"People experienced with a tool deserve the respect that their intuitive desire for a new feature, like more text formatting in Notes is correct." True, not everyone is going to be good at expressing their wishes in a well stated, rational fashion, and they can still have insight on real improvements. But it is also true that experienced developers can see that a flag and a status are usually the same thing conceptually, and what differentiates them is the usage case. The art and genius of development and customer management is to be able to hear "I want Flags", understand "I want a status with a visual cue so I can get meaning in a glance" and deliver what the customer wants without turning a masterpiece of programming into a collage of features stapled together. If the customer can express their desires with some usage context, that is easier to do, and everyone wins.
I think what bothers people about the suggestions along the lines of rich text, calendar view, etc, is not that anyone questions that some people would like and use it. What bothers people - or maybe I should speak for myself - what bothers me about these suggestions is that they are at odds with what makes the tool so good. The selling features of MLO, to my way of thinking, is that it is fast, light, stable, flexible and powerful. What is currently wrong with it is feature bloat. We have flags and statuses and goals and priorities and color coding and on and on and on. Adding all these things hogde- podge, I think, has reduced the ability to add more powerful and elegant features. All of these kinds of features could be handled by custom fields and a robust skinning system for instance. Then features like this could be added quickly and easily by releasing templates - and we would not have these religious wars - and the tool could stay lightweight and simple and powerful for me, and full of multiple thinly disguised status fields and visual cues for others. The issue is really one of getting agreement and consensus on what MLO is. There are many suggestions for a web front end to cloud sync, for instance. A good feature, if MLO is a way to access a todo list over the internet, but I thought it was a way to manage a very complex and busy life in a very simple to use yet powerful way - so I see auto- syncing and rapid entry and mobile platforms as key features. A web front end can be many things, but no web front end has ever been called "flexible" or "powerful" . Is a calendar view a good idea - it is, if MLO is a dayplanner and organizer - but I see MLO as a collector and organizer of tasks, which you then complete in meetings and appointments arranged in a collaboration system like outlook or lotus notes, so I view a calendar as feature bloat unless you are going to add workgroup calendars and messenging to it as well - otherwise it will just be a way to organize appointments with yourself, which other people will just book over top of in your collaboration tool. Outlook sync, on the other hand - is a good feature that could still use some work. That is my usage model - a task collector and organizer for a complex life in a large organization. i would imagine, if I were self employed, I would have a different view. Certainly the calendar view would be a lot more compelling, for instance. So what is MLO and who is it for? Of course, here is the problem - I don't decide what MLO is or who the target market is. Andrey does, based on our input and his motivations and opinions. And once he does decide, there is nothing wrong with him saying - that is not what MLO is trying to be, and therefore I won't build that feature. To argue that "most users want X. therefore he should build it" is silly. That is how zunes get built. "Most users" are mediocre, with mediocre ideas (by definition, in fact). MLO needs to be excellent at something. I say all this without intending to be disrespectful, buy the way. I know for instance, all the status fields and goals and so on are required to make the auto-generated priority system work - and there are clearly people for whom that feature is a centrally important selling feature. It just is not for me. I am not right, and neither are they. Embrace my idea of custom fieds, and MLO can be a powerful way to hierarchically manage almost any kind of small tibits of information. Embrace their ideas, and it is a lot more limited, but it is a more powerful tasking engine. What is MLO supposed to be? That is the question. On Sep 23, 6:27 pm, Trish Putnam <[email protected]> wrote: > A couple of comments inline: > > On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Grant <[email protected]> wrote: > > Neal, > > Desktop, laptops and (separate) keyboards are not going to away, > > especially in the professional world. There are just too many tasks > > that are better and quicker (time is money and money is king) done > > with a large screen, and well designed physical keyboard and mouse. > > For that matter, pen and paper have not, and will not go away either. > > So lets accept that MLO will still have to work on all these devices. > > But the origins of this discussion where that releases of MLO for new > > platforms needs to be balanced with its continuing functional > > development. > > No disagreement from me regarding desktops, laptops, keyboard and mouse - > they aren't going away anytime soon, and they are still my principal tools > for heavier computing needs. I definitely think that the primary focus is > the desktop version of the app - that's where I do the majority of my > "housekeeping" for projects, schedules and tasks. Keyboards and mice are > peripherals that we're all expert in using and it's become engrained. > > However, that said, it is not right to class development of tablet/slate > based versions with the phone versions. Tablets, due to their screen size > primarily, are perfectly capable of doing complex work with MLO that would > be difficult to do on a phone. One of the primary markets for tablets is > for business folks, management, and others who need to move around a lot > through their work day to meetings and client sites. These people will be > away from their desks for hours at a time, and need to be able to manage > their calendar/task lists/projects on their primary portable device, which, > more and more commonly, is becoming a tablet of some sort. A tablet in > most ways is more closely aligned with a netbook than a smartphone, > regardless of the OS that's being used as a platform. > > I'd really like to see MLO more closely aligned between desktop and tablet > versions. It's logical to keep the smartphone version "dumbed down" due to > the challenges of the user interface on a small screen. > > > > > Mark, and a few others: regarding justifying a wish for a new feature > > by giving the business need it solves, it not really necessary. > > People experienced with a tool deserve the respect that their > > intuitive desire for a new feature, like more text formatting in Notes > > is correct. When more than a few ask for the same feature, its is > > pretty much confirmed that there is a need, even if not analytically > > defined - and the fact that most of the world does not work with > > simple text editors, but prefer and use the capability to improve the > > visual attractiveness, and visual navigation and accelerated > > understanding that goes with richer formatting capabilities seems to > > pretty much put any doubt to rest. > > > Grant, I see your point, but when the business justification - the problem > > being solved - is provided, then it's easier to consider options for a > feature. Say that someone asks for feature X. With the context that > feature X is requested to solve problem Y, the designer and developer can > consider other ways that problem Y could be solved or at least partially > solved if X is very complicated. Perhaps option Z would be a simplified way > to accomplish most or all of what problem Y actually needed and could make > it into the next release instead of the more complex X that would be 3 years > out on the roadmap. > > It allows the ability to think around the problem space for a solution, > rather than focusing on something that addresses a symptom, as well. > Perhaps one feature request is for HTML formatting and another is for Rich > Text formatting, for example. They're two separate requests if it's without > any context. But if both requests are intended to solve a similar problem, > it might be that only one need be implemented, or that one will at least be > a good compromise for the short term. In part, that also addresses your > next comment, as it focuses the dialog on what needs to be solved, rather > than the exact implementation. > > > > > > > > > Lastly, it always amazes me when someone says they want something like > > a simple calendar view, or more text formatting capabilities that > > there are bunch of people who take that to mean a request for a full > > featured Outlook like calendar or a Word like program (or physical > > keyboard only request) and then go on to bash the idea as silly and as > > far too technically complex for the MLO team to implement (and then > > elsewhere also say that people should not make technical decisions for > > the MLO team - which is just what they are doing). These these people > > have taken the suggestion immediately to an extreme, indeed a worse > > case scenario, and decrease the chances for rational dialog around > > what scale of features is really needed in this case which probably > > would reduce the technical complexity by 80%, while still giving 80% > > of the new capability being asked for. > > > But regardless, there is one point I agree with many on: we hear far > > too little from the MLO team about their concrete future feature and > > release plans. I know there are lists of future features they are > > considering, etc. but with not dates, etc. Some of those have been on > > the list for years, and what actually gets done seems fairly random to > > the outside world. And no-one yet has disagreed that the MLO team > > have focused on new platforms and not on improved functionality the > > last 2 years or so, for better or worse... > > > So that is my two cents. As always I look forward to the continued > > creative replies... > > > On Sep 23, 5:51 am, Neal <[email protected]> wrote: > > > People are entitled to their opinions. I tried to explain it to them > > here > > > but I'm not going to take any guff about it or get mocked. Sorry, just > > not > > > going to happen. > > > > Anyway, I tried to explain this to Andrey. And to be honest, I no longer > > > really care. Besides, I think Andrey will figure it out dealing with the > > > IPad crowd... > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "MyLifeOrganized" group. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > [email protected]. > > For more options, visit this group at > >http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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