Chad Vavra

“I’m not designing software for other people, I’m designing it for me” –David Hansson, Ruby on Rail creator and proprietor of 37 signals as quoted in Wired magazine 16.03 [March 2008]

I read this line and immediately thought of Todd Wilkens UX Intensive workshop on Design Research and his insight that “user motivations lead to, drive, and shape their behaviors.”

37signals is the Web 2.0 poster child of applications Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire, all of which are based on a strict mentality of less is more and the belief that saying no to feature requests is the only path to quality software. While I am not a user of their software I did entertain it and go so far as to read their pamphlet Getting Real about building web applications. In which they proclaim

At 37signals, all of our support emails are answered personally
by the people who actually build the product. Why? First off, it
provides better support for customers. They are getting a response
straight from the brain of someone who built the app. Also, it
keeps us in touch with the people who use our products and the
problems they are encountering. When they are frustrated, we are
frustrated. We can say, “I feel your pain and actually mean it.”

How can you feel my pain if you don’t know, or CARE about my motivations? It’s examples like this that make me realize that the market will take care of itself. Just like Starbucks coming to terms with the rediculousness of expensive coffee and funny conventions, someone who cares about user centered strategies will quickly cut into the business motivated successes like Mr. Hansson.

I can imagine a small team of AIR developers quickly creating a competing product. In fact any experienced Flash developer with a copy of Lee Brimelow’s FITC Amsterdam slides could probably give them a run for their money, or should I say ‘model’?

While I’m not the person to program it, I may have to take a stab at designing it, for everyone AND me.

[note: CloudCity is what I would call this software]