Catering To Any Sort Of Pro, Before We Know Anything About Them

How the first screen we present balances the different priorities people bring to our software

We have an internal list of eight distinguishing circumstances of on-location teamwork to prioritize in There.App. The contents would not surprise readers of this blog. Actually I stare at the list often to consider what to emphasize in posts. For example, the list includes “Maintain some personal boundary while roaming” which inspires the Protecting Privacy post, and several other posts like It Can Feel High Wire relate to "Pressure of deadline-driven, on-location objectives", another one of the prioritized considerations.

Beyond the blog post writing, we consider each of these eight on-location circumstances across all of our software, feature and design efforts. There was intense consideration for the first screen new users see after they sign up for There.App, before even determining whether to join a project where they were invited. This first screen is set_profile for users to decide how to present themselves to teammates including what details to share, or hide. Scanning the eight circumstances prompts consideration of several types of individuals using There.App who may bring different mindsets to this set_profile screen.

Someone feeling the “pressure of deadline driven on-location objectives” may particularly value us serving as a single resource, organized for immersive focus within particular projects, and with fluid navigation across related features and data. This person could support best use by filling a lot of relevant information about themselves in their There.App user profile so that teammates can recognize them visually, know how to address them, understand their job title and/or role in project and/or other relevant information, have direct communications access either inside of There.App, or outside (e.g. email, phone, social media), and more. As long as it contributes to success achieving project goals, such intensive use of There.App is certainly in our favor, so we do want to support this person with a line-up of fields they can fill to reveal whatever aspects of themselves they want to share.

In the same project there may be other people who care more to “maintain some personal boundary while roaming” with no interest in such extensive sharing about themselves. Without speculating on possible reasons, some may actually intend to only collaborate during an on-site period, and then immediately disconnect and be unreachable by that team. To prioritize support of these people, the set_profile screen informs them up-top about all fields being optional, and there are a couple places to tap and proceed away from the screen, one explicitly promising direct progress from profile filling (or not) to a project invitation. But first, if they choose, these people can remove sharing of the email address they used to sign up for There.App, and can modify the name shown for them to be something like “NoneOfYourBusiness”. Consideration of these privacy-oriented people is also why most of the profile fields are presented on this screen as compact buttons instead of blank lines, to further emphasize that filling them is optional and not ultimately essential for successful There.App use.

Back to the “pressure of deadline-driven on-location objectives” circumstance, a different sort of user with that priortiy joins the privacy-prioritizing person to influence how we collapse initial presentation of most fill-able fields to small buttons on the set_profile screen. This could be a person jumping into a There.App project with urgency to immediately take some action like confirming completion of a task that’s due or connecting live with a teammate. This person will not want to be waylaid by form filling, and the compact buttons and multiple cues for proceeding through navigation reassures them they can jump directly through this initial screen they encounter without having to do anything, and get onto their more urgent priorities in There.App.

Even though it’s for a straightforward and fairly standard exercise, the There.App set_profile screen balances a few nuanced considerations about sorts of users whose interests are tricky to align, like some wanting to maximize sharing about themselves and others with opposite inclination. We prioritize finding ways for these multiple sorts of users to each have software experiences that underscore There.App accommodation of whatever on-location teamwork circumstances drive their top priorities.