Suggestion - guys please stop changing the Major parts of the program.

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bobcomer9465
  • updated
  • Under review

I understand that you have to make minor tweaks here and there , but it seems in the past 3 months you have made 2 major program changes with boards and roles. 

As soon as I get the system working one way you change it - then I have to adopt another way of using the program and you change it again. What happens if you have a few complaints with the way it is now, do you plan on changing it again?

If you keep making changes and we have to keep adjusting how we use the program, I am sure you will lose your customer base. Maybe you feel you are improving the program, but choose a style and keep it that way....PLEASE

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Aymeric Founder
  • Under review

Hi Bob,

What is the second major change we did? Related to boards and roles, we simply unified the navigation under one Boards menu I believe?

We are looking at improving the user experience and it requires us to make changes to the user interface. 


I am sorry that you are finding it frustrating, and I totally understand. The product is still in its infancy in terms of traction, so we need to find ways to make the user experience smoother so that more people adopt the app.

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bobcomer9465

Aymeric, 


I appreciate you responding, but as users you get used to using the program one way. Then, when you change the process we have to adapt. I was really frustrated when you made the big change (I think it was Oct or Nov last year) so I had to totally change how I was using the program.

Then when I came in this week the Roles have become BACKLOG BY ROLES removed and placed under boards - it changes how you use or drag and drop the tasks onto the schedule (and I wasn't using that as a backlog).


Users are using the program because it works for them.

How many new customers did you GAIN because you moved Roles under Boards in the menu? How many might you lose if you keep making changes?

I appreciate you wanting to have the best program out there, but please, choose a layout and stick with it. If you want to add things, great, just stop redesigning the layout.

Just my 2 cents.

Bob

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lncalabre

I agree with this. I was really disappointed to see that I can no longer have Roles and a list of the tasks I have assigned to each day visible on the same screen. The reasons I liked this program was that I could so easily drag things from roles to the days just above them, and actually see what I was doing instead of having these tasks disappear like they do with the 'timeline' thing that is now there when you go to Backlog By Roles. Since I can't have everything laid out for me in one simple place anymore, I'm now searching for another program which will allow me to do so, which is a shame.

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raland

3 Month ago we already had a discussion regarding the role tab.

At that time I wrote:

"Two more aspects regarding the role funktionality:

- when you add a HIT-item with reference to a role in the Plan-Of-The-Week section it should be visible under the correspondent role-tab. The role section has the name "tasks by role", so it should work.

- it is not possible to bring back a scheduled task with role-assignment in the role area by "unscheduling", which is not logical. To keep scheduled task in the role-tab as in my previous post described would automatically heal this inconsequent behaviour."

and some other users had the same point of view.

Backlog by roles can be helpful but I also would appreciate to have the role tab again, to see all the items (planned AND unplanned) regarding a role.

Thank you very much for considering this point of view.

Ralph

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Aymeric Founder
Quote from raland

3 Month ago we already had a discussion regarding the role tab.

At that time I wrote:

"Two more aspects regarding the role funktionality:

- when you add a HIT-item with reference to a role in the Plan-Of-The-Week section it should be visible under the correspondent role-tab. The role section has the name "tasks by role", so it should work.

- it is not possible to bring back a scheduled task with role-assignment in the role area by "unscheduling", which is not logical. To keep scheduled task in the role-tab as in my previous post described would automatically heal this inconsequent behaviour."

and some other users had the same point of view.

Backlog by roles can be helpful but I also would appreciate to have the role tab again, to see all the items (planned AND unplanned) regarding a role.

Thank you very much for considering this point of view.

Ralph

We are planning to show scheduled tasks in the backlog. 

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k8millerbains

I totally agree with the original comment Bob made. I was using Week Plan pretty faithfully until about 6 months ago, as I found I would often log on to see that things had been moved around in such a way that I had to spend a non-trivial amount of time figuring out how to do things/locate features. I decided to give it another go today, and found that yet again, things look very different and accessing or editing different things is often not intuitive. I truly love the ideas behind the app and the features it incorporates, especially the pomodoro timer, but I keep going back and forth about whether or not I'll keep using it due the inconsistencies that pop up on a fairly regular basis. 

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bobcomer9465

Hi Aymeric,

Those of us that commented here were the ones that went out of our way to make a comment because we were frustrated with changes that had been made. There are obviously many more that didn't go to the trouble of searching and typing a comment or that were not as frustrated (and maybe many more that were happy with the changes you made). 


I think part of the issue is that we all interpret how the program should be used slightly differently and we use it in accordance with how we NEED to use it. When you view the program being used as you envision it being used and you move a minor item, it can be a major process change for others. 


I don't know a way around this for you unless you make sure we all know exactly how to use the program as you envision it is used and no other way, then any changes you make will have a very small effect on all of us. This would involve more specific "how to use the program" tutorials and remove any old pages of instruction that refer to the old way.

I hope this helps a little.

Bob

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daniel_vout@siemon com
Quote from lncalabre

I agree with this. I was really disappointed to see that I can no longer have Roles and a list of the tasks I have assigned to each day visible on the same screen. The reasons I liked this program was that I could so easily drag things from roles to the days just above them, and actually see what I was doing instead of having these tasks disappear like they do with the 'timeline' thing that is now there when you go to Backlog By Roles. Since I can't have everything laid out for me in one simple place anymore, I'm now searching for another program which will allow me to do so, which is a shame.

Hi - I've got the same problem. I put all my tasks into Roles and would then drag and drop into the days of the week / month. Can I not do this anymore? 

Its gone from being such a simple interface to giving me no benefit at all. Can I get a refund on my subscription please? 

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Aymeric Founder

Hi everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to give your feedback. Know that I do take it in account, positive or negative feedback is always welcome.

When I started Week Plan, I made a particular design choice, the choice that Week Plan is going to be opinionated about how to manage your time and tasks. Many apps out there try to be as flexible as possible, Week Plan sits on the other side of the spectrum of flexibility.

We want the software to guide our users towards a specific methodology.

Right now, the main complaint about the tool is that it is not user friendly, people don't know how to use it properly. 

And so, if we want Week Plan to be better, we need to make Week Plan more user friendly, make it better at guiding our users.

Like Bob said in this thread, we need to be better at explaining how Week Plan should be used.

I have hired a dedicated User Experience designer this week. User Experience is our focus for a little while, and it means the user interface is likely to change, but hopefully for the better. 

I am thinking of recording a few videos to explain the methodology, but you can also find it in the Help sidebar we introduced last week.

I am sorry you are getting frustrated with the changes, and I totally understand the feeling. But I need to go through these short term pains to unblock Week Plan's potential on the longer term.

We are making more efforts in educating the users about the new changes, since the backlash from the big layout change a few months ago, but we still have progress to make in this space, which I am hoping the UX designer will help introduce.

Sorry for the long winded answer. Short response is: I am grateful for your feedback, I am sorry about your frustrations, we will continue with changes until we nail the experience, we will introduce the changes better in the future to reduce frustrations.

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0
bobcomer9465
Quote from Aymeric

Hi everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to give your feedback. Know that I do take it in account, positive or negative feedback is always welcome.

When I started Week Plan, I made a particular design choice, the choice that Week Plan is going to be opinionated about how to manage your time and tasks. Many apps out there try to be as flexible as possible, Week Plan sits on the other side of the spectrum of flexibility.

We want the software to guide our users towards a specific methodology.

Right now, the main complaint about the tool is that it is not user friendly, people don't know how to use it properly. 

And so, if we want Week Plan to be better, we need to make Week Plan more user friendly, make it better at guiding our users.

Like Bob said in this thread, we need to be better at explaining how Week Plan should be used.

I have hired a dedicated User Experience designer this week. User Experience is our focus for a little while, and it means the user interface is likely to change, but hopefully for the better. 

I am thinking of recording a few videos to explain the methodology, but you can also find it in the Help sidebar we introduced last week.

I am sorry you are getting frustrated with the changes, and I totally understand the feeling. But I need to go through these short term pains to unblock Week Plan's potential on the longer term.

We are making more efforts in educating the users about the new changes, since the backlash from the big layout change a few months ago, but we still have progress to make in this space, which I am hoping the UX designer will help introduce.

Sorry for the long winded answer. Short response is: I am grateful for your feedback, I am sorry about your frustrations, we will continue with changes until we nail the experience, we will introduce the changes better in the future to reduce frustrations.

Aymeric, I think that is great. If you give us a more clearly defined way we should all use the program, we will all be on the same page.

I might suggest that quite a few of the older supporting documents online about how to use the program will need changing, but from the sounds of it, you are going to be on top of that too.

It is nice to see that you have responded so constructively

This certainly encourages me to stick with week plan and see what the future holds.

Kudos to you.


Bob


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