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