As I sat down to write this post, it occurred to me that the Design Playground's 1st anniversary came and went without any fanfare--and I think that's just due to how crazy it has been in product development as of late.  The design and development teams have been particularly busy deepening the Blackbaud Enterprise CRM product as well as gearing up for next generation product development across product lines.  Special thanks to our partners in Professional Services and to our CRM clients for helping us to understand business needs that will benefit future clients and users.  Your phone calls, email, and all-around willingness to roll-up your sleeves and get in the goo with us is very much appreciated!

Now, to the way-back machine...

In March 2007, the Playground was launched in an effort to:

• communicate our design culture
• provide insight into our processes
• facilitate discussion on business needs
• solicit feedback
• recruit participants for usability testing
• share designs for not-yet released features or products
• test-drive applications that are still in development

Over a year later, I think we've met all of these objectives in one way or another, but we still have work to do especially as we plan to bring other products onto the Infinity platform.  Recruiting participants for usability testing and design validation is still a priority and if you haven't already done so, please consider signing up.  While you're at it, if you could talk a colleague into signing up, that would be great, too.  We're always looking to talk to folks who don't consider themselves to be "RE gurus" (but we love the gurus, too!)  If you're an occasional user or even someone who relies on someone else to generate reports from RE, for instance, we need you! 

We have some new faces on the design teams, so look for upcoming James Lipton-style interviews (blue index cards and less-than-substantive details included) with our new designers.  We'll also begin sharing plans for the Design Playground's presence at this year's Conference for Nonprofits.

All for now!  

-Katie     

Design has been heads down for the last couple of months so we apologize for not putting timely information on the Playground.

So what have we been doing?

• Gathering requirements
• Designing interfaces
• Hiring great new people
• Validating our designs
• Re-designing the playground (coming soon!)

You should be hearing more from us in the near future as we launch remote self usability testing and begin posting more designs on the playground for validation. 

In the meantime....

Stay cool and dry.

Trit

As we say good bye to 2007 and look forward to 2008 let's recap the success of the playground so far.  Wow!  We had an excellent launch of the Playground.  With almost 2800 unique visitors since the site went live is amazing.  Our goal is to double that amount for 2008 and we cannot do it without each of you contributing to the playground.  Stay tuned for new things coming to the Playground, including "do it on your own" Usability Testing and more information on designs related to Raiser's Edge 8.

We want to send a big thank you to everyone who was participated so far and are looking forward to working with you going forward!!

Hello from the bricks and mortar Design Playground, live from Blackbaud's Conference for Nonprofits!  It's been great getting to meet so many attendees; we're having a great time!  We're booked solid for all 64 of our scheduled usability testing sessions, but if you want to skip out of a session early to try to snag a spot, please do.  We'll be here through the duration of the conference.

If you're not able to test in person, you can sign-up for remote usability testing.  Click the "sign up for testing" link on the right-hand side of this page.  We'll get in touch with you as soon as we have something new for you to test.  In the meantime, be sure to grab the RSS feeds available here to stay up-to-date on breaking design news.

Have a great time at the conference; talk to you soon!

-Katie

What in the world is World Usability Day?
From the WUD site:  World Usability Day was founded to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use.  (Even its explanation is simple!) 

Everything from software to your cell phone to your can opener (especially if you have an OXO Good Grips!) has been subjected to the poking and prodding of usability testing.  But, as we've been known to say around the Design team, usability *isn't* just testing.  Each time we toy with a new design or review one that's in progress, we're constantly applying sound principles of design and looking for bumps in the usability road.   

How are we celebrating?
To celebrate World Usability Day, the Design Team is hosting a full day's worth of in-house usability testing to evangelize the testing experience and the importance of being conscious advocates for good design.  We've asked folks from other Blackbaud teams to take The Raiser's Edge 8 for a spin.  If there are snags to be fixed in the design, we'd rather find them here first!

In addition to this, some of us use World Usability Day as another fine opportunity to attend a happy hour.  Or maybe that's just me...