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.