Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#21

Post by axod » Wed, May 20, 2009, 3:45 PM UTC

spanktheuser wrote: post #18

axod wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the OP's question as hostile, or suggesting their applications are rubbish. I think it's a valid question - clearly some people are willing to pay money for inferior products, because they value other things. Trust? support? name brand? Love RoR and want to support people using RoR? Analysing what those things are seems a good idea if you're trying to emulate it, and you can't do that by "Trying the app…

You make a good argument that follows logically from your initial assumption - that "clearly some people are willing to pay money for inferior products." So I'll just challenge that assumption ;-) By and large, I think you and the OP are defining inferior products as synonymous with less fully featured products. But it's not that simple (witness the iPhone, still lacking cut & paste). For example, compare Highrise wi…

I'd say a sure fire signal that it's inferior is if it can be replicated by someone else easily. If so, they can replicate it, then improve it - making the original inferior.

The iPhone looks extremely simple. But it's a ruse - it's actually massively complex and a feat of engineering. It's hard to copy.

I agree, it takes a lot of thought to decide what to leave out - lack of features can be a good thing. But those decisions are not really defendable in terms of IP (Unless you complain Huddlechat 'stole' your whole UI and they roll over)

I haven't used basecamp or highrise extensively, so perhaps they make up for campfire.

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#22

Post by wallflower » Wed, May 20, 2009, 3:59 PM UTC

I looked at LiquidPlanner and Wrike recently in a comparison of Basecamp. They are nice products but they make things complicated. In my opinion, Basecamp is excellent for working with multiple clients/stakeholders on small, self-contained projects.

For collaborating on projects with clients, 37S makes a product that has limitations but the overall user experience makes it better than their competitors.

LP and Wrike both share serious access/security flaws (LiquidPlanner grants global access to anyone who is shared a workspace (clients,projects,folders) and Wrike allows anyone who is shared a virtual project folder to go on and share it with anyone - (who can easily delete the entire virtual project folder and all its children). These open, Web 2.0 collaborative ideals don't work well with a company focused on multiple client projects (all of which must be confidential).

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#23

Post by ziadbc » Wed, May 20, 2009, 4:06 PM UTC

I think the reason is all the things you mentioned, and more.

Most of the other project management software still seems sterile, and you have no sense of who is creating it. As far as features go, if everyone on a team isn't using a feature, that feature doesn't exist anyway.

With the high profile of 37signals team, you get a sense that if anything was drastically wrong with the software, the user base will be able to hunt down Jason Fried and get the thing working again. If they're not gonna fix it, Jason Fried will be the first person to say so.

Thats straightforward, and people use straightforward as a proxy for 'good.'

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#24

Post by rmalik » Wed, May 20, 2009, 4:13 PM UTC

spanktheuser wrote: post #18

axod wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the OP's question as hostile, or suggesting their applications are rubbish. I think it's a valid question - clearly some people are willing to pay money for inferior products, because they value other things. Trust? support? name brand? Love RoR and want to support people using RoR? Analysing what those things are seems a good idea if you're trying to emulate it, and you can't do that by "Trying the app…

You make a good argument that follows logically from your initial assumption - that "clearly some people are willing to pay money for inferior products." So I'll just challenge that assumption ;-) By and large, I think you and the OP are defining inferior products as synonymous with less fully featured products. But it's not that simple (witness the iPhone, still lacking cut & paste). For example, compare Highrise wi…

I am not stating that 37 Signals products are inferior at all. The classical mindset was that people would move from one product to another because of some killer feature or low cost alternative. 37Signals has seemed to flip this idea and challenge the idea of what better software means. This brought me to wonder how other users felt about their products and their motivations for using them. I like your distinction between effort and value. I don't agree at all with the notion of the amount of effort put in equals the amount of value to the user. It simply doesn't work in reality. The effort is also a vague concept as it could be related to development time, marketing, customer service, etc. Effort in dealing with users, gathering feedback and iterating on the product based on that feedback is what gains value for a product IMHO.

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#25

Post by dugmartin » Wed, May 20, 2009, 4:37 PM UTC

I'm not a big Basecamp fan - I'm forced to use it for work where we have 40+ projects running on it and sometimes for larger clients when they have their own Basecamp setup.

Maybe we don't use it to its fullest but all it ends up doing is archiving conversation threads and being a file repository. Just looking now there are 3 month late todo items that I don't think will ever get closed. After a while every project seems to drift off of it and end up using a combination of email + bug tracking.

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#26

Post by rmalik » Wed, May 20, 2009, 5:11 PM UTC

dugmartin wrote: post #25

I'm not a big Basecamp fan - I'm forced to use it for work where we have 40+ projects running on it and sometimes for larger clients when they have their own Basecamp setup. Maybe we don't use it to its fullest but all it ends up doing is archiving conversation threads and being a file repository. Just looking now there are 3 month late todo items that I don't think will ever get closed. After a while every project s…

So are you not a fan of it because it isn't used properly at your company or that it doesn't fulfill your needs?

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#27

Post by crux » Wed, May 20, 2009, 5:22 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #10

djcjr wrote: post #6

If you're so curious, perhaps your time would be better spent actually trying their applications, rather than "watching various videos and seeing the growth".

I didn't read the OP's question as hostile, or suggesting their applications are rubbish. I think it's a valid question - clearly some people are willing to pay money for inferior products, because they value other things. Trust? support? name brand? Love RoR and want to support people using RoR? Analysing what those things are seems a good idea if you're trying to emulate it, and you can't do that by "Trying the app…

Campfire's just-work quotient is pretty high. As someone who's got his own web hosting, I was casting around for a hostable Campfire-workalike and there was nothing that I could find to compare. I also know some folks who have developed a very similar system as a part of their larger product and I hear enough of their bitching to know that there is some degree of skill in getting things to be 37S-level smooth.

Re: Why do you use 37Signals products? Simplicity, UI, Hype?

#28

Post by RossM » Wed, May 20, 2009, 6:01 PM UTC

I use Highrise (free version) for task management, although since that's all I use it for I'm working towards shifting those to Google Mail/Calendar Tasks. I do however like the fact you can get some of the task/reminder feeds in Backpack and Highrise as iCalendar feeds - not enough applications use this.

As far as my experience with the apps has gone they're nice, and they do work well, but I don't believe they're worth the hype. It might be that I haven't seen enough "bad" software but I've seen simpler web apps that work just as well.