37signals: Live design review for "mentions in the HEY menu"

Here's a recording of a live design review between three people. Jason (bottom) runs the company and oversees product, Brian (top right) is Basecamp's product manager, and Andy (top left) is the designer who's been working on this specific feature.
In this session we review a design that's about to ship to customers, but that we're not completely internally satisfied with. All designs are tradeoffs, and we're not entirely sure that we've made the right ones in this case.
We work through a few different options, compare them to what we're about to ship, and ultimately decide to go in a simpler direction with fewer tradeoffs. We think it works best all things considered, while the original design may have worked best nothing else considered.
Hope you find this interesting. Got questions? Drop 'em below and we'll do our best to answer.
Watch more live reviews here: • Live Reviews

[@SebastianSastre]

I like how it feels to have all the options on screen and evaluate it at the same time. Makes the discussion so rich

[@Etcher]

We (my colleagues and I) use Basecamp everyday - I've been using it since 2011, I'm the true-blue bedded-down Basecamp evangelist in our compay. I have to say, this is just fascinating to see the discussion taking place on a feature that I noticed was rolled out (to my account anyway) last week. I think you should do more of these videos; it speaks to not only what you espouse in Rework and It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work but it's also very interesting to see how decisions are made that could affect directly thousands of users every day. I'm a user og Hey also and I really like the little updates that Jason posts now and again on new features. 37 Signals have hit on something here, more videos please - I for one really like these "behind the scenes" vids, it's like Inside The Actor's Studio but for dev nerds :)

[@37signals]

Thanks, and appreciate your business over all these years. Planning on doing more of these videos. Stay tuned. -JF

[@abderrahmaneayad6038]

Good job. More of these videos please.

[@burner918]

Loved this.

[@37signals]

Will be aiming to do more of these. -JF

[@iamjerrygoins]

Great to see the team continually developing this awesome feature! I'd still like a section under "My Stuff" for all mentions so you can see all them in one place for quick/easy reference.

[@ReubenHochstetler]

This is really interesting to see you guys walk through the design concepts. I do think you ended up at the right place. It’s hard to go wrong when you keep things simple. 😊

[@37signals]

Sometimes you have wander through the woods to find the clearing. -JF

[@AylonH]

Really great seeing these, thanks for sharing! Would also love to see the original pitch doc for this project. It could give great context for where this started vs where it ended, and the journey inbetween

[@37signals]

Here you go: public.3.basecamp.com/p/4TemZcvY5sEiTrgFqtTpvmMg -JF

[@thehanke]

Really nice discussion. I reckon Two Sections only would be super neat: 1. News for You (as discussed, as far as Mentions go) 2. Don’t Forget The third “Previous Notifications” sort of doesn’t serve any immediate need or problem? Every time I look at it I think it should be in Search (as a searchable feature, “view previous notifications” or something). Doesn’t really have to be on that screen?

[@dpatrickwalsh]

This is really cool! Thanks for sharing this level of detail. Is this the kind of meeting that would happen during a cycle as you're implementing a shaped project, or is this the kind of meeting that happens during the shaping process?

[@37signals]

I wouldn't call this a meeting. It was an impromptu conversation between three people to discuss a design detail right before shipping. We didn't feel quite right about something, so we wanted to go through it in real time together. Not scheduled, not part of a process - it just felt right to review, riff, and resolve. -JF

[@julienlacr0ix]

Love this! It's popcorn!🍿

[@dylanbland]

Pretty interesting and enjoyed watching. However, it was pretty funny how Jason just barged in there and came up with his own solution - defined the problem they were trying to solve AFTER coming up with his solution, and then said it was a 5 minute styling change that could be pretty much pushed straight to production. Another way of looking at this is - what was the point of those two guys as it seems Jason could have just done this (particular improvement) himself. Looks like a fun team and a fun project was just surprised by the process “that gets my vote - not that we’re voting!” 😂

[@37signals]

It's a review - we were looking at things together. Sometimes someone sees something that wasn't seen before. It wasn't about "me" seeing it, it was about someone seeing it that happened to be me. This is one of the advantages of bringing someone in who hasn't been heads down in the work. There's plenty of times when I've been doing something, and someone else saw a much simpler path ahead. We don't care who sees it, only that it's seen. And it doesn't matter what work was done, what matters is what makes the most sense at the moment, within the context of everything else that's going on. -JF

[@dylanbland]

@@37signals hey Jason - that's all good and I totally understand. I was being a bit cheeky there. I guess it was just as I was watching it I was also thinking about the chapter in one of your books called "the weight of the owners words" or similar. I guess it's something you are already mindful of - that your weight as the owner will carry more weight in any review process. I'm sure as you say you could also give 1000 examples where it's gone the other way, and I totally believe you. I definitely enjoyed the video. Another solution you could try is a filter bar at the top of the page "All | New Activity | New @ Mentions" and then the page filters as appropriate. The link "Mark all read" could apply only to whatever is filtered. Thanks for the reply to my cheeky comments :)