When you work hard it’s awfully nice to have that work recognized – especially by an expert in the field.

The design of the FreshBooks application is a story of continuous improvement.  Every release (and the next one is due out very soon) includes improvements that make FreshBooks easier to use.  Why does easy matter?  Because it ensures a positive user experience which makes people (it’s all about people after all) want to tell other people about your service. Positive experience inspires other designers and it leads to more paying upgrades (i.e. it affects your bottom line).

About three weeks ago I received a call from Jack Bellis of Usability Institute.  Jack found FreshBooks through AListApart.com, which is an online resource for web designers, and he tried the service.  As someone who literally wrote the book on usability in 1997 (scroll down to “Computers Stink”), Jack appreciates good design when he sees it.  What he liked about FreshBooks was the emphasis we have placed on “instant usability”.

While the phrase is new to me, the concept is not.  We try to design every aspect of FreshBooks to ensure you are taught how to use the service AS you use the service.  The effort we invest in instant usability reduces support calls and increases the number of people who choose FreshBooks as their online billing solution.

Jack’s report is a great read for anyone who has a website.  Jack painstaking chronicles 28 things that FreshBooks does right to deliver a great usabiliity experience.  Honestly, you can learn a lot from the time Jack has taken to dissect the FreshBooks application.  I was amazed at the time he invested in preparing this document – it’s inescapable.  Jack did all of this of his own accord – we had no involvement or influence over it.  The fact that Jack even bothered is a strong indication that we are on the right track at FreshBooks, and I can tell you we are just getting started – so please stick around.

For those who have not seen this, check out a feature on Digg called Digg Spy which allows you to see what others are digging and commenting on, all in real time.  I think this is one of the best uses of AJAX I’ve seen so far, in terms of usability… and me being a design guy, its got some cool design elements too (new content fades in the old fades out at the bottom). I did notice these cool design effects do not show up in IE.

Good work by the team at Digg for implementing AJAX in a way it was meant to be used.

I was just catching up on Lars Pind’s software blog and I came across this snippet from John Gruber of Daring Fireball:

The fact that guess work is not necessary in Software As A Service (SAAS) feedback driven software development is a boon for users and developers alike.  Guess work is the reason accounting software companies like Intuit QuickBooks have got it wrong for so long.  They built in all the features you could possibly imagine because they had the resources.  They did not worry about the fact that it took 12 steps to create an invoice and five hours to set up your software.

In the SAAS paradigm (and FreshBooks is a perfect example of this) it’s now common sense (i.e. “what do we build next?”) that is the x factor for many software services.  “How can we add feature A, and still provide our users with the fastest way to generate invoices?  Do we even need to add feature A, or is there a work around?”

I went on to comment on Lars’ blog as follows:

Developing software pre a web enabled instant feedback loop was infinitely harder because of the distance between developers and users. SAAS closes that gap and benefits both parties.”

I am sure most of you have already heard about the upcoming feature to send invoices by ground mail, but here is a list of new features that will also come with the new ground mail release.

• Payment Notifications.  You can now let your clients know that you have received their payments.  If you also use the auto-bill feature, your clients can also be notified that they have been charged.  You can even use this feature to make a receipt or a nice thank you letter for your clients.
• The organization field will no longer be required. Only the name of the client will show up on the invoice if the organization field is left empty.
• You will be able edit support ticket details.
• New Payment Gateway (Velocity Pay)
• The PSiGate Payment Gateway will be upgraded to support auto-billing.
• One click logout.

If you have any requests for our next release, please leave me a comment.