On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Jason Fried vs. Me! > > > To have a real debate with Fried that the audience would buy, you'd have > to first substantiate a comparable level of success, else he'd crush you. > Can you do that? > Yes, the success we have at Motorola Enterprise Mobility. We NEVER design for ourselves. We ONLY design for the customer. Our 2.5 Billion Dollars in annual revenue and tremendous customer satisfaction go a long way to tell that story. Designing applications for you in the enterprise world doesn't make sense, promoting it as an end solution for all design is irresponsible. Now I know that he would come back and say, but we only say this is what works for us so we do it. But that is not what you say when you write books, blogs, and do conferences and speak on the topic. You are promoting a process and set of tools that you believe are generalizable and this is my problem w/ it. > > > I think 37Signals' notions of "designing for self" are wrong > > despite. Starting with "yourself" has led to what I would call the > > disaster of design known as basecamp. > > > Basecamp is hardly a disaster of design—it has a higher satisfaction > rating than any app I've ever heard about. Maybe you're just more > comfortable with something else. > Really? I find that almost absurd. We have been dying to get off the tool ever since we got on it b/c it fails us in almost every category of use. It isn't good for task management b/c the milestone:task relationship is too cumbersome It doesn't have threading, so to use it for conversation is awkward. Writeboard is subpar so we are constantly throwing in links to Google Docs, but when we do use Writeboards the lack of integration always leads to someone putting up the wrong link in the messages when they want to talk about it. There is no calendar so you can't add events. I.e. We want to have a call. You have to create a milestone. A phone call is a milestone??? What? You can't do scheduling. The way that users are put into companies is inflexible and doesn't scale over long periods of time as people change positions and roles and even companies but remain related to projects. You can't reply to messages via email, even though you get an alert via email. These to me are just SOME basic failings in the product. I have always found the lauding of Basecamp so confusing. I've been using the tool deeply for 4 years now and for the life of me, the only appeal I see in it is that it is not as bad as everyone else, but that criteria of success would lead one to believe that to be successful at design means to be good enough. That is soulless and leads to mediocrity. It also leads you very vulnerable. -- dave > > > -r- > -- David Malouf http://synapticburn.com/ http://ixda.org/ http://motorola.com/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
