I’m always analysing task|mate for what could be improved or made simpler. Something that has always been tricky to get right is the navigation through out task|mate. This has mainly been because we currently have a hierarchy of a User, that has many Projects, which has many Tasks and belongs to a Milestone. The user interface has always tried to mirror this relationship, however it’s made the system awkward to navigate and confusing.

So our next step is to simplify the user interface and remove this hierarchy from the users perspective, below you can see the new suggested layout.

You can see that the majority of our current functionality has been moved to the very top bar, the larger menu will now become a project specific menu and the screens accessed from there will be filtered down to whichever project your currently viewing.

The current project screens try to squeeze too much information onto a rather crowded small space. So we’re going to move towards spreading this across multiple screens, and increasing the power and flexibility of each section.

We currently estimate that there is a couple of months work to complete the migration to this new layout. Don’t panic though that doesn’t mean there will be no updates until the work is complete. We don’t plan on having a big bang release, instead we plan to slowly move towards this layout over the next couple releases.

Please let us know what you think of the new layout, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Last night we deployed a new version of Task|mate, this update is a combination of technical improvements as well as a new security system.

Security System

The new security system has implemented 2 new user types - Admin and Normal. By default all users have been made Administrators, so we recommend you configure your teams permissions asap. Normal Users can no longer Create Projects, change company information, create users, delete users or change team members in a project. So this should be a massive help for everyone who works in a large team or collaborates with clients using Task|mate.

Known Browser Compatibility Issues

The latest version works correctly in IE8, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. At the moment Task|mate has some "quirks" when running in IE7, however we hope to resolve these over the next couple of days.

Technical Improvement

For those of you interested in the technical side of Task|mate, this was a major release for the system as it signals completion of the below migrations:

• Monorail MVC to ASP.net MVC
• Prototype Javascript library to jQuery

What this means from your perspective is that the system should feel a lot "snappier" as the Task|mate has been put on a much needed diet. With the migration out of the way, you can expect development to accelerate as we benefit from our new foundations.

Update: All known browser compatibilities have now been resolved.

We’ve just released a big update to the system that drastically improves the speed of changing information related to your tasks. Everywhere you see a task card like below, there is a new action next to Show Description called “Quick Edit”.

Selecting quick edit will instantly change your task card to look like below, from here you can edit the most common information about a task.

Unfortunately this new feature didn’t fit on the project screen using the 3 column layout, so we’ve changed to a two column layout similar to dashboard as shown below.

Also in this release we’re the following smaller tweaks.

• A consistent task list style across all screens.
• More “under the hood” improvements for a faster sleeker system.

Note: All screenshots are taken from our test system, so don’t read too much into them.

I sat down with a few friends the other day to do some usability testing, after reading this article. I thought I’d sit them in front of my first run experience and ask them to do some very basic operations:

1. Create a task
2. Create a project.
3. View a task.
4. Create a milestone.
5. Assign a task to a user.
6. etc

Well it turns out I didn’t get very far as I hoped I would. They both failed at step one, neither of them could see the main menu. This is obviously bad, really bad. So an emergency rethink needed, in the below screenshot you can see the new dashboard interface with the old menu system. The main menu is in dark orange on a light orange background, making it easy to see on a bright monitor – but camouflaged into the background on darker ones.

Below you can see the new menu system:

We’ve made the following changes:

• Reduced the items in the main menu, this should help keep the interface simple and focused.
• A new user submenu(top left), this menu will contain information about the person logged in.
• The search bar has moved(top right), this helps to conserve space for the rest of the screen.
• The main menu is now on the right, and is in big black text making it stand out – more importantly hard to miss.

After these changes, both friends could use the application and complete the tasks given to them – a massive improvement.

We’ll probably tweak this more over the coming months, but I learnt a very valuable lesson:

Watch someone else use your application.

I was recently contacted by a new user of Task|mate who asked “How do you set due dates on a task?”. At first I explained that we only supported due dates by bundling tasks together, and questioned why a due date at task level was required. After a short email conversion it was obvious that this was a feature Task|mate that would make our customers very happy.

I’m now very pleased to announce that, this feature is live and available for all our customers to use. You can see this new feature on the Add/Edit Task sections, however when shown on the dashboard – it’s true potential becomes obvious.

As you can see below, it’s no incredibly easy to see what you should be working on next.

Your feedback really does help in improving Task|mate and we’re always eager to hear your ideas.

Please get in-touch, your idea could be implemented just like this one.

Other Usability Improvements

We’ve been really busy over the last week, and also implemented the following improvements:

• Improved Navigation between Projects/Milestones/Tasks
• All commands have been consolidated into one "Action Menu".
• After adding a new task, the screen will now automatically refresh.
• Improved layout of Task Information.
• Improved layout of New Task section.
• Improved My Projects menu section.
• Improved layout of Timesheets.

Well it's been a rather busy few days since our official launch on Friday, we've had a few teething problems along the way but they we're all solved as quickly as they where found.

We've also tonight pushed out a slight update to our systems, including:

• Improved Login Page - we've clarified the text and simplified the interface.
• The Registration page - it's now much simpler and explains the process upfront - no surprises when you’re forwarded to PayPal anymore.
• Improved the logging of all errors that occur, now we'll be instantly notified of any problems that happen and be able to fix them just as quickly.

We'll be announcing more shortly.