REWORK Making things that multiply
26 snips
Jan 14, 2026 
Join Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals and Basecamp, and David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, as they explore the art of product design. They discuss how strong ideas can transcend products, allowing for creative evolution. Jason shares stories about simplifying UIs and the migration of features like Hey's stacks. David emphasizes the value of fresh codebases in driving innovation and how nostalgia can cloud judgment. Together, they celebrate playful design elements and the importance of letting time reveal the best ideas.
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Multiple Products As Idea Labs
- Building multiple products surfaces new patterns you wouldn't find working on one product alone.
- Jason Fried says successful ideas can then be threaded through other products when they make sense.
HEY’s Stacks Migrated To Other Apps
- HEY introduced two stacks — Reply Later and Set Aside — that physically pile and fan open as cards.
- That stack pattern later appeared in Fizzy and is being explored for Basecamp 5 as a portable UI idea.
Green Fields Fuel Technical Progress
- New products give developers a 'green field' to try fresh architectures and features without legacy constraints.
- David Heinemeier Hansson says those experiments feed improvements back into Basecamp and Rails.
