There is a great point made on the 37 Signals blog about designing the blank slate. Now although this post is over 6 years old, the point is still very valid. The whole point of a web application such as this one is to help you manage large amount of data, but when a user first starts to use the system, there is no data. There are no other users in the team, no clients, no projects, no tasks, milestones or files etc.
If a user logs in for the first time and all they see is a blank screen as there is no information, then they may not realise the full potential of the application. To tackle, this, I am implementing 3 methods to help manage this
- Making sure that on any page which has user defined data, it first checks if there is any data and if not, it will show some instructions on how to get started or use that partilular screen, so in the files section, it would show you how to add files, organize them etc. There may alos be a screenshot of how it would look once full populated
- Create a first time setup wizard which they will be taken to after registering. This will allow them to easily add users, clients and projects in bulk at the very beginning. Although it will be possible to skip this step and come back to it later should they wish
- Allow users to import a sample project which will give them a sandbox like environment with sample users, clients and projects populated with tasks, milestones, tickets etc
As the designer and developer behind the application, it is hard for me to appreciate how real users will interact with the system when it’s in it’s blank state as even when I enter the application in a blank state (which is a small amount of time in comparison to when it’s full of data) I still know how the application should be used. The only way to find out for real if the application will work well when in the blank state is to get real users to test it, which is what the now 190 beta testers will be doing next week
Next week? Am I in … am I in?
Of course… you where one of the first to sign up