slate blog

So the guys at 37Signals launched a new look for Basecamp. We currently use Basecamp for project management across our department (the big one, not just Web Services). Chris and I were recently getting back into the groove of using it and then… pow a new look. All I have to say is it’s mainly ‘eh’ but the Overview page gets a big thumbs down from me. Now to be fair to the guys at 37s they did provide a heads up that the changes were happening and I wish I had taken an opportunity to review it but… it’s 37s, they rock, they’re awesome, they know what they’re doing. Well, I think they stepped into it with this one. Check out the commentary plus the new look. The colored boxes on the overview are overkill. I don’t need the page screaming at me. And the strikethrough used to be a nice visual for figuring out what was done and what was new. Ed. note: Looks like they fixed the strikethrough. Ah well… I think this is one UI feature we won’t be copying. I also think they overdid it with all the blue headers. I do like the big buttons though. Luckily they haven’t changed too much else.

Basecamp update rating? 2 out of 5. Nothing was really wrong as far as I was concerned but maybe I was just too used to things.

Google Analytics also launched a new look. Ok, feature-wise I really like the changes because the ability to customize the front-end and the email reports are cool. That said the geo map overlay has lost a lot of it’s punch. It’s easy to drill down but it’s annoying to try to figure it out. Being a Geog major the maps were about the coolest part. The referrer report has been greatly improved in that now you actually know which page from a site the referring link was on BUT there’s no clickable link back to the page to see what they said. I mean, you tell me which page links to my page but I can’t easily get to it without copying, pasting, and deleting some characters?! By default GA now has a much longer timeframe for reporting which threw me off at first but I’ll get used to that. I also think it’s lacking a bit in visual hierarchy but considering I can really customize the layout that hopefully won’t be too much of an issue. The use of sparklines for some of the stats is cool since you don’t see them much but I expect more and more people to use them. They’re a bit overshadowed by the actual numbers.

Update: More complaints as I use GA more.

• it’s annoying to not have the calendars right up front therefore incurring an extra click. The whole point of GA is to be able to compare data across time… and you have to take an extra step to do that. I’m always wanting to look at today to see how traffic develops. Now it’s really annoying
• If you select to show just a day’s worth of info you can’t get a view of just the traffic across the day (e.g. by hours). Instead it’s just a dot at the end of graphs showing the month’s worth of data.
• the Traffic Sources Overview is now so generic that it’s useless. Ok, a majority of my traffic comes from ‘Referring Sites’... great but why can’t you just draw percentages of those sites like the old GA? Now it’s an extra click. I tried to customize the dashboard with that info but all you get is a list. If I could also customize the type of display of the report (e.g. list vs. pie chart) it’d be useful.
• I’m also finding I’m missing the dual pages and visits view of the data in the main dashboard.

GA update rating? 3 out of 5. Probably a five out of five just for all the new features but the lost punch in geo map overlay, the awkward referrer and just the general weird visual hierarchy drop it a point for me. I’ve dropped it another point with the update. Sorry, guys. But after watching the tour I am obviously not in their target demographic for this update.

Just interesting to look at the changes people are putting out in light of our own impending changes.