Design Decisions #1: Inviting people (before and after)

Here we take a look at a (hopefully) improved screen we're about to ship. I take you through the changes and explain why we did what we did. Some design, some copywriting, some UX stuff.

[@TubeBuddy]

Jason - LOVE Getting Real and excited to check out this new KZbin series (just subscribed). I read "Re-Work" years ago and put many of your ideas into place. Our software product (which is KZbin focused) is now profitable, employs 7 people and I'm basically living my dream life. Big "thank you!" to you/DHH!

[@zaccharles]

Very interesting! I was thinking that button sounds have ellipses then you said it :) In interested why you can close the "invite by link" box with the X in a circle, but you click nevermind to close the "invite by email" one. It looks like this tripped you up at 14:20 add you tried to click the X that doesn't exist.

[@jaredwhite88]

I was going to mention this as well...I think it's good to have an X on any sort of box-looking thing that appears over or inline on a page, so I'd support adding it to the Invite by Email feature as well :)

[@noahhaasis827]

At 14:23 you wanted to click on the X button to close the window, but there is no X button in the email invitation option. Isn’t the Nevermind button that’s there instead a inconsistency?

[@Taalaibek]

Thank you for sharing your experience! Very much interesting and beneficial. Can you tell how did you come up to current design? Where do you do your sketches?

[@NiclasHellberg]

Really like the format! Looking forward to new episodes. I was thinking if you also thought about adding the "people management page" to the section switcher? It's seems like the only option only available on the "homepage" of a project. Could be helpful to be available on every section in a project. Just a thought :) Would be really interested if there is a hierarchy decision behind it.

[@luc4leone]

It's great to be able to listen to Jason talking about design decisions. I've always been a huge fan of Basecamp - which I've used for more than 1 project. I'd like to add a semi-quick note. In both versions, when I'm on the page "The Rework Podcast" and I click the button [Add/remove people] I go to the "People on the team" page where I can't actually Add/remove people. If that was my intention, I need to click (again) the [Add/remove people] button. While I may guess the reason, as a designer I would think: "is that really necessary?". The problem is not "one click too many"; it's that I'd like the button to keep its promise (bring me to the form where I can "add people"... by sending an invitation or by coping a link). As usual there are many alternatives. I can change the copy of the button on the "The Rework Podcast" page to something like "See people on the team". mmmh..."Add people" is a useful action to have on the project summary page. So this one doesn't feel good. Another possibility is to link me to the form directly, without seeing the "People on the team" page. I will see them on the form page anyway, right? Following the rework version, the button on the "The Rework Podcast" on click should give me the 2 options, "Invite by email" or "Invite with a link" and send me to the corrisponding form when I click one of them. OK, but the "Add people" will not be in the top left "standard position"; would that be a problem? Not consistent with what happens with the list of messages, list of docs, list of chats, ecc pages. But the "list of people" is not a tool, so I think this inconsistency is OK ;-)

[@santosharjun]

Thanks for sharing your insights with us. I think there will be a reason behind every design decision but would appreciate if you can respond to my message. Two things - 1) Can we do a auto suggest when user is typing email IDs for invitation and show who all are already invited and who are not from his contacts, like a google search auto suggestion? Then the need to see 8-10 invited members below the invite section is not needed and I think that is not serving complete user problem. 2) I think name and email are enough to invite someone, do we really require title and company name?

[@arnolditerson7881]

Hi jason, great insight on your design process. You mention the need to see the list of current people a couple of times. This need could be less important if you give a good feedback loop when adding a new member. If you can prevent double entries people won't have to scroll down to check their input. Did you think of this type of sollution as well? Like to know your thoughts on that. Keep up the good work!

[@JacobDFrank]

This is such a cool example of understanding your design's goal when compared to what the solution was that was put in place. Love this video.

[@arthurklepchukov1822]

Thanks for the informative video and sharing your approach. I appreciated your consideration for the interface language. On that note, why did “Never mind” replace “Nevermind”?

[@KeeganSard]

Could add a third option which would be "Invite from Company" which would add the team member to the project automatically?!

[@LautlosMusik]

i think you can remove "themselves". Sounds weird.

[@danrocc]

Great video... have been a Basecamp fan for a long time (although still not a user!), and it is great to see such attention to detail. I wonder why "People on the team" do not appear as one of the choices when you click the icon on the left of the project title... the effort to make it "belong" to the family of the other sections would not lead to it getting a shortcut on that menu?

[@kossnocorp]

Thank you for sharing this video, please do more! I love the approach with the invitation link. I'm wondering why this pattern isn't common. It's not useful only for graduating from one tool to another but also joining a new service that was introduced to the team's workflow.

[@abdrhmns]

That was very informing. Thank you for doing these videos :)

[@raulraul81]

This is very helpful to watch.

[@austriker]

I think I noticed a small design inconsistency, why is there an X is dismiss the invite via link but no X to dismiss the invite vis email?

[@pierre-louisfirre9720]

austriker exactly. At 14:19 Jason prove it himself that it’s not coherent :-)

[@MarcinPerak]

How to switch between Safari and Basecamp desktop without any animation? I'm curious how Jason is doing it on this video.

[@gettingreal8980]

Command-Tab on the Mac lets you jump back and forth between the two most recently used apps. That's what I'm using for the instant switch. -JF

[@rinaldifonseca]

Very nice video!

[@gemfinder]

Thank you. If it’s not a trade secret, I’d love to hear the reasoning behind flat pricing. I would have guessed your clientele follows a power law distribution, i.e. a few whales could lavishly fund the whole business. If so, why not charge them much more? Risk of dependency? Pressure to make a heavier, more complicated design? Just curious.

[@jordandavis3258]

From what I read in rework, it's both those factors. The two make each other worse - more complexity drives away some users, and makes you and the 'whales' increasingly dependant on each other in a way that can become pathological. Suddenly you are in a death spiral, frantically trying to please the big customers with changes that drive away your smaller ones. Then a whale dies or moves on, and you're screwed. Instead, they keep the product simple and the user base large. If your business gets too big for basecamp, congratulations! It's time to move on, because they aren't changing the product for you.