Every time I find a bug in our development version of Backboard a little parade goes on in my head.  Or I’m at the circus and I’ve just knocked over an impossible milk bottle pyramid.  I’ve found a flaw that one of our users won’t have to.  It feels great.

As the Business Analyst intern here at Increo, it’s been a wild ride.  I’ve marketed and promoted, I’ve made a screencast video for the Backboard homepage, I’ve represented the company at a marketing forum, and I’ve written about Backboard in blurbs and pieces like this.  That’s all been a blast—but most new and maybe most rewarding has been helping develop Backboard through bug testing.  I’ve joined my co-workers in the eternal struggle to root out errors by hitting the different browsers (cough…IE) with all I’ve got.  And like a fine wine, my appreciation for the process has matured as I’ve realized just how much of a team we really are.  None of us are done until everyone has completed their assigned tasks—and tasks are passed around because of the varying experience and expertise of our team.  All the while I sit, wide-eyed, and hope to feed the Backboard team more and more bugs to seek and destroy.

Beyond finding bugs, I get to partake in our discussions about what we want for the site and for our users.  And it’s cool to think that my suggestions and opinions might touch the lives of people around the world.  Before I start dreaming big though, I should get back to the grind because we have a release to put out.  And I’ll promise this: It’ll be a great one.

As Increo is currently in a period of nose-to-the-grindstone development (preparing a new release of Backboard), I thought I’d step back and take a look at one of the articles written about Backboard just after our initial launch.

Marc Hustvedt, angel investor blogger behind seedWatcher, a blog that tracks early-stage startups reviewed Backboard back in May.

The pro’s of Backboard, are clearly its painless setup and ease of use. No mindless registration process needed, just an email address will do. […] Anyone can comment on a document if they’re given the specific URL, adding some basic level of protection for your shared pages.

As we add functionality to Backboard, we’re careful to leave the basic lightweight use case Marc mentions intact. Our hope is that you will continue to find creating a Backboard as easy as when Backboard was first introduced.

Marc continues:
The downside for Backboard is the lack of a decent feature set, like say, a markup tool, ala recently covered Twiddla or Stickis. I’d like to see more ways to give feedback beyond the basic text comments on the bottom of the page. It’s also going to need some enhanced security beyond URL obfuscation if it’s going to get wide-scale business use. […]

This is where Backboard has made tremendous strides over the past few months. I’m excited to launch markup support (easy enough for your most time-pressed client) in the coming weeks. We have also launched security for confidential documents.

Now, they could take the approach of rolling out a suite of collaborative products that integrate together seamlessly and end up with a packaged product that could compete with Huddle and BaseCamp. Or stick to the minimalist approach to tools, which could work in its own way.

Plans are certainly in the works to continue producing tools to help companies innovate.

The Backboard team has been hard at work on a new set of Backboard features based on your feedback. The new Backboard allows you to do more than the original, but we have done our best to ensure your experience is still so easy you could create Backboards and leave feedback in your sleep.

Enhanced Security
We understand that some documents are more confidential than others, and may need additional measures in place to ensure their security. Now you can specify one of three different security levels for your Backboards.

1. Open to anyone who knows the URL (Standard security) - This security level makes it quick and easy to get feedback from collaborators. We protect your Backboard by locating it at a difficult to guess URL–so difficult that today’s computers would require thousands of years to break in.
2. Requires a secret Access Key - We protect your Backboard by including a secret Access Key in the invitation email. Each viewer must enter the Access Key before he or she can see your Backboard.
3. Restricted to people I invite - We protect your Backboard by requiring all viewers to log into their own confirmed, password-protected Backboard accounts, and then allow access to your Backboard only to the people you’ve authorized. This security level provides the maximum security for your Backboards and requires a nominal monthly fee.

Better Sharing Support
Sharing a Backboard shouldn’t be difficult. Check out Backboard Groups, which make it easy to share multiple Backboards with the same project team and Address Book Import to get your contacts from Outlook, Gmail, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Hotmail.

Multiple Versions
After getting feedback, it is often important to make changes to your file and request thoughts on the new version. Backboard now supports multiple versions of the same document–as many as you need to get your work just right.

Request Approval
Select this option while you’re creating your Backboard, and the contacts you share with will be asked not only to provide feedback, but also to approve your document. This allows you to make sure you have the go-ahead from your team before proceeding.

Premium Plans
While Backboard will always make its basic functionality available for free, we are making certain features (maximum security and larger file uploads) available for a low monthly fee. A premium account also grants you the license to use your Backboard for business purposes. Need your entire team to create secure Backboards or Backboards from large files? Simply choose a Team or Office account.

At Backboard, we rely heavily on feedback from users to help us shape new features and functionality.

The process is simple (and borrowed from some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs). First, we come up with a vision. At a high level, what will the product do? How will it affect our users’ lives?

Next, we build the basic infrastructure to address the vision. For Backboard, this was the no-frills initial version, launched in mid-May. While some reviewers found the product a bit too simple, others found the ease-of-use refreshing. We found that if you give users a taste of where you are going, and ask for their feedback, you can shape a product that addresses their needs spot on.

Feedback on the early versions of Backboard came rolling in, taking the form of blog posts, comments, emails and posts on our sample Backboard. We compared this feedback to our product plan and made some significant changes–prioritizing features our users asked for most. Address books and security (now launched) shot to the top of the list. Other features were nixed — they would only serve to distract from Backboard’s core functionality.

We have been working hard for the last couple of months to introduce these new features. Please continue to give us feedback!

As a feedback company, what is more natural than seeking feedback at every stage of development?

7. More whiteboards than blank walls.

6. “Viral” has a positive connotation.

5. The more monitors on a desk, the better.

4. it’s 6am or midnight and someone is in the office.

3. The old office: a garage.

2. At least one half-finished degree courtesy of the token dropout.

1. Six people passionately committed to bringing an innovative product to the world.

First of all, congratulations to the new Increo graduates! Ray, Rebecca, Kimber and Jeff received their degrees in computer science this past weekend.

Increo has been busy moving into our new office. We’re now located in Bayside Business Plaza and are very pleased with the new space.

In the midst of all these changes, we have been working on enhanced features for Backboard, including the ability to import contacts from your address book and save groups of contacts–making sharing a backboard quicker and easier.

Since our launch just over a week ago, we have received a lot of great feedback on Backboard, with most people excited by the idea, but left wanting more. More security, more file support, more tightly integrated comments, and more moderation options for Backboards.

We agree, and are working to deliver on these requests over the coming months.

Today, I’m excited to announce the first round of feature improvements to Backboard.

More file support - Along with JPG, GIF, and PNG, we have added support for three popular image file formats: BMP, TIFF, and most importantly, Photoshop files (PSD). Many graphics designers have requested the ability to directly upload their source files, instead of having to Save them For Web, first. This is now supported!

More moderation support - Addressing what was by far our most common request, it is now possible to delete Backboards that you have created and no longer need. Click on My Backboards and then click the X next to the Backboard you want to delete. 

This release also brings many small changes and bug fixes to all parts of the site, so your Backboard experience should be much smoother.

What else do you think we should add or change? Let us know by posting a comment below, or getting in touch!

I’ll change directions today and write about a technique Increo has found extremely useful when making decisions between a large number of choices with a large group of people with varied (and sometimes strong) opinions.

Increo has used this technique extensively for names (Increo Solutions, Backboard, Increo Suite) and even to narrow down interview candidates from a large pool of applicants.

1. Make a long list of all the possibilities. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm.
2. Remove anything that everyone agrees does not make sense.
3. For each possibility, have everyone vote whether they like it or not. Each person has unlimited votes, and voting decisions should be based on first impressions.
4. Go through the entire list, then remove half the possibilities–those with the fewest votes.
5. Repeat until only one option is left.

Essentially this results in the result that is okay with everyone–usually not a favorite of anyone on the team, but something everyone can live with. And, even better, from my experience, the results tend to grow on you. I look back at the other potential names for Increo, and I’m awfully glad we discarded them.

Thanks to Sarah Arora for first suggesting this technique.

The second-largest source of Backboard traffic is the Japanese blog 100shiki. We’ve also been written about in Chinese at Darksdream and at Bitelia in Spanish.

One of the more interesting parts of running a software company today is that you never know where your software will make a splash. Telephony service Jaxtr has a huge user base in India. Google’s Orkut dominated the Brazillian social networking scene after a few of Brazil’s VIPs joined. It seems like the instantly global phenomenon starts as instantly multi-regional, then fills in the gaps. Our key takeaway: founding teams must be flexible enough to adapt to the regions where users begin adopting their software.

Increo places a high priority in making our software available for use wherever you are. While we are not quite yet ready to translate Backboard, keep watch for multiple language availability and support in the near future.

Since the public Backboard launch, we’ve heard from many users with kudos, feature requests, and even the occasional bug (now fixed). I thought I’d share some of the more interesting uses we’ve stumbled upon:

Education - In Larry Ferlazzo’s education blog, he posts about utilizing Backboard for a simple assignment for ESL learners. They could find a picture, write about it, and others could give their feedback. For more, take a look at Larry’s Blog.

Flight Simulators - Participants at Flight Simulation Forums are using Backboard to get feedback on screenshots from their best flights.

Designophiles - Here at Increo, we’re passionate about good design and user experience. We were quite honored to find Backboard at CSS 2.0, a site that features well-designed websites as inspiration for the web design community.

Web Designers - We built Backboard to be very useful for designers seeking feedback from teams and clients. I’m happy to report that several Backboard users have posted links to Backboards requesting feedback on their own web designs.

Note: We discovered these uses posted on your blogs and forums. Tell us how you’re using Backboard.