I love Basecamp but one thing that still confuses me even after months of usage are those unique, custom names for features. Instead of seeing “Chat”, I have to figure it’s “Pings” while next to “Pings” is something called “Hey”. It took me a while to get used to which one is for chat.

I’m sure you didn’t make that decision on a whim but I feel like you’ve gone too clever with it. Basecamp is a means to an end, not an end in itself, so I wonder why you didn’t stick with conventions in naming, so that I don’t have to think what’s for what. Using popular conventions is one of those Product Design 101 things when it comes to tools and I was shocked to see something so playful as changing feature names on a tool that is used for something so serious as doing business.