Hi,
I have gathered several small points of improvement furing the last year or so, and since I do not have much time to work on communicating them properly, I decided to gather them here for you to digest when you feel you can. So I am indeed sorry if some of this has already been reported, but on the other hand it is kind really a problem report as much as a feature/improvement request.
Product Version: ThinkingRock 2.0.1
Java: 1.6.0_07; Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 10.0-b23
System: Linux version 2.6.24-21-generic running on i386; UTF-8; en_US (tr)
The biggest single feature request for also me is to make gtd work on my mobile, too: namely, I simply need to have certain context viewable when I am in a context where I can not use a computer.
Make reprocessing easier: as I am bad at GTD, I often put a bunch of tasks that would really be better in a related project, just as single tasks. Also, as I generate lots of tasks I really do not want to do, I sometimes want to send many of my tasks into inbox (Collect tasks) at once to think them through apart as a part of inbox processing afterwards. It would be great to be capable of sending many tasks to inbox for reprocessing at once. Currently the UI is infuriating since when I select one task for reprocessing, it does not only send the task to the inbox but also changes the view to "Process thoughts" so I have to return back to the Actions view to send more actions to inbox, and do this every time over and over again.
About complying to UI standards: I think it would serve you well to try to comply to the GNOME user interface guidelines, even if you would not follow them obsessively. There are some quite basic mistakes Thinkingrock makes that are quite easy to fix. Below, I refer to heuristics in Nielsen's list, which is often viewed as de facto in the industry (
www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html).
What I think is in good state from that list is Aesthetic and minimalist design.
Are the Future and Templates tabs in the projects views supposed to work? Currently, they seem useless since I cannot move tasks/projects from Future/Templates to actual projects. Currently, I have someday/maybe projects hidden under a separate someday/maybe project, and would like to have an appropriate place for those.
As an example of violating common UI heuristics, to ease navigation, do show the state of the UI: when a user clicks a button that changes application mode, do highlight that button or make it look like it is pressed down. This is not catastrophic, but helps users keep track of where they are in the application - reduces the cognitive workload of the user since they do not have to keep the state of the program they are in, in their working memory. (Visibility of system status, Recognition rather than recall).
A related problem is also in the Process Thoughts view. It would be easier for the users, I think, if it would be visually more clear that the "Is this actionable?" changes the state of the rest of the screen. (Visibility of system status , Recognition rather than recall )
I have lost many a thought in the Collect Thoughts screen, since the Add Thoughts screen has the cancel button first after the" "Notes" text input box. The sequence is as follows
* after writing thought, presses enter.
* notices/is reminded that it only gives another line in the "notes" box
* quickly presses tab and then space to save the thought, resulting in actually pressing "Cancel" losing the thought.
And there is no undo. (Error prevention, User control and freedom)
I have already requested undo capability, but I will do so again. The most basic thing you need to do is to at least enable undo within all the text fields, it feels that I am gambling with the application since I cannot even delete text without being afraid that I cannot get it back if I want to. Other things urgently requiring undo capability are deleting anything else. (Consistency and standards)
Also, the text fields that are strangely read-only unless you double click on them are simply infuriating, especially if you try to copy-and-paste several times between different applications. They really should be made into either simple text fields, or if you want to keep the rich text functionality, changed into an actual rich-text field. Basically, please just make the text fields work as they do in other applications on ANY platform. (Consistency and standards)
The importing UI requires attention. I use Finnish as the language to make tickets, and we have letters such as ä and ö which are different in ISO-8859-1 and UTF8 charsets - alas, when I import a file that is ISO-8859-1 in Linux or one that is UTF8 when in Windows, I may get 80 new tickets with characters all screwed up. (I often import text files coming from my Nokia e70 phone.) So some kind of a warning/preview for importing would be very cool. (Error prevention)
I would like a filter in the Actions view to only view single actions only since often I want to view the projects completely separately - though I am slowly learning to do this in the real GTD way, and using sequencing having only the next actions of projects active so it is okay to have those fewer amount of project actions also in the Actions view.
Seems that the project list is bigger than my screen (1024x768) on Ubuntu Linux 8.04 since I have so many projects - I cannot scroll to the bottom of the list since the box itself extends to outside the screen. (Consistency and standards)
Also related to screen size, many of the forms do not seem to accommodate to the size of my screen: this is especially troublesome with the bigger notes boxes, which I have to scroll horizontally back and forth in order to read the contents. The forms should only have vertical scrolling in *any* situation.
On the other hand, the font size is barely readable on bigger resolutions. It should definitely be adjustable to user preference.
