What if every question you asked your customers was multiple choice? And every question had an “I’m confused” option. How often would your customers choose that option?

If your whole business was laid out flat – every product, every promise, every price, every rule, every condition all on one surface – and you superimposed a heat map layer over it, where would the confusion hot spots be?

Everything you do as a business includes multiple choices for your customers. It doesn’t matter if you give them the choices – they have the choices. Features, benefits, prices, promises, support, etc. They can love it, hate it, be indifferent, etc. But they can also be confused. And “I’m confused” is the worst option of all. If your customers are confused, you’re in deep trouble. “I give up, unhappily” is next.

This is what clarity is all about. It’s about eliminating “I’m confused” answers. Lots of people think simplicity is the opposite of confusion (“It’s confusing, let’s make this simpler”). It’s not. The opposite of confusion is clarity.

For those who like the behind-the-scenes stuff, here are 10 early sketches of UI elements/concepts for the new Basecamp.

Early concept for the project blank slate (empty project, no content yet).

Companies and people, take 1 (discarded).

Companies, people, and groups, take 2 (discarded).

Wow, what a week. The whole company was in town to launch the all new Basecamp. Launches are a mixture of exhilaration, stress, thrills, anxiety, joy, pride, surprise, and flat-out exhaustion. We’re experiencing all of these emotions, and plenty more.

All things considered, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We’re humbled by that. That’s not to hide the fact that there were rough spots, some confusion, and some questions. It’s been all hands on deck helping our customers with their questions and concerns while also listening intently and patiently to their praise and criticism. We have a lot more listening to do.

Where’s time tracking?

What was most interesting to us was the reaction around the lack of time tracking in the all new Basecamp. The people who rely on the time tracking feature in Basecamp Classic really rely on it. It’s still there in Classic, of course, but huge numbers of people already want to switch to the new Basecamp. That’s awesome. However, since the new Basecamp doesn’t offer time tracking, they don’t feel like they can make the switch yet.

We had nearly 1000 beta testers using Basecamp over the last few months. We heard about the lack of time tracking, but the lack of time tracking didn’t stand out as unique against the total field of feedback. Further, time tracking was only used by around 14% of paying Basecamp Classic customers in 2011. Based on beta feedback, and usage statistics, we didn’t anticipate such a strong visceral “no time tracking is a deal breaker” reaction. This was definitely a blind spot for us.

Deep understanding comes before designing

Our values have always revolved around designing the best software in the world to solve problems we intimately understand. The new Basecamp is the perfect representation of those values. It’s excellent at what it does. It’s our best work and it’s only going to get better.

However, since we don’t track time at 37signals, we don’t have a deep understanding of the time tracking problem. Plain and simple, this is why time tracking isn’t in the initial release of the all new Basecamp. We simply don’t understand it well enough.

We didn’t want to shoehorn anything into the new Basecamp that we didn’t understand well enough to feel confident in our design. We could have done something that might have simply satisfied people who were used to time tracking in Classic, but we’re not here to just do the bare minimum. We’re not here to simply satisfy. We’re here to make the best products in the world for our customers. We’re here to delight beyond expectations. We’re here to give people a combination of things they can’t get anywhere else.

Help us understand how and why you track time

Before we can commit to saying yes or no to adding time tracking in a future version of the all new Basecamp, we need to understand the problem better. It’s time to observe, study, learn, and understand how and why our customers track time.

If you’d like to help, we’d love to hear from you. Over the next few months we’ll be talking to customers 1-on-1 (via Skype video chat) for a more in-depth understanding of how people use time tracking.

We’d like to talk to you 1-on-1

If you’re interested in helping us understand how you track time, please fill out this survey. We’ll be contacting a select group of customers for the 1-on-1 interviews. We’re anticipating a lot of responses, so we won’t be able to talk directly with everyone, but we’ll do our best to come away from this experience with a deep understanding of what people need, expect, want, and dream about time tracking.

Thanks for reading, understanding, and helping us know your world a little better.

After a ton of very hard work, and lots of debates and decisions, we’re thrilled to be able to share the all new Basecamp with you.

This has been a company-wide effort. Every designer, every programmer, every sys admin, and every support team member were involved in building this product.

It’s completely new. Reimagined, rethought, and redesigned from the ground up. Everything was reconsidered. Every idea, every flow, every concept. Nothing was sacred – every idea and every feature had to fight for its place in this first version.

The new Basecamp features an entirely new innovative interface. All new code. Brand new tech. And some serious hardware backing it all up.

This is our best work. And it’s just the beginning. We have a lot of great ideas in store. But first we wanted to focus on the basics. Nailing the foundation so it’s strong and steady, easy and fast.

In many ways, this is our second chance to make a first impression. For many of our customers, Basecamp was the first time they’d ever used a project management and collaboration tool. Most used email. Or the phone. Or lots of in-person meetings. Basecamp was a whole new idea, something brand new, an opportunity to get organized and keep everything together.

This new Basecamp is a return to our roots. It’s focused on the basics. It’s even simpler and clearer than before. It’s super fast. And it’s useful for a whole new group of projects – short projects. Most project are small and short. The original Basecamp was overkill for most kinds of projects. The new Basecamp is perfect for projects of every size.

We think a whole new generation of customers will be introduced to a new way to manage their projects when they use the all new Basecamp.

A few years ago I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I’d think of a way to disagree. I’d push back hard if something didn’t fit my world-view.

It’s like I had to be first with an opinion – as if being first meant something. But what it really meant was that I wasn’t thinking hard enough about the problem. The faster you react, the less you think. Not always, but often.

It’s easy to talk about knee jerk reactions as if they are things that only other people have. You have them too. If your neighbor isn’t immune, neither are you.

This came to a head back in 2007. I was speaking at the Business Innovation Factory conference in Providence, RI. So was Richard Saul Wurman. After my talk Richard came up to introduce himself and compliment my talk. That was very generous of him. He certainly didn’t have to do that.

And what did I do? I pushed back at him about the talk he gave. While he was making his points on stage, I was taking an inventory of the things I didn’t agree with. And when presented with an opportunity to speak with him, I quickly pushed back at some of his ideas. I must have seemed like such an asshole.

His response changed my life. It was a simple thing. He said “Man, give it five minutes.” I asked him what he meant by that? He said, it’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to push back, it’s great to have strong opinions and beliefs, but give my ideas some time to set in before you’re sure you want to argue against them. “Five minutes” represented “think”, not react. He was totally right. I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.

This was a big moment for me.

Richard has spent his career thinking about these problems. He’s given it 30 years. And I gave it just a few minutes. Now, certainly he can be wrong and I could be right, but it’s better to think deeply about something first before being so certain you’re right.

There’s also a difference between asking questions and pushing back. Pushing back means you already think you know. Asking questions means you want to know. Ask more questions.

Learning to think first rather than react quick is a life long pursuit. It’s tough. I still get hot sometimes when I shouldn’t. But I’m really enjoying all the benefits of getting better.

If you aren’t sure why this is important, think about this quote from Jonathan Ive regarding Steve Jobs’ reverence for ideas:

And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.

That’s deep. Ideas are fragile. They often start powerless. They’re barely there, so easy to ignore or skip or miss.

There are two things in this world that take no skill: 1. Spending other people’s money and 2. Dismissing an idea.

Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff at it. You can ignore it. You can puff some smoke at it. That’s easy. The hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, and try it. The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.

So next time you hear something, or someone, talk about an idea, pitch an idea, or suggest an idea, give it five minutes. Think about it a little bit before pushing back, before saying it’s too hard or it’s too much work. Those things may be true, but there may be another truth in there too: It may be worth it.

Over the last year, we’ve spent a ton of time on little details that really make using the all new Basecamp a real pleasure. That’s not to say it’s perfect – we still have a lot of work to do to realize our full vision – but we’re very happy with what we’ll be launching with. And launch is literally right around the corner.

Here’s a video showcasing some of the little details and power user features we’ve baked in. We think you’re really going to enjoy exploring these little corners once you start using the all new Basecamp.

I love to study how people make decisions about the things they buy and sell. It’s always fascinated me. Sometimes I go shopping not to buy, but to learn. I like to observe how people make purchasing (and selling) decisions.

I guess that’s why my two favorite shows on TV are Pawn Stars and the ever entertaining Shark Tank. I’ve seen every episode of both and always look forward to the new ones.

One thing I find interesting about Pawn Stars is how people justify selling their goods for less than they originally expected.

After the pawn shop gives the seller their final buy offer, the seller – almost like clockwork – stares at something for a second, then comes up with a story like… “Well, my wife would kill me if I brought this home without selling it, so…” or “Well, I’m really running low on space in the garage, so…” or “Well, I’ve had this at the top of my closet for 20 years, so…”

The pawn shop makes an offer, but the seller is the one who talks themselves into taking a low number. They justify the low price with the personal consequences of a non-sale. I guess it’s not all that different from justifying a buy, but there’s something fascinating about how people often need to give themselves a comforting non-monetary reason to give up something for less than they think it’s worth. Sometimes it’s “I need the money,” but more often than not it’s about this condition they’ll find themselves in if they don’t sell it.

I don’t have much else to say about it other than I find it interesting that so many different people from so many different walks of life with so many different items for sale almost always fall into the same pattern of thinking. That itself is worth thinking about.