I feel the UI (of the desktop version) is a bit lacking.
Within one minute from installing it, the following happened.
I added a note: a text note, fine. So a side bar opens...
Why is it only ever a side bar? I have a 1920px wide monitor - not really unusual - but you're forcing me to edit my notes in a fixed 700px sidebar, the rest of the screen estate just darkened out. Evernote lets me use all my screen.
But I've typed some stuff in. So, I'm clicking on "Add text note", the first most obvious call-to-action that catches my eye. A dialog pops up: "The note has unsaved changes. Really leave?". Well, I just clicked on "Add text note", what do you mean?
Only after a while I realized that I'm not supposed to click on the most prominent (white on black) caption bar at the top, but on the greenish "Add" in bottom right corner. Even though the title does say "Add text note", which is as explicit as it gets.
Okay, time to edit my note. It opens in preview mode by default, I still have to click on a floating button to make it editable - another little mental bump, but okay.
I can click on an eye icon to get a preview of the note. Once I do that, the eye icon vanishes, and I'm left with an uneditable note. That's quite weird, normally the "eye" icon would just be replaced with a symbol indicating return to edit mode, allowing to switch back and forth with no fuss. Makes sense, especially sice it's easy to anticipate that the preview function would often be used just to quickly catch a glimpse of whether our work (markup, etc.) looks fine, and further we go, it's not a Rembrandt painting : )
Not here, though - I click on the eye, but in order to resume editing I have to move mouse cursor to the left now, and tap on the "I guess I'm sort of a power user (I'm a software dev for starters), so these confusions don't stop me for more than 5 seconds each. It is frustrating nevertheless, because being computer-savvy, I'm not used to that. And when my mum clicks "Add text note" only to be asked if she really wants to cancel all changes, I can tell you she'll look like a deer in headlights rather than mumble "what's this bs" as I did ; )
I understand you're an indie dev, but hallway usability testing doesn't require hiring focus groups etc., all it takes is have a few people sit in front of the monitor and watch them go at it
