In/Out by 37signals
Posted by Massimo Sgrelli in
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In/Out is an internal application by 37signals first sited by Jason Fried 2 months ago. They implemented it to keep in touch with each other during the workday without useless interruptions:
In/Out is based on a simple need. People working together, on the same team or the same project, that sometimes need to know what each person is doing during the day.
What are you working on? When someone asks you this question it interrupts you and if 3, 4 or 5 people ask the same question during the day, it’s better that you take the day off.
In/Out helps to solve this problem efficiently. Each person in the team can use this tool to notify their actual status to others, and at the same time they can add log entries just describing what they have just accomplished.
The main page – and I suppose the only one – of this application allows you to see on the left side what has been finished by everyone during the day, while on the right side every worker can see each others status and the list of what they’ve already finished:
It’s probably one of the most innovative and simple tools that I’ve ever seen.
There’s only one thing that I cannot understand. Why they don’t release it as a stand alone product? I think it could be a major hit. Of course making something similar is not hard for anyone – so it cannot be considered a real asset for 37signals. Actually they only released it as part of Backpack.
But having conceived something so simple and at the same time so useful is really impressive. It’s like having designed the first non-Twitter application for the business, using the same fundamental principle of “simply useful” – I’ll get back on this concept again in future articles.
There’s only a subtle doubt I have. What if they decided not to release it stand alone to avoid cannibalizing their golden egg, Basecamp?
Mmmmhhhh…
If I was Jason Fried I would be studying a smart way to release it as a stand alone application and at the same time, have it integrated as a “module” of Basecamp – like they have already done with Writeboard.
For those of you that want to have some details there’s a short video describing this application at work – now renamed as Backpack Journal:
References:
- A peek at In/Out an internal app at 37signals
- Launch: the Backpack Journal
