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

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  • 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

App:
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bobcomer9465
Quote from bobcomer9465

Aymeric,

That is Totally different to how I was using the program. In all honesty I had never even seen the inbox and I think it will be very useful to use.

I have realigned everything to using the program in this method - I also like the fact that it is giving me a way to track OKR's within the program.

Thanks once again.

Bob

Ok Using the program as you suggest, I am taking items from the inbox and dropping in the backlog by roles (thus giving me a long list of items that need to be done in some form of group list). What is the purpose of Boards if the items go from backlog by roles straight to Plan of the week or to the schedule? It used to be the boards were used like a parking lot for each role - now it seems the boards are redundant. How are you personally using the boards or how do you intend them to be used?

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bobcomer9465

Aymeric,

That is Totally different to how I was using the program. In all honesty I had never even seen the inbox and I think it will be very useful to use.

I have realigned everything to using the program in this method - I also like the fact that it is giving me a way to track OKR's within the program.

Thanks once again.

Bob

Avatar
Aymeric Founder
Quote from bobcomer9465

Hi Aymeric,

As per the earlier conversation I understand you have someone new working on the details of how the program should be used. Do you have any updated information or can you point me to the location that has the most updated, relevant information?

I am trying to realign how I am using the program to be compatible with your intentions - just so when changes are made in the future they do not totally screw up how I use the program.

I just went into the "in-app tutorial" and I am not sure if this is current now or not.

For instance when I watch the high impact tasks - you refer to roles - but I am not sure if I am meant to be dragging items from roles into the high impact tasks area.

Also, now I am not sure whether Boards, Roles or objectives are where I should be keeping the to-do list for each area.

Finally, in the Help, Understanding the methodology, you are referring to the inbox, is this new or old information.

My assumption is that I should have around 7 boards which I keep general to-do lists, then for each board I drag and drop the items I need to get to each week into backlog by roles. Then from there I drop them onto the calendar as I feel I can schedule them for that week. If that is the case, at what point are they placed onto the high Impact tasks?

......or is this totally incorrect.

Thanks

Bob

  1. The help sidebar is the most up to date information.

2.The normal flow of task would be: Inbox > Backlog > Plan of the Week > Schedule

So when you pick a task from a board that you want to do this week, you can either drag it to Plan of the Week, or move it directly into Schedule if you have a specific date in mind.

3. Inbox is a quick place where to jot down tasks or ideas, but without having to think too much about location / importance / urgency.

4. I will review the in-app tutorial

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Ana Loraine
Quote from bobcomer9465

Hi Aymeric,

As per the earlier conversation I understand you have someone new working on the details of how the program should be used. Do you have any updated information or can you point me to the location that has the most updated, relevant information?

I am trying to realign how I am using the program to be compatible with your intentions - just so when changes are made in the future they do not totally screw up how I use the program.

I just went into the "in-app tutorial" and I am not sure if this is current now or not.

For instance when I watch the high impact tasks - you refer to roles - but I am not sure if I am meant to be dragging items from roles into the high impact tasks area.

Also, now I am not sure whether Boards, Roles or objectives are where I should be keeping the to-do list for each area.

Finally, in the Help, Understanding the methodology, you are referring to the inbox, is this new or old information.

My assumption is that I should have around 7 boards which I keep general to-do lists, then for each board I drag and drop the items I need to get to each week into backlog by roles. Then from there I drop them onto the calendar as I feel I can schedule them for that week. If that is the case, at what point are they placed onto the high Impact tasks?

......or is this totally incorrect.

Thanks

Bob

Hi, Bob!

Thank you for reaching out. 

Aymeric is away from his desk at the moment. We have forwarded your message to him for review. 

We appreciate your kind patience to wait for his response.

Thank you. 

Avatar
bobcomer9465

Hi Aymeric,

As per the earlier conversation I understand you have someone new working on the details of how the program should be used. Do you have any updated information or can you point me to the location that has the most updated, relevant information?

I am trying to realign how I am using the program to be compatible with your intentions - just so when changes are made in the future they do not totally screw up how I use the program.

I just went into the "in-app tutorial" and I am not sure if this is current now or not.

For instance when I watch the high impact tasks - you refer to roles - but I am not sure if I am meant to be dragging items from roles into the high impact tasks area.

Also, now I am not sure whether Boards, Roles or objectives are where I should be keeping the to-do list for each area.

Finally, in the Help, Understanding the methodology, you are referring to the inbox, is this new or old information.

My assumption is that I should have around 7 boards which I keep general to-do lists, then for each board I drag and drop the items I need to get to each week into backlog by roles. Then from there I drop them onto the calendar as I feel I can schedule them for that week. If that is the case, at what point are they placed onto the high Impact tasks?

......or is this totally incorrect.

Thanks

Bob

Avatar
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

Avatar
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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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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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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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.