Obviously because I am new... that means in part I have no idea what I am talking about. But partly it makes me a real expert in the NEW user experience.
The thing is I develop/managed websites for a living and I too would regard myself as 'above average' technically and I also have a strong sense of how users work. To be honest, I do feel for the MLO team. Given where they are, it will not be easy to get to where they need to get to in order to get anything close to adoption by the mainstream audience. I am being extremely persistent here because I have a fairly short time-window in which to get my entire life onto MLO... or give the heck up. I am also being persistent because there is MUCH wrong with all the competition that I have seen so far. But that won't last (see below). What do I like about MLO? Well, on the up-side, there is a plethora of hotkeys on MLO, many of which you can configure yourself is great and it is dead-easy to whiz items things up and down multi-level Project Trees and also it's also trivial to switch items between being an action and being a Projects. [These aspects are astonishingly rare in the obvious competing product that I have tried but I LOVE them in MLO!] Moreover you can have something called a "Folder" which is neither a Project nor an Action. It's a subject area. (Brilliant! But again, v rare in other apps...). On the down-side this has to be up there as being one of the hardest apps to 'learn how to drive' that I have ever, EVER come across. [And that's even after I have spent quite a lot of time reading up on GTD theory - and after I have even listened to an entire 2-day seminar by David Allen!] BUT I can't think of a single social or business friend who would put up with this level of difficulty of learning that I have experienced with MLO. Yes, some techies might well go for it... but any normal human being - Absolutely no chance! And it's no use saying "but it's very powerful and configurable". Life is short. We are aren't here for the fun of using your software... Ultimately we are only using these tools in order to *save* us time! [Aside: MLO reminds me of the PC database software dBase clone called Clipper - anyone here old enough to remember that? It was indeed incredibly powerful and configurable but the learning curve to get anything useful out of it was about 3 months. Management were NOT happy. And commercially it simply *died* as hugely powerful and highly configurable as it was.] Now, after all the work the you good people at MLO have put into this your extremely powerful tool, this is bad news indeed. If you want a 'quick win' you could regain a lot of usability points at a stroke simply by doing a couple of explainer videos. A quick short high level one for total newbies *selling* the whole concept (max 1-2 mins) and a more detailed one for the converts telling us *how to use* the system (8-12 mins). And then if you get a chance do another 5 or 10 and slap them onto YouTube. And do them in English. Having built this video the next thing you need to do is 'Primary Customer Research' - newbie *user trials *! What you need is need about 8-10 users who are not particularly technical sit them down in front of the software and WATCH. Get them to talk their thoughts out loud. Video them. Then show them the video and watch again. You will be appalled, I promise you. Honestly, you chaps have built a fantastic engine. But if you want to appeal to *Mainstream* users (rather than *Early Adopters*) then frankly you people need to stop all developments until you have done both of the above. To get clear Early Adopters have a very different psychology from Mainstream users. Early Adopters like to be the first. They are generally pretty clever. They like learning news stuff. They tolerate complexity, mistakes, errors and even bugs to a significant extent. BUT there aren't all that many of them. And if your product appears to be going nowhere and is not longer "cutting edge", then they will feel like idiots for wasting their time with you and they are off! MAINSTREAM users are different. They value their time very highly. They just want to get the job done. And fast. They do NOT want to waste any more time than necessary learning stuff. So they want everything to be easy to learn and obvious. They like simplicity. They HATE complexity. They want to get the job done and they want everything to work. Frankly as things stand, MLO is a total nightmare for Mainstream users. But don't just take my/Joel's word for it. Do some serious trials with newbie users! Try some less intelligent / 'ditsy' and/or 'arty' new users. Even try some slightly drunk or extremely tired users. You need a random spectrum of users to trail. They will run screaming I guarantee you. [Aside: Another top top - if you are short of time &/or money and want to do a 'quick and dirty'/'better than nothing' user trial, then consider using Feedback Army and asking the reviewers to so something specific. The clever thing is that you can keep rejecting their responses until you are happy with the level of work that they have done. Brilliant! But actually you at MLO also need to do proper face-to-face user trials I suspect as well] If you want further proof of what I am saying take the number of really important keyboard shortcuts that are completely missing from your official Keyboard Shortcuts page. e.g. Control/PgUp ==> to change tab Control/PgDn ==> to change tab Control/Enter ==> to parse the title of an item Control/Shift/Insert ==> to add a new folder Control/Shift/S ==> to add a star Control/M ==> to move a task ...} all missing ! (er I think...!) If you had done in depth user trials then surely this would have been picked up. One word of caution. Beware of *some* of your most loyal customers. There is no subtext to this - I am not having a go anyone whatsoever. But it's an established fact that in order to appeal to *Mainstream* customers you will almost certainly get terrible advice from some of your customers. But they are dangerous. They are far too close to your product to see it through the eyes of anyone else. And over time they can bankrupt you. Finally you need to know that much though I am trying to help MLO in what probably seems like a whirlwind of input, please know that I am not happy. And I have been keeping a list of competing software in case I find that I genuinely can not get MLO to work for me (This is still not clear either way...!) . And believe me there is a LOT of competition. My spreadsheet for this purpose has well over 100 competitors ! For completeness here they are: 2Do 5PM Achieve Planner ActionComplete Action Method ActiveInBox Ajour Apigio Asana Assembla Tickets Astrid List/Task Manager Blue Smiley Organizer Bonsai Bontq Central Desktop Clear (Realmac Software) ClearContext Conqu d-cubed DoIt.im Do It Tomorrow do-Organizer DropTask Due Today EasyTask Manager eProductivity EssentialPIM Pro EverNote (+The Secret Weapon) FacileThings Facio Tasks Feng Office Flashpoint Flow Frictionless GeeTeeDee germ.io Get Stuff Done Getitdoneapp Ghost Action Gmail Tasks GoalsOnTrack Google Tasks GTD TiddlyWiki Plus GTDAgenda GTDFree GTDNext gtd-php Harmony PIM HiTask iGTD IQTell Jello Dashboard KOI KonoLive Lifeballanced LifeTopix LiquidPlanner Lists Manager? MasterList Professional mGSD MindManager MindOnTrack MyLifeOrganized Nach Nepture Next Action, Personal Ed Nexty Nirvana Nitro Nozbe Omnifocus OneNote OnePlace Online Task List Oprius Organitask Org-Mode Outlook 2010 Papirus Pimki Plancake PocketInformant Priacta Producteev propelr Psoda Redmill Relenta Remember The Milk (RTM) RexDesktop SimpleNote SandGlaz Smart To-Do List SmartSheet Smartytask Smthngs Task Coach Task Toy TaskFreak TaskPad.jp Tasks/Tasks Pro TaskStep TaskTask (iOS only?) TaskUnifier Taskwarrior Tasque The Now Organiser Things (iOS only?) (by Cultured Code) ThinkingRock Thymer TickTick TiDy TimeGT TimeManagementNinja.com Timetpnote Tjeklist ToDo To-Do DeskList ToDo.txt ToDo Exchange ToDo Matrix Todo Pro ToDoIst ToDoList ToDoMoo Toodledo TomBoy TouchDown w Exchange Tasks TaskUnifier Tracks Tracks.tra.in Treedolist Ultimate ToDo Upvise VIP Task Manager VitalList Voo2doo What To Do WhatsNext (not ready?) Week Plan Wieldy Workflowy Wunderlist Zendone Zoho CRM Zoot OK many of they above may not be *direct* competitors, (e.g. many don't run on Windows and many are more list managers than GTD tools as such ) but I promise you that as a normal/average user, this is the number of tools we have to wade through on-line, competing with your listings. Why are there quite so many competitors? Because they all think that the existing market leaders aren't doing a good enough job! They are trying to steal your lunch and there are a LOT of them out there. Conclusion: You have SERIOUS competition and you need to raise your game. You need dramatically improved usability. Finally: Please don't think I'm saying you need to work harder. Nor write better code. What I'm saying is you need to work differently. VERY differently. J P.S. If anyone from MLO is still reading and appreciating my input please let me know. Alternatively, if I am simply wasting my breath please do let me know too! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/CAEN65Jb4Kkc3Ogq9C0ZHZXDZ1Gp02Yr7uOFR7aQAoBsBHr%3DHbA%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
