Reaction to the Spring Release

Written By: Quickbase
June 21, 2007
3 min read

You’ve had almost two weeks with the "new Quickbase" now. For those of you who’ve given us feedback, thank you very much. We’re always interested in how you’re using Quickbase, so don’t hesitate share your thoughts or ask questions.

Overall, reaction to the new Quickbase has been quite positive. We’ve gotten comments like:

"It looks much more modern.

"The usability is much improved from a development perspective … much smoother and easier to get around."

"Great Job! The navigation is far more intuitive and it looks much better."

This release made even steely Quickbase staffers nervous, because moving people’s features is a big deal. But we shouldn’t be surprised that things are going well. The fact is, we didn’t come up with the new setup out of the blue, nor as a result of caffeine-induced visions. Recent changes are based on extensive research and testing. We asked a bunch of business people to use Quickbase, and watched what they did (or tried to do). Weeks of this usability testing showed us where users were struggling. Armed with this information, our developers and product managers redesigned Quickbase to make features easier to find and to save you all tons of clicks.

"Easier to find?!" some may be thinking. Certainly Quickbase mavens who could navigate the old menus blindfolded need to make an adjustment and learn the new paths. If you haven’t yet seen it, check out this cheat sheet of shortcuts to basic features. Menus and screens that end users see have not changed that much, but there’s a cheat sheet for them too. Also – there are video tours posted for both users and managers. To view these and read more about this release, go to your My Quickbase page click the New link within the Quickbase News section.

How do I know that the new setup saves you clicks? My evidence is more anecdotal than scientific, but I thought it was worth sharing. A big "a-ha" for me was that as I updated Help topics with paths to the new features, I spent a lot of time deleting steps. Where it used to take three steps to access a feature, it now takes one. So, you’re not only saving clicks, but "reading time" too, which frees you up to read even MORE help topics. But judge for yourself. With most administrative features now located on one of three pages, don’t you find that there’s less moving in and out of screens? I do.

I really do. I’m not just on staff, I’m a Quickbase user and app manager too. You’ve probably heard that we here at Quickbase "eat our own dog food." In other words, we use Quickbase to run our business. This means that we too must navigate the new menus to locate important features, just like you regular folk on the other end of our programming code. This revelation begs the question: How is the transition going at Quickbase HQ? Was it a seamless "new look" love-fest? Not every day. Change is hard for us too. There’s been the occasional "Where’s the such-and-such feature?" or "How do get to my blankety-blank now?" During development, we even made some changes based on requests from ourselves.

(See? We listen) But one week later, all is silent here as I type. Email notifications indicate that everyone is updating their issues and projects as usual, with no more questions. Hope you all have found your stride again too.

As always, we love getting your feedback, so please let us know how it’s going.

Written By: Quickbase
Quickbase is a cloud workspace that helps teams get more done with apps that match their exact processes. Easily customize and build business apps to collaborate on data, automate workflows, and turn insight into action with dashboards and reports.

Never miss a post — subscribe to the Quickbase Blog.

Sign up to receive the latest posts on everything from Operational Excellence to Digital Transformation.