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’ve just finished deploying the new improved international support for Task|Mate, up until now all dates and numbers had to be in a British Format.

For Example:

Numbers: 1.00
Dates: 24/12/2008

Task|Mate will now lookup your locale from your browser settings and use the settings of your default language, which should increase the usability of the system for everyone outside of the UK.

The current TaskMate project overview screen needed a little polish, so we've transformed it from the below:

To the following:

With these changes we've improved the clarity of the information on the screen, this combined with the extra information we've added will improve communication of the projects progress.

We've improved the milestone section by removing unnecessary information, now the milestone graph turns red when your milestone is overdue - allowing for instant notification of problems on your project. 

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.