FreshBooks

On Design: Don’t iPhone and drive

by Levi Cooperman | January 17/2007 | cost of goods sold, design, iphone, mobile phones, usability

In December I was in a car with a CEO of a successful Canadian technology business and I was a little nervous. The reason was because the CEO was driving at full speed while simultaneously checking his Blackberry for new emails. Some people would be quite freaked out by this, but I was quite calm, …

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Web App Design Lesson from Our Coffee Machine

by Mike McDerment | November 28/2006 | cost of goods sold, interface design, redesign, usability

We have a new coffee machine…I’m just not sure it will stay. Why am I writing about coffee machines? Cusinart’s redesign is a great illustration of how new versions can make products worse, not better. Okay…here is our old coffee machine (sorry about the photos…they are quick and dirty from my cell phone): …

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Breaking Conventions for Better Usability

by Mike McDerment | November 3/2006 | cost of goods sold, credits, Fresh stuff, usability

Doing what you’re not supposed to…sometimes it works. We are just finalizing some designs for our upcoming release [about 10 days from now]. We have redesigned a few pages including our “view user” page. I have long had a problem with our “view user” page. We used bold text to describe information like this:

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Instant Usability – The FreshBooks Way

by Mike McDerment | May 31/2006 | cost of goods sold, usability, user experience, user interface

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? …

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Digging in the Right Direction

by Jeff Sarmiento | May 30/2006 | AJAX, cost of goods sold, Digg, Digg Spy, usability

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 …

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