Does “rails” contribute to a better customer experience?
Geek Chic: Rails
37signals has built 5 new software products over the last couple of years, and has knocked every single one out of the park, two of their products earned “best of the web 2005″ from business week, not bad for a couple of years. Currently over a quarter of a million people use those products, which means they are no longer the niche player they once were. One mind boggling fact though is that even with quarter of a million users, support requests are so infrequent that they are generally handled by the founder, Jason Fried (a fact I discovered on a duct tape marketing podcast)
Many factors have contributed to 37signals deserved success, not least their heritage as a “usability” company, and their focus on keeping it simple. What I am wondering though, is whether the development platform/web framework they use for all their products, the geek chic “ruby on rails“, has contributed to the simple, consistent, and clearly superior Customer Experience.
Now, i’m not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have taken a few tutorials, and viewed a few of the video screencasts of “rails” in action, giving me some limited insight. It seems that the “rails” “write once” philosophy forms an incredibly tight relationship between the User Interface and the database. In other words you write one piece of code and it creates all the UI elements and database stuff automatically. The “creating a weblog in 15 minutes” screencast provides a great example where the programmer creates an item in the program called a “post”. A post has a title and a body that contain text, and as the programmer specifies this, a web view of a post is created, with a title and a body. Not only that but the functions for creating, deleting, and viewing lists of posts are all there as well, with the requisite “create”, “edit”, “delete” buttons.
What this illustrates to me is really the “power of patterns” on customer experience, and the value of consistency. I “think” that because all of the 37signals products were built in rails, they have some consistent patterns that help users learn, and adopt their products. This is not taking away any of 37signals design chops, but I think there are so many details that “rails” is helping making more consistent that 37signals can focus on building a great products.
Clearly well designed, usable, easy to learn products are leading to very strong adoption rates, and the dirty little secret of software sales is that “adoption” is what makes a software product successful. The CRM industry has an awesome failure rate, not because the software doesn’t “scale” or whatever other consulting buzzword you want to put in there, they fail because no-one uses them. This is the reason that salesforce.com actually invests a “shit load” of money in usability (I was getting pitched on salesforce.com at one time and the figure they threw out of how much the spend on UX is huge).
Anyway, why would I mention CRM? Because 37signals has a product in the works called sunrise, you’ve been warned.
References:
- the 37signals blog Signal vs. Noise
- Ruby on Rails Site
- A blog for Rails N00BS - wonderfully named Nuby On Rails
Some additional links courtesy of nubyonrails
- http://podcast.rubyonrails.org — Interviews with Rails pros
- http://rubyonrailsworkshops.com — Opportunities to learn Rails
- http://rails.techno-weenie.net — Practical Answers
- http://railshelp.com — Searchable documentation
On the subject of “rails” hosting I’ll take an opportunity to plug my host here, I host half a dozen sites on site5. Apart from the fact they host “rails” apps, they have lots of features for people who host multiple sites and they provide a shit load of storage space, i mean 11 gigs of space, 400 gigs of bandwidth, 5 domains, for about 8 bucks is pretty good.
My only complaint is they don’t have phone support, but their email support has been very responsive and knowledgeable.
10 Comments, Comment or Ping
Zeke Sneaker
So what’s the whisper rumor…what does Sunrise do?
Feb 27th, 2006
karl long
Ahh, maybe I was too cryptic, from what I understand, it’s actually a 37signals interpretation of CRM. Something for small businesses to keep track of conversations with customers. I’m very excited about it, if there is any software category ready for a “feature diet” its CRM.
Feb 27th, 2006
Mike
I think you’ve discovered an anomaly in the 80/20 rule. Design patterns can get you only so far, and good design can only impact an app so much. You’ve nailed it though–
“…there are so many details that ‘rails’ is helping making more consistent that 37signals can focus on building a great products.”
Feb 27th, 2006
karl long
Thanks Mike. It’s kind of building upon some ideas from Yahoo releasing open source design patterns, it frees the designers of basic decisions so they can move onto higher level activities.
cheer,
Karl
Feb 28th, 2006
Jess McMullin
So I might be misreading here, in that you’re crediting rails for some of 37S success. I agree, and - in the uncomfortable position of advocating for an already popular poster child - 37S gets the credit for Rails too…they invented it.
Feb 28th, 2006
karl long
haha, popular poster child they are, but I think you’re right to point out they invented rails. The problem is they are the best known example of products built on rails. But my idea that rails might contribute to a better use experience didn’t come from using there products. It came from me doing some tutorials with the rails and noticing how consistently controls and various UI elements were implemented.
I actually used locomotive - a mac os x stand alone rails “IDE” http://locomotive.raaum.org/home/show/HomePage
and followed this brief video tutorial: http://locomotive.sourceforge.net/images/locomotive_intro.mov
Feb 28th, 2006
Simon de Haast
Reading this post inspired a variety of riffs from me:
1. It just doesn’t matter. Check out this blog entry from 37S that reinforces their “focus on keeping it simple.” http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/it_just_doesnt_matter.php
“I think that statement embodies what makes a product great. Figuring out what matters and leaving out the rest.”
2. “The power of patterns”
A friend recommended a book to me, Pattern Language (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195019199/sr=8-1/qid=1142254868/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-9048805-3280928) that talks about the various architypes of great buildings, and why the combination of those ‘patterns’ really make a space work, and others are void of any feeling eg. light from two sides… I wonder if there is an emerging pattern language for user-interface design that can be broken into components like Christopher Alexander has done.
3. Metatools.
I read a strategy book once that said the reason the Japanese economy grew so successfully in the beginning was because they “made the tools that made the tools”. I guess in a was that’s 37S’s situation.
Mar 13th, 2006
Riel Roussopoulos
We’ve also been working on a Ruby on Rails based CRM for some time now.
It is fully functional for one of our businesses and we are in the latter stages of a major overhaul on the design and UI site to make it a more general application (it was originally done to manage a Christmas lighting company).
Please take a look, unlike sunrise, we’ve made it an opensource project and you can download the code at our website XLsuite.org.
We welcome any and all contributions and suggestions.
Thank you.
Riel Roussopoulos
Mar 11th, 2007
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