I just don’t like it
App:
Replies 14
Hi Ana. I can try and give you feedback from a designer's perspective.
I absolutely love the idea behind Weekplan. I think is one of the best solutions I've heard on managing time effectively and it is definitely different from the bunch of other promises of organizing your day that are really just time trackers. This is by far the best option in concept and tools. Having a prioritization matrix sounds great, I'm a fan of this system and having it integrated within my task planner is great. Also, the roles side of the app and the parking lot to free your mind from later tasks, big hits.
Now, notice how I always said "sounds good". It doesn't "look good". Weekplan's UI is cluttered and confusing. There is A LOT going on at the same time. Several options dispersed throughout the screen, super small buttons and a variety of call to actions. You don't seem to have a Visual Design Language. What you see is feature within feature within feature. Which can be great when you are the master of organization, but probably your users found you looking for something that helps them in that aspect because they are not o great at it.
Moving on. For the tasks (your core feature) There's no clear differentiation between Urgent tasks from important tasks from unimportant tasks apart from urgent ones being red stroked. But that doesn't stand out much.
- The canvas is overwhelmingly white and light grey. There's no contrast or eye catching elements, besides the hot pink "upgrade button" in the lower right corner, but right now I don't feel like pressing it. The titles of the sections are not noticeable and it took me literally 4 minutes of really straining my eyes to find the "prioritize button" (which looks more like a title) and it is grey over a slightly less dark grey.
- You are not optimizing the space at all. There are messages on screen that dis-encourage you rather than boost you up (talking about the "time" out of "time" left__________________ ) and multiple call to actions that do the same (+Add task...) light grey over white, (again, contrast) that can be grouped and located in a way more optimal way. Right now, they are just occupying space, but they all do the same. You can just have one task creator and then drag it where you want it. Done.
- Navigating through the weeks is slow and inefficient.
- Creating a new task wastes A LOT of space. You darken the whole screen to make the user focus in a tiny space with tiny buttons (that look more like information than call to actions). The navigation is rather confusing.
- Your transitions are no consistent. Sometimes you get the screen darkened, some other there are floating elements, some other there are page switching.
- There is no hierarchy in the texts, no clear color palette, and no branding integration. The interface has a "work in progress" vibe and you wouldn't be able to identify this app if you cover the small W logo on top. It is the only element that somehow connects with the brand.
- Your side menu and the settings page look outdated
I just spent 40 minutes in the app maybe and I knew I wouldn't be able to achieve the "Use WeekPlan for at least a week" pre-installed task.
And all of this I identified with just a couple of tasks created from Google calendar and three tasks created inside of the app. I wouldn't want to imagine if I had a cluttered calendar the first time I integrate it with Weekplan. It would be an instant turn off.
Keep in mind that your users are people looking for help in ordering. Prioritizing, organizing, plan and executing tasks. So Weekplan should be rather "invisible", but with this interface you are pretty much contributing to their chaos and forcing them to spend their entire attention in organizing their mess with a hard to use tool.
You have here a very good idea in functionality terms, but not so well executed in design terms. You are using advanced techniques for efficiency, which is great, don't get me wrong, but when the concept is so dense your solution has to be equally proportioned in the opposite way.
Hope this quick feedback is valuable and I look forward to seeing improvement in your design system. I love designing apps, and if your team needs some extra hands on this aspect please don't hesitate on contacting me.
I'd be happy to help
Keep it up!
Aymeric Founder
Hi Ana. I can try and give you feedback from a designer's perspective.
I absolutely love the idea behind Weekplan. I think is one of the best solutions I've heard on managing time effectively and it is definitely different from the bunch of other promises of organizing your day that are really just time trackers. This is by far the best option in concept and tools. Having a prioritization matrix sounds great, I'm a fan of this system and having it integrated within my task planner is great. Also, the roles side of the app and the parking lot to free your mind from later tasks, big hits.
Now, notice how I always said "sounds good". It doesn't "look good". Weekplan's UI is cluttered and confusing. There is A LOT going on at the same time. Several options dispersed throughout the screen, super small buttons and a variety of call to actions. You don't seem to have a Visual Design Language. What you see is feature within feature within feature. Which can be great when you are the master of organization, but probably your users found you looking for something that helps them in that aspect because they are not o great at it.
Moving on. For the tasks (your core feature) There's no clear differentiation between Urgent tasks from important tasks from unimportant tasks apart from urgent ones being red stroked. But that doesn't stand out much.
- The canvas is overwhelmingly white and light grey. There's no contrast or eye catching elements, besides the hot pink "upgrade button" in the lower right corner, but right now I don't feel like pressing it. The titles of the sections are not noticeable and it took me literally 4 minutes of really straining my eyes to find the "prioritize button" (which looks more like a title) and it is grey over a slightly less dark grey.
- You are not optimizing the space at all. There are messages on screen that dis-encourage you rather than boost you up (talking about the "time" out of "time" left__________________ ) and multiple call to actions that do the same (+Add task...) light grey over white, (again, contrast) that can be grouped and located in a way more optimal way. Right now, they are just occupying space, but they all do the same. You can just have one task creator and then drag it where you want it. Done.
- Navigating through the weeks is slow and inefficient.
- Creating a new task wastes A LOT of space. You darken the whole screen to make the user focus in a tiny space with tiny buttons (that look more like information than call to actions). The navigation is rather confusing.
- Your transitions are no consistent. Sometimes you get the screen darkened, some other there are floating elements, some other there are page switching.
- There is no hierarchy in the texts, no clear color palette, and no branding integration. The interface has a "work in progress" vibe and you wouldn't be able to identify this app if you cover the small W logo on top. It is the only element that somehow connects with the brand.
- Your side menu and the settings page look outdated
I just spent 40 minutes in the app maybe and I knew I wouldn't be able to achieve the "Use WeekPlan for at least a week" pre-installed task.
And all of this I identified with just a couple of tasks created from Google calendar and three tasks created inside of the app. I wouldn't want to imagine if I had a cluttered calendar the first time I integrate it with Weekplan. It would be an instant turn off.
Keep in mind that your users are people looking for help in ordering. Prioritizing, organizing, plan and executing tasks. So Weekplan should be rather "invisible", but with this interface you are pretty much contributing to their chaos and forcing them to spend their entire attention in organizing their mess with a hard to use tool.
You have here a very good idea in functionality terms, but not so well executed in design terms. You are using advanced techniques for efficiency, which is great, don't get me wrong, but when the concept is so dense your solution has to be equally proportioned in the opposite way.
Hope this quick feedback is valuable and I look forward to seeing improvement in your design system. I love designing apps, and if your team needs some extra hands on this aspect please don't hesitate on contacting me.
I'd be happy to help
Keep it up!
Rafael, I am the founder.
This is awesome feedback. I am the one behind this inconsistent design and I know I have failed at this job.
Can I pay you so that you can draft the UI the way you think it should be?
Aymeric Founder
Rafael, I am the founder.
This is awesome feedback. I am the one behind this inconsistent design and I know I have failed at this job.
Can I pay you so that you can draft the UI the way you think it should be?
The earlier the better so that your impressions are still fresh/
Rafael, I am the founder.
This is awesome feedback. I am the one behind this inconsistent design and I know I have failed at this job.
Can I pay you so that you can draft the UI the way you think it should be?
Hello Aymeric, nice to e-meet you.
I wouldn't say you failed, I'd say is in progress. I love your idea and it'd be my pleasure to help. We can discuss this further by email or maybe a quick call?
Please feel free to reach out to my email: contacting@rafaeltudelah.com. Do you have a Skype account or any other way of contacting?
Hello Aymeric, nice to e-meet you.
I wouldn't say you failed, I'd say is in progress. I love your idea and it'd be my pleasure to help. We can discuss this further by email or maybe a quick call?
Please feel free to reach out to my email: contacting@rafaeltudelah.com. Do you have a Skype account or any other way of contacting?
Hope this collab goes through. Would love to see UI improvements on an app with such a wonderful philosophy and idea.
That is some really good feedback here. I have to agree to all of the above. Hope is definitely not lost and the whole thing is far from terrible. I see how some choices in progressive disclosure of functionality came about and even tried to make the interface less overwhelming. It is just not there yet. I would love to see the issues mentioned fixed and I can see myself using this on a regular basis.
Before the excitment level about a new web UI reaches the heaven here a additional requirement.
I use 98 % of the time the iphone App.
Mobile Apps are in 2017 as important as web frontends.
Please don‘t forget the necessary basic improvements there. As example:
- Once a subtask is created in the app you can‘t edit and correct it. Once written, no change. You have to delete and create a new one.
Hi Aymeric - As a trial user, I find this layout and really the whole process confusing. Just like the post from 4 years ago, I'm seeing the great potential here, but the actual navigation is all over the place. The biggest hesitancy for me is the left sidebar navigation. The top of the sidebar begins with the "Help" link/icon. Not the first thing I want to see when I begin my descent down the progression of my day/week. Seems the "Backlog by roles" "Parking Lot" and the "Backlog by objectives" links are all similar functions. I think one link in the navigation is enough and have the selection for roles parking lot etc be selected from within that link once the page opens, otherwise, it just looks repetitive.
I don't like the "shortcuts" left navigation. If I'm looking down my punch list - for example: if I want to spend my Sunday evening reviewing my week (including my vision, mission statements, etc) I have to go past the shortcuts - then look at the "Just Me" link (which for an individual user should have an option to be removed) While I did go to setting to remove the team name (Just me) the icon is still there.
The "Vision" section looks good but shows the "Inbox" on the left which is an unnecessary distraction. Yes, you can "X" out of it, but any windows that were opened previously need to be x-ed out too. So, when I click "Inbox" Then go down one link and click "Schedule" it leaves the inbox window open and the same with Journal etc. Is there a way to just have the window for the link open and not the other windows opened previously?
It sounds like I'm nitpicking, but the left-side navigation, and the order it's in, just doesn't work for me. The "Journal" link seems out of sorts as well, just happens to be between backlogs and objectives and should appear last perhaps? I would suggest is either get rid of the shortcut options or allow the inclusion of the backlogs links, otherwise, it just looks like 2 incomplete lists of actions. Would it be possible to add a link for "Roles"?
There is a web app called Planplus online that was created to coincide with The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People much like this app. The layout is much easier to follow, but lacks in many areas and is more expensive.
Hi there!
We are sorry to hear that you don't like the app.
May we know the reason why? Your feedback will help us with improving the app.