Project background

Assumptions

I am assuming that through research, Basecamp discovered that their primary persona preferred an explorative approach to onboarding and preferred diving into the deep end, rather than taking a guided, step-wise approach.

I am assuming that Basecamp’s approach to onboarding was based user preferences / behaviors around project building, organizing, and managing, which can be a rather messy process. Basecamp embraces this.

The product value that Basecamp offers then, I can only assume, is one that meet’s their market of users where they are, in terms of project management and organizational style. There is likely much variation in terms of how users approach setting up projects. I can imagine Basecamp asking, how could we possibility accommodate it all in a single onboarding experience?

Furthermore, there is no shortage of ways to engage and collaborate with teammates, through pings, scheduling tasks, daily notifications, etc. I am assuming this multifaceted approach to collaboration differentiates Basecamp from similar products, and aims to meet users where they are, based on research, in terms of supporting different wavelengths of collaboration and offering a unique landscape of collaborative variety.

Process

Understand as-is (onboarding)

🔎 Pre-product walkthrough that learns about your team, needs, etc. in order to pre-configure your experience when landing on the project canvas.

🔎 Sample projects let you see fully loaded projects.

🔎 Contextual onboarding helps you build out projects.

🔎 In-app support provides more detailed learning opportunities to fill in any gaps.

🔎 One-off contextual onboarding nudges user in the right direction.

Understand as-is (collaboration)

🔎 Multiple collaborative touch-points and nudges are woven into the experience, from pings, to various forms of messaging, to scheduling to-dos and emailing notifications and updates, to formal messaging boards and knowledge sharing repositories.

🔥 Friction points - onboarding

Different forms of onboarding are presented. I imagine this is intentional. Different onboarding techniques to meet various persona needs / business needs, engagement targets, KPI’s etc. But again, as a user, I can easily get lost and disoriented.

It isn’t quite streamlined. I can’t see the entire surface area of my onboarding experience. Ironically, the product value from a project management standpoint is just that, to enable users to see the entire surface area of your projects.

Where do I stand in terms of completeness, understanding, and feature exposure? I don’t have a sense of my overall progress towards learning this app. I have no perspective on just how blank my blank- state situation is.

Basecamp is hoping that users will dive right in, experiment and learn as they go, and that may be the case for some of their user base.  I can’t imagine it’s the case for all.

For instance, after the initial setup, all I am presented with is a collection of blank card states. What should I do?

There is no sense of priority here. It’s great that basecamp helps you overcome a blank project canvas, but then they sort of just throw you in the deep end.  

Finally, onboarding does not cover any of the collaborative aspects of Basecamp. Onboarding is focused primarily on team and project setup, not on collaboration aspect of the product, which is like missing something like 50% of the value / functionality of the product.  

🔥 Friction points - collaboration

I haven’t used Basecamp for an actual project, so I can’t really judge what it would be like in action, however, after going through sample projects and team, the immediate question that came to mind was, who am I collaborating with exactly, at any given time?

Sure, I can see my teammates, my to-do’s, etc. But I have no sense of the scope of my priorities, relative to my teammates priorities, and the impact that has on a specific project, and any given point in time.

It seems all to easy for something to fall in between the cracks, regardless of how many checks and balances basecamp has in play, be it pings, emails, scheduling, heartbeats, pitches, questions, assignments, etc. I did not see an area that lets users simply understand the scope, priorities, and activity (input / output) of any given interaction between teammates.

Basecamp doesn’t offer an effective way within the product to manage and monitor a collaborative activity and/or touch-point, there are only ways to encourage it, instigate it, and then hope that it drives progress.

Finally, users cant really grasp what is blocking any project at any given time. The to-do list lets you see what tasks are in-flight. But there doesn’t seem to be an effective way to add blockers, that could be impacting those to-dos. Maybe this isn’t an issue, and users just treat to-dos as blockers, however there seems to be an opportunity to add value here.

Onboarding solutions

I show two (2) different approaches to solving for the friction points I identified: a tactical solution for onboarding, and a more vision-based approach for collaboration. Each solution is divided into three (3) phases which can be interpreted as building towards an optimal experience from an MVP state.

Will onboarding learn about my needs and priorities?

There is opportunity to learn just a little bit more about the user during the initial setup workflow, that would go a long way to tailoring the project canvas experience. 7 steps maybe a few too many to require, so the user can skip these steps.

Will it help me prioritize team and project building?

Based on the setup selections, a simple UI nudge, simply highlighting the Finance team using the purple color that is used throughout to signify onboarding related content, could provide a nice basis from which to prioritize team / project building, providing a sense of orientation for the user on this canvas, rather than throwing them into the deep end.

Will it nudge me towards exploration and learnability?

Basecamp can take more of a stand in terms of suggesting where users should start their journey. The pre-built team and project samples are extremely valuable, and promoting them more during the initial onboarding could go a long way to improving learnability.

Will it track my progress and guide me towards critical learning pathways?

Finally, a much more guided and step-by-step onboarding experience could serve the needs of users who prefer this style. I decided to take advantage of the current support assistant as an ideal place to integrate this experience.

Collaboration solutions

Will it help me articulate blockers?

Blockers is a new feature idea that allows users to articulate blockers they are experiencing that is impeding progress and defined To-dos.

Will blockers scale to the project level?

The blockers feature could easily integrate within the current project page view.

Will it help me better manage and monitor collaborative efforts and outputs?

Collaboration board would be a new concept that allows teammates to pair up, and more directly manage and scope collaborative activities throughout a given project. Here users could view the entire surface area of their collaborative activity and the impact that it is driving towards a project.

Notice the new sub-navigation introduced to accommodate this collaborative canvas. It shows the projects that the collaborators are working on for quick and easy reference. A page dedicated to blockers that are impeding progress, specific to this collaboration. For each Blocker there is a field to define a corresponding To-do for which it is blocking.

Next steps

Usually, I would have followed a more formal discovery process to uncover rather or these were actual problems in the first place, using some form of available data, either analytics, or support cases, or interviews, etc.

Next steps would to be get these concepts in front of users in one format or another, survey or prototype, to evaluate and validate.