Ask HN: Feedback on Thymer - a GTD/project management app for teams
It has been a while since I last talked about Thymer (www.thymer.com). Based on the feedback we got from our first users we went back to stealth mode and we've given the interface a major overhaul. It's become a one-page-design where all your time-tracking, planning and scheduling happens on a single page. We've noticed that almost all existing time-tracking software either has a terrible interface or doesn't even match the features of pen-and-paper time-trackers. We think our interface turned out pretty well, and it might suit your taste too.
We just entered private beta, so, if you have a few minutes, try it out (key for HN users: NOPROCRAST). Needless to say, we want to know what you think. Don't hold back :)
www.thymer.com
(
49 comments
| 36 points
| on HN
)
Feature requests:
1.) When I add a task, sometimes I'd like to add a really detailed description (or any description for that matter) (i.e. a project spec) and I'd like the ability to do that. The ability to bold, italicize, change font size and format, etc, would be helpful in descriptions.
2.) Attachments. I want to be able to attach files to my tasks.
3.) Keep the above features out of the way. Most of the time I won't need them, but when I do, I really need them.
EDIT: 4.) Just realized that the projects aren't hierarchical. I expected them to be, and it doesn't allow me to be super organized for more complex projects/tasks. An example of this might be Work>Websites>ClientA and another might be Life>Exercise or Life>Clean-Up.
If I think of more, I'll let you know. Nice job so far.
1 - we use the comments ("discuss") section for this as it also allows for all this formatting, but it might be nice to bring this to descriptions as well
2 - Yep, we also need those. Attaching files is part of a bigger problem - managing, indexing, finding and sharing digital documents. Uploading and finding back attachments can be really frustrating. We're thinking about solving that problem in a more fundamental way, while keeping it really simple to use.
3 - We want to keep the design 'clean'. the interface should not interfere or distract. we also want to continue on this line when adding new features.
4 - Someone else also commented on this, going to look into that.
Right now our priority is fixing all the glitches but we're definitely going to look into this. Thanks.
It's pretty hard to get reliable worldwide sms delivery, but -- sms for the USA and Europe we can do, I think.
Maybe you could make it free for people unless they want the advanced features. The features could be sms/email notifications, more projects than x at a time, or whatever you might deem worth charging for. You will need to tweak the business model but so far the site looks clean and usable. Good job.
A lot of times you can get away with a decent smart phone interface and just put a few meta tags in the head tag for the iPhone so that it looks slick for the iPhone too.
Also on front page, your tag line ("For individuals ...") is too close to the word "planning" with a big gap underneath it. The tagline could be very much bigger and make better use of the available space.
Your signup page is a bit of an eyeful. I like the narrative on the fields, but maybe put the elements in a table with the narrative in a column on the left (in place of regular labels) and the fields on the right. However, thanks for guessing my timezone correctly (or maybe it was a lucky default ;) and letting me change the date format up-front.
The video is too long at 5 minutes. My (admittedly short) attention span ran out at 2 minutes. In fact, the first two minutes were enough to convince me to sign up based on the look and feel, etc. Someone I know who does marketing told me "give them just enough information to choose you over your competitors. Everything else is wasted." So less is more on the video front.
However, I did sign up and I like the look of the app itself. Judging from your help page, there's a lot to know so maybe you should make those pages into a PDF so people can print cheat-sheets? Looks like each section should fit nicely on an A4/letter page.
Sounds like I'm being critical but it looks like a great app and I wish you luck with it. I'll try to use it some more and post again.
We're Dutch, so the timezone wasn't a lucky default ;) (i'll let you think about what time it is here in GMT+1 land :p), but I think in the end small things like the timezone-guessing help a lot.
Thank you for your other suggestions, and I'm glad you like it.
-- The name did make me think there'd be live timing function. Unless the thing with the broken, blinking 00h00 is it.
-- Project naming is broken. You allow projects to be named with more than one word, but things break if you do that: you can't use @Project Name, and todos added to a multi-word–named project are saved incorrectly and only get tagged with the first word of the project, so they aren't added to the project at all.
-- The projects should not be listed with arrows between: they imply a hierarchy where there isn't one. Also the general design breaks with more than two realistically named projects: http://imgur.com/Q49W.jpg
Seriously, everyone should work with real examples. It takes time and mental effort to enter realistic data, but how else will you know how well your product works? And you'll be able to take much nicer looking screenshots that actually show what your product can handle rather than only hint at it and make me figure the rest out myself.
- Good point, we used the 'D'-icon to show other team members that a discussion was needed before this task could be completed, a sort of specific 'waiting for'. Conversely it would also indicate when there was no discussion needed. We could make this more clear.
- The "broken blinking 00h00 thing" :) is indeed currently the only actual timer in the app. It counts hh:mm you're currently working on something. So it does time, but we know there's room for improvement there. The name Thymer also fits with the names of other products we're working on, we'll blog about that soon.
- You're right. Sorry it should be made more clear that the name it meant as a short tag (which you can type fast to assign tasks to it), whereas the description can be used to add additional information and a longer name.
- True, it's used as a separator with some nice visual touch, but I realize it implies some relationship. I'll look into it, thanks.
Good point about the real examples. That was actually the idea but the tag/description thing is obviously very confusing. It will be fixed.
[edit:layout]
"The server at thymerdev.stunf.com is taking too long to respond."
But when I tried again, it worked. Is your web server having trouble with load? If so, do you have plans for scaling?
Edit: yes, it definitely could use some more speed. It's decent, but just a little too laggy for my liking. That said, this is the first time tracking thingy I've seriously considered actually using. I wish you the best of luck, and my reasons for doing so are largely selfish: I want Thymer to be great.
If you're serving this from a machine in the Netherlands, that could be a problem for those of us in other continents. The perception of quickness is important, so this is probably something you should sort out soon and then launch.
If it isn't we can always lease servers in the US, so even if the latency doesn't improve we'll figure something out. Thymer is instant for us, and it should be instant for everybody else. I doubt we'll get around to leasing servers in the US before we launch though -- so please bear with us.
And thanks for wishing us luck. We want Thymer to be great too -- creating passionate users and all that.
First, your interface is very nice, and mostly intuitive.
However, to me, I could never see using the application unless it integrated into my e-mail system. This is a minimum for actually using as part of my workflow. As a bonus, I usually configure my GTD systems to integrate with my calendar (ical and google cal).
A nice web app is interesting, but to me, and I expect most power users, GTD is about managing existing information (e-mail, calendars, folders, files, etc), not for creating meta-lists which indirectly and subjectively modify the information I need to deal with.
1. It's confusing to see the equivalent of two checkboxes on the left, one that is an icon and one that is an HTML checkbox. What is the difference?
2. In general, the icons could be a little more intuitive. I'm not sure what "D" means (discuss maybe? Then why is a discuss button also on the left?
3. Going to a new page to discuss / comment is kind of annoying. I'd prefer something like FriendFeed-style inline commenting.
Good luck and thanks for the invite!
1. It is a little confusing, now you mention it. The difference is that the big check box on the left marks a task a done, and the other (small) checkbox is used to select a bunch of tasks so you can do bulk actions. At this point there is only bulk-complete, but adding tags by bulk is something you want to relatively often, so that's why we can't really get rid of the second check box. On the other hand, it is weird to have two check boxes for every todo, so we'll have to think of something.
2. Correct, D is discuss. The D button can be toggled so other people can see the todo should be discussed first. Suppose I want to work on a feature, and Wim realizes that it won't work because of X, he can click the 'D' button and add a comment. When I then go to my task list I see the 'D', I check the comments and realize what's wrong. We found that a simple flag that says "hey - wait a second" is a really effective way to indicate a possible problem.
3. Very annoying. We wanted to fix it, but we couldn't justify waiting any longer with the beta.
1. Being a swede I like the date format YYYY-MM-DD
2. The controls for changing the projects (private, completed etc.) on the bottom feels unconnected to the project. Perhaps you should place them just below the project bar or to the right of it.
3. The term changelog feels like programmer talk, perhaps you should use reports or history
Most likely something you have under way but wanted to add a quick note
I love the plain text entry, reminds me of another of my favorite web apps, 30boxes.com. The calendar I use which manages my entire life :)
Thymer is by no means finished -- but we think it shows promise. If you want to invite your girlfriend to Thymer create an account and team for her via the "settings" link in the upper right corner. It's not intuitive -- I know, this will be fixed in the near future.
When I wanted to edit tasks, I tried double-clicking on them. This did nothing. You can detect double-clicking with the dblclick event, and I think that would make things a bit more intuitive.
2. Double-click for edit - yes, absolutely. It's completely obvious now you mention it.
If I type in @today twice (because it didn't move it to the "today" section), it assigns it to a user called today (I believe, at least that's the same visual language as when I assigned a task to another team member).
Is it possible to access my google calendar? My biz team member probably won't use this, but we share a google calendar. Would be nice to be able to manipulate it through your interface.
Overall, very nice. I'm very, very cheap so I'm not sure what price point I would be ok with, but it's still very impressive. Thanks for sharing!
1. We'll fix the @today @today bug. Dropping the second today is probably the right behavior.
2. No google calendar plugin yet, but we plan to do a lot with extensibility. Since I use google calendar myself it a plugin is on the todo-list.
We haven't decided on pricing yet - but there should be a plan for everybody.
1. Create a project with a space in its name "project name"
2. Add a task to that project and only the first word is tagged as @project
One complaint I hear all the time from people I have worked with is the lack of autocomplete features so this would be a big win for your usability.
This would be the "make or break " feature for me.
(I have signed up and am using the app. Great work !)
We definitely want to build an iPhone app, but it is a lot of work to make, so we're probably first going to iron out the flaws in this version and then release version 1.
Guys, if you want to do a Japanese cell phones version, give me a holler. I might be able to help.
[edit] Now it's back. Weird.
Thanks for the heads up.