you figure out what the joining words would be when the category is “fax”? “David has completed a fax with Jason” doesn’t really work. We tried too hard for too long to be clever on wording when it really doesn’t matter all that much.
The second rabbit hole was permissions. Permissions is always a deep, dark dungeon that you really would rather not venture into. But some times dragons need slaying and so we did. We started out with a ridiculously flexible system that allowed you to mix and match any number of groups and people together. You could have a note visible by “Marketing, Programming, John, and Jane”. That proved to be incredibly complex on both the implementation side and the UI side. But for a long time we couldn’t let go because we were caught up chasing edge cases.
The promises that got us back on track
So when we finally realized that this wasn’t going to work, we rebooted the project with a number of promises:
- Design for yourself, make everyone on the team want to use Highrise—not just Jason talking to journalists, but Ryan dealing with his mechanic as well
- Not every edge case needs solving—yes, there might be a case where having both Marketing and Jane see something but not Joe, but it’s not worth the complexity of enabling that case.
- Start using the product right away—a lot of “what ifs” and “wouldn’t it be cools” just go away when you actually start using something and discover what really matters.
As you can see, these lessons are nothing new. We’ve been preaching these ideas for a long time, but living them is so much harder. When we let the core principles of Getting Real slide, not even we could produce software worth a damn.
Got a question for us?
Got a question about design, business, marketing, etc? We’re happy to try to provide some insight into how we’d tackle the problem. Just email svn [at] 37signals dot com with the subject “Ask 37signals”. Thanks.
Adam
on 09 Jan 08Man, I bet Bezos is getting tired of all those phone calls.
some guy
on 09 Jan 08Imagine you’re working at a company that isn’t as hip and enlightened as 37Signals—how do you convince people that thinking this way is good? How do you create change in your existing organization? Is there no choice but to find another job or become your own boss?
Andrew
on 09 Jan 08I infect my organization with change all of the time, by doing exactly what 37Signals is preaching. I develop simple, simple tools to solve real problems that I deal with. If I don’t use something everyday, then I ditch. It turns out that when people see how much more productive I am the FUD comments turn into, “Oh, what’s that?” type of comments. Those comments easily create the inertia for change on the larger scale without a fight. Since I’m designing solutions for me, no one can really argue with my methodology. Cheers!
Micah Calabrese
on 09 Jan 08Some guy,
I’ve found that when working within ridged companies, or even with freelance clients, it pays to be quick. As a developer, if you can create a usable prototype within a day or two of discussing initial requirements people will naturally start to work iteratively. Everything becomes a feature request rather than a pie in the sky requirement. The hard part then becomes knowing when to say no.
FredS
on 09 Jan 08Wow, that’s a very un-37signals looking interface.
nraynaud
on 09 Jan 08How would you manage to develop a product you wouldn’t use yourself, because it is aimed at big teams in traditinal IT ?
(I resigned after 2 years)
JF
on 09 Jan 08Wow, that’s a very un-37signals looking interface.
A lot of our early product concept UIs look unfinished like this. We polish things up as we go. This was a very very early mockup as a proof of concept. Getting the basic ideas into a UI so we could all look at something real instead of a description of something abstract.
Luca Guidi
on 09 Jan 08So, it wasn’t a software born from real needs. How do you figured out it could be useful to the other people?
JF
on 09 Jan 08So, it wasn’t a software born from real needs.
It was born from real needs, we just tried to combine our needs with the imagined needs of other people. We confused “what do we need” with “wouldn’t it be cool if…?”
Greg
on 09 Jan 08@JF
Have you ever thought about integrating a web-based mail client with Highrise.
Highrise looks great but Outlook provides one huge feature that I can’t do without, and that’s associating my address book with every email I send.
In Outlook, in my address book when I mark that someone works for company “XYZ Inc.” – I can instantly filter to see ever single e-mail I have sent not just to a particular person but that entire company as well.
Then of course Outlook provides ToDo lists. Reminders. Calendaring etc
JF
on 09 Jan 08Greg, you can just BCC/CC Highrise when you send an email and Highrise will keep them organized by recipient.
A Guy from South America
on 09 Jan 08It seems to me that you forgot to read the ‘Getting Real’ book. :) . Perhaps writing a book is not the same as reading a book.
Marc
on 09 Jan 08Another great ‘Ask 37 Signals’ post. I’m glad to see these really in depth and honest articles. It seems you guys were right to start again though.
JB
on 09 Jan 08All the concept behind Highrise/e-mail is great, but I wish you could spend some time on making it work with characters in ‘odd’ character sets….
Cheers, jb
BR
on 10 Jan 08What’s the “In/Out” shortcut in your bookmark bar?
Greg
on 10 Jan 08@JF
But what do you do when the client replies?
JF
on 10 Jan 08But what do you do when the client replies?
Just forward the email to Highrise. It will attach it to the person’s page.
Vicky
on 10 Jan 08JF, I’m going to check that capabilitiy out!
Experimenting with Highrise… Loving Campfire…
Robin Hood
on 10 Jan 08Do you guys consider Highrise a success? How do you define success for a new product in it’s first couple of years?
DHH
on 10 Jan 08In terms of growth, Highrise is the most successful product we’ve ever launched. It’s growing faster than any previous product. But of course it starts out from a smaller scale than Basecamp that has been on the market for 3+ yrs.
Personally, Highrise is also probably the 37signals application I use the most for my own stuff. So it’s really gratifying in that sense.
Daniel Schutzsmith
on 12 Jan 08can we get ical support for tasks in highrise already? I love it, but the tasks are useless without being able to sync with my other tasks in life.
I understand one of you’re major motivations is to “design for yourself” but I am starting to think that you believe your users will use all of your web apps, when the real case is that I don’t want another web app like basecamp when all I want is my task list from HR.
Sorry for the rant, no disrespecting here, just getting frustrated that this still has not happened.
This discussion is closed.