Last time I looked at one aspect of what Google did right with their very intuitive and fun to use Reader.

This time, I’d like to focus on the group management and collaboration software: Basecamp.

Designed and built by 37signals. They really hit the nail on the head with a easy to use and intuitive product. Today I’ll be looking at a specific aspect that really made me go ‘wow, that’s so simple - why doesn’t everyone do that?’

First off - if you’ve never used Basecamp, you should really take some time to check it out. It’s great for collaborating with your team on projects. There’s cool features like writeboards, to-do lists, calendars, and a simple forum for easy communication. You can try it out free (the free version limits you to only one project at a time) and their price points are fairly reasonable. (Believe it or not they didn’t pay me to write this article… although I’m thinking maybe they should )

Anyways, moving on - taking a look at their to-do list, I was impressed by the simple yellow box:

‘Wow,’ you must be thinking, ‘it sure doesn’t take much to get Aaron excited.’ I’ll have you know that I’m not easily distra… Oooh! Shiny object!

Seriously though, this isn’t any normal yellow box. (Ok, yes it is - but it’s so much cooler) Ready for the fun part?

It fades in after you’ve added a new item, and fades back to nothing fairly quickly.

Tada! That’s it! Easy huh? Then why don’t we see it more often?

This might appear to be blindingly stupid or insignificant, but I beg to differ. That little bit of color and motion lets the user know that their item was added, and that all their information is ready to go. No reloading of the page, no wondering if their information was lost in the transfer. Nope, no worries. Immediate relief. A little bit of DHTML and we’ve just made this page fun to use and a ton more usable in one fell swoop.

Ok, now apply this simple idea site-wide. Anytime a user sends information, wouldn’t it be great to let them know immediately that we got it? I would love to see the day when all sites use this sort of confirmation.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, how about that its a little flashy and shows off you’re not building your pages in FrontPage?

It’s the attention to detail and doing the little bit of work and planning in making a page not only accessible and usable, but enjoyable to do so.

Are there things about web apps you love? Hate? Want to share? Leave it in the comments!