"Reaction [beta]"
Redesigning Campfire 2 Mar 2007
37signals launched Campfire - its web-based group chat tool - back in 2006. With a year of experience now under their collective belt, the company has decided to made some revisions based upon what they've learnt about how users are using it. Interestingly, the changes were mostly made in response to the flaws in their original "wouldn't it be cool if..." thinking. For example:
"We thought it would be really useful to be able to not only filter by room, but also filter by person. Just show me the chats that Jamis Buck was involved with.Reality: Theoretically useful, but rarely used. The overhead to build this list and deal with per-person filtering was not worth the cost - not by a longshot."
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3 comments so far
frankz 2 Mar 2007 05:29 PM
It is good to see a company talking openly about their failures (and not just their successes). I think I remember reading that they aren't big advocates of user research - perhaps this will convince them otherwise.
XY 4 Mar 2007 08:16 PM
I especially liked the following quote:
"Yes, the new design isn’t as visually pleasing as the old design, but it’s significantly faster, more useful, makes much better use of screen space, and gets the job done better."
An unusual - but very welcome - philosophy for a design agency ;)
Armena 23 Aug 2011 01:26 AM
That's way more cevler than I was expecting. Thanks!