BatchBook Blog
Archive for Tag
It has been quite some time since I wrote for the “Using BatchBook” category, and I wanted to share some of my personal BatchBook usage tips.
To-Dos: Complete vs. Delete
You may have noticed that we have a “Done” checkbox as well as a “Delete” button with every task on your To-Do List. Why?
We used to have tasks disappear immediately when you hit the “Done” checkbox. There was a very “instant gratification” feel to it. But at the end of the day, I found myself thinking, “Hey wait—what did I actually get done today?”
Now during the day, I check items as done—and they are not removed from the list. At the start of the next day, I delete all the finished tasks and start the same process over again. (more…)
Tags: batchbook, contact management, User Experience
This round of changes includes a lot of suggestions from our beta users, more so than any other code push we have done so far:
- To-Dos now support entering natural language date entry. What is this you say? Well, it’s possibly my favorite feature right now in BatchBook. Now instead of having to use the calendar pop-up to enter dates, you can just enter something like ‘next wednesday’ in the text field and it figures out the date for you. This is really useful for entering terms like ‘tomorrow’, ‘today’ , ‘next month’ etc. It will also support dates like “1/31″ and will just default to the current year. Give it a try; it’s so fun it makes you wish you had more To-Dos to enter.
- Another change is that overdue To-Dos are now styled in red with an exclamation point in front of them. This makes it much easier to quickly scan the page and see what tasks are in need of attention.
- For Contacts, we’ve removed the requirement of needing a last name for an individual contact. Sometimes you just do not have a persons last name, which shouldn’t prevent you from getting the contact in BatchBook. Editor’s note: like if you know Madonna! Or Cher!
- We also made a change to the Contact detail page that makes it much easier to log location information. You’ll now see a blank form ready to fill out. This is just the start of a major revamp to this page we have in the works. Stay tuned…
- The Login page now has a “Remember me” checkbox which will keep you logged into BatchBook for two weeks. This is really nice for accessing BatchBook on mobile devices so that you can stay logged into the app without having to re-enter your email and password everyday.
There have also been a bunch of little UI tweaks here which should make for a better experience all around, especially in IE7.
It’s very cool to be getting such great feedback from our users, so keep sending it in.
Tags: Customer Service, usability, User Experience
As BatchBlue’s User Experience Designer, a big part of my job is to hide BatchBook’s technologies from users that don’t want to deal with them. My main goal is to make sure users can do what they need to do as efficiently and painlessly as possible.
For this reason, it takes a pretty compelling bit of technology for me to bring it into BatchBook and expose it to our users. Today, I wanted to share one of those technologies with you. Consider this a warning that this post can get a bit techy, but if you follow me you’ll see that it’s really not that bad and can actually be quite useful.
About Microformats
When I first heard of a technology called Microformats, my initial thought was “oh geez, now what?” This was at a time that I was already trying to learn about things like AJAX, Javascript libraries, and browser quirks in CSS development. Microformats sounded like just another thing to add to the list.
But microformats are different. They’re simple. And while the potential usefulness for them is just being uncovered, there is already an immediate benefit. One of the key microformats, hCard, is all about contact information. So, of course, that one is huge for BatchBook.
(more…)
Tags: batchbook, microformats, User Experience
As soon as I joined BatchBlue in May, I was thrown into the fire—we had a beta to get out, after all. There were lots of bugs to be fixed, display issues to be resolved, cranky browsers to accommodate, and architectures to learn. A lot of things initially impressed me about BatchBook, but it seemed like all I was doing was fixing issues. It becomes easy to lose a sense of the whole when you’re arm wrestling with tiny pieces of code day after day.
Then, a wonderful thing (on so many levels) happened—I took a couple weeks off to welcome our second child. For two weeks, I didn’t fix any bugs… I fixed makeshift dinners. I didn’t clean up code… I cleaned up belly button regions. I didn’t change class names, I changed diapers. Yet, I still used BatchBook. But I finally used it as a real live user.
When you become a user, you expand your view of the app beyond just functionality to include the entire user experience. Sure, things work… and kudos to Sean and Riley on getting that foundation in place. Now is the time for Michelle and I to make sure things feel right.
I started off by importing my contacts from my Mac OS X Address Book, my GMail account, and my LinkedIn account. The imports (via vCard) were flawless, which is wonderful. What I noticed right away is that we really need to streamline the process for consolidating the contacts library after this first batch of imports.
(more…)
Tags: batchbook, crm, importing contacts, online address book, User Experience, vCard
Software and its users have entered an age of higher expectations. Although business software is hardly leading the charge, it’s starting to catch up.
Once upon a time, business software was business software. Nobody got too excited about it, if by “excited” we understand something positive. Except, of course, for the people whose business it was to sell the software and a few pointy-haired analysts who knew what to do with the numbers it was increasingly possible to wrangle.
As more companies realized the competitive advantages of computerizing aspects of their day-to-day workflow, the market for business software grew exponentially. Competition was fierce for this new market. Alongside aggressive sales, the makers of business software relied on vendor lock-in to keep their customers buying their products and related upgrades whether the customers wanted to or not.
Nobody was too happy with this arrangement, if by “nobody” we understand anybody besides the makers of business software. Those in charge of buying decisions had to negotiate upgrades and additional licenses with effective monopolies. And those on the user end too often found themselves wrestling with obtuse interfaces, inscrutable user manuals and cryptic error messages.
Then, the Internet happened. While it didn’t change the old, bad ways of business software all at once, it caused people to understand computers and their use in a new light.
(more…)
Tags: business, open source, User Experience
Newer Entries
