[Cameron]

Originally Posted by Brian

If I may offer a suggestion about interface feedback - by itself, "I don't like it" doesn't give us much to go on.

Good point, but Im no designer. I know it when I see it :)

I'll post some thoughts that jump out for discussion here as well.

-The Folder list when the video starts looks confusing. Maybe move them closer together?
-The icons at the top look like they are different sizes and are not positioned correctly.
-"Inbox 0" seems kinda bland. Add slick looking icon here?
-I look at this next to Things for iPad and there's no comparison.

I say these mean things with the utmost respect. :cool:

[mhedstrom]

Originally Posted by Cameron

Good point, but Im no designer. I know it when I see it :)

Same here, but I'll try to verbalize my "it looks blocky" statement.

I guess it's like Cameron said, where as Mac users we crave good looking UIs. The entire projects list on the right side looks like something that I, with no design experience, would do because I don't know any better. The left sidebar looks awesome, and I really like that, but the projects list just looks...boring. I'm not sure what I expect because I'm definitely in the same "know it when I see it" area, but I just expected something better looking.

[CatOne]

It does look like someone took a cardboard physical mock-up and just moved it wholesale over to the iPad.

I wish I could offer something constructive, but design skills are not my strength. I can only say when I don't like something as-is, and that's the case here, with the (very) short preview.

[Brian]

Someone here just pointed out that I hadn't made it clear that what's in the video is the current state of the iPad app, not necessarily the finished state of the app.

I am not promising that every change folks ask for will be incorporated into the application, of course. Just making clear that sending your feedback is not a waste of time. :-)

[atreinke]

I'm in agreement with a previous poster, it looks to "blocky" for me (if that's a word...) I like the UI that is on my Mac, a single line to denote an action and a grey bar to identify the project. That way there can be many projects and actions listed on a page instead of a half dozen or so blocks to identify both projects and actions. I would prefer the iPad version to look more like the Mac version instead of the iPhone version. There should be enough space on the iPad display to offer a single line for each action, color coded the way they are on the Mac, but I don't know if the OS could handle whatever code would be needed.

The only downside to my suggestion is the touch screen interface. Putting actions in small lines may make it difficult for those of us (myself included) with large fingers. Even so, if you were to make each line the size of what is on the iPhone version now there would be room for many, many projects/actions on the iPad with plenty of space between. I just don't care for the "block" look, looks too much like Things.

[wlow]

Let's be blunt. It is ugly. It is off-putting in its ugliness. It's disappointing when you should be wowing customers. Both Things and that other ToDo app that is selling well are beautiful to look at, but this strikes me as a quick port of the iphone app and I wonder why on Earth it took so long. There certainly is no reimagination of GTD on the iPad.

Someone once said of a well designed bridge that it must have both function *and* form, i.e., it must support weight, of course, but that it must also be beautiful if only so people form an emotional bond to it and want to maintain it. There is no question that you guys do function very well but you don't seem to respect form as much as the other guys. Customers intuit quality from good form design and the visual cluckiness of your iPad app as represented in the video does not project quality. There are going to be customers buying based on screenshots who will choose the other apps because of the attention to form detail both in layout and at the pixel level, which is lacking here. Watch how much Steve Jobs points out all the little visual design details when he introduced OS X for the first time (it's on YouTube); he told his team he wanted the user to want to lick the screen - is your current design that emotionally engaging? No, it's pedestrian - it looks like a Windows XP app, like Windows Explorer. You haven't even reworked the icons.

As for reimaging GTD say for example some projects are more important to me than others. Is there a visual cue for this so I will zero in on these projects? Maybe these icons could be larger than less important projects. Maybe if there is a lot of actions, the project icon can take on a stack appearance like the iPhoto stack icons in iPad vary depending how many pictures are inside. I've always wanted a better visual cue for an action that I've allotted a lot of time to as oppose to a little time - even with the hr, min designations, it doesn't convey visually the way say fonts metacommunicate more than the written word can. Wow in a wow-like font says wow better than wow in helvetica. Finding ways to visually metacommunicate an idea like "important project" or "day consuming action" aids your user in ways that yet another line in an outline do not.

I understand that Omnifocus came out of the outliner app, but I think that metaphor is hampering real, constuctive reimagining. Are you in the outlining business or the GTD business?

[Nicolas_Thomsen]

I agree with most people here, it really doesn´t look good, and it certainly doesn´t feel like much love or care was put into the UI.

If we start with the left region:
When you have this HUUUGE box showing the number of stuff in the inbox, why is the text "Inbox" put so close to the top of the edge? you have plenty of space and it seems really weird that you didn´t put it a bit lower so that it would have 5-7 px of space above it.
Why is it necessary to show day and date here? It looks like an extra element, that just adds to the clunky look.
The labels for the sections here really ought to be in bold here and possibly 1 or 2 px bigger, they look too weak here as they are.
The giant "add" button and the inbox field is sooo huge and really looks like the designer here had a lot of space to fill out.

Top bar:
Why you decided to separate the black top bar I really don´t understand, it´s a very strange design decision.
The buttons are in different sizes, just compare the "move to" button and the "plus" button. It is so basic to at least make sure that they should be the same size.
You ought to move the search field 1 px down so that it´s in the center.

Now the main section:
You waste so much space here with those boxes.
On top of that it makes it look very "blocky"
I really don´t get your arrows, the one pointing downwards probably shows that it´s open, but what does the one pointing upwards mean? That it´s closed? In the case it should be pointing to the right.
Why are those icons placed so close to the left edge? Why is the font used here so huge?
Why not use the space to show people how many items there are within each folder or project?
As far as I can see, you have added a note to the task "Lay out sidebar items" and then you actually try to show the first words there. that looks completly odd as it really clutters up the way it looks, why not add a note icon to the actions that have notes attached?
I would suggest to make the action title bold and a bit smaller.
---------------------

Those are the things I can say about the 4 sec. preview.

I must say I´m very dissappointed with the way you decided to do the iPad app. This was an opportunity to do an app that is as beautiful as it is functional, but truth to be told it looks like something designed by an engineer on a lunch break.
It is clear that no one has paid any attention to details here, and this layout simply isn´t good enough for a stellar product like OmniFocus.
It lacks elegance, balance, polish and an understanding of how to utilize the iPad screen in the best way.

[jasong]

It's so hard to give constructive criticism based on a four-second video. I feel like this is the Zapruder film, with the frame-by-frame dissections!

Here's mine:

* First reaction: that doesn't look right. It looks nothing like either the mac or the iphone version.

* Everything looks big, oversized, with a lot of wasted space.

* The disclosure triangles are all wrong. Disclosure triangles don't point up.

* The indentations will be quite troublesome with long project names and multiple indentations.

* It's unclear how notes will be handled. The one thing that appears to be a note is short, and no obvious way for seeing longer ones.

* It's unclear if I can tap a context to switch to it, or if I have to switch to Context mode and then find the item again.

* I like the idea of animating open the project, but that first jump to the left is disconcerting. It should animate out smoothly.


Overall, I'm disappointed by the 4-second preview. At this moment, I feel a blown-up iPhone version would continue to be a better solution, though not long-term.

Based on the preview, it doesn't feel like the interface has been rethought for use on an iPad. Instead it feels like it's been "skinned" to be "flashier".

At a basic level, I think you could have taken the Mac interface and made it work better on iPad.

Here's how I'd like to see it work:

- when in horizontal mode, the various "modes" (project, context, etc. maybe select perspectives too) would be on the left pane (as now).

- If I tapped (say) "Projects", that left pane would slide left, and the left sidebar would be the list of projects and folders. (Tapping a folder would progressively slide left to expose items)

- When I tap on a project name, the right pane would contain the list of actions for that project.

- The toolbars would contain the same items (or many of them) that the Mac version does (filtering, sorting, etc.)

- If I tap an action, an editing window would slide up from the bottom, allowing me to edit the contents, and see any notes attached (you can indicate a note is attached with a small icon somewhere; tapping that can also bring up a notes-only window).

etc.

I could probably spend hours writing something up, but you get my drift, I hope.

Summarizing:

* 4-second clip: underwhelming
* There's work that can be done to make this more iPad-friendly

I'm looking forward to the next iteration, whenever and whatever that might be.

[martinfbcampbell]

I too shared a "ouch" moment on the new UI, but here's what's positive, and what I would dearly want to be there...

The links to key views on the left look OK.
The facility to expand and contract folders and navigate through looks great.
The listing of actions is clear and nicely uncluttered.

And moving forward?

The controls on the left could be taken right down in size, and maybe placed across the top like in the desktop app - we don't need them often compared with the other features.

The nested folders could then sit on the left like in the desktop app.

The tasks could then be presented more like in the desktop app too.

I guess the theme is emerging here, and having connected up the iPad as an additional monitor to my mac and dragged the desktop app over to it, I've got to say that the desktop interface works just fine on the iPad's screen resolution. The overall scaling will have to come up a bit to accommodate my fat fingers, but that's all it needs.

I guess the overwhelming feeling is that the UI on the desktop app is right. The iPhone has a great subset of that UI. We don't need another one!

And what's all this about $20? You can certainly set your sights higher than that for the value that this thing will deliver!

[iannarino]

Simply port the existing iPhone interface to the iPad. There is nothing wrong with OmniFocus for the iPhone except the distortion that occurs when you hit the 2x button on the iPad.

One (anxious) man's opinion.