21–30 of 39 posts
Some full size screenshots would be good to have on the Tour page rather than the current lengthy text descriptions. After skimming through the whole tour, I still don't have a sense of whether or not your app is better than Basecamp.
Using the phrase "crush the competition" seems to go against the rest of your site - calling the product "Zen," the bonsai tree, and the logo. At the least, it's a jarring contrast that distracts me from your product.
Agreed; I would definitely get rid of that part. Zen isn't so much about crushing others. I feel like it should be a requirement to study a philosophy before using it to promote a product. Edit: Signed up; looked around; certainly appears to be a solid product. I kinda like the story-board style stuff. Good luck! :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed; I would definitely get rid of that part. Zen isn't so much about crushing others. I feel like it should be a requirement to study a philosophy before using it to promote a product. Edit: Signed up; looked around; certainly appears to be a solid product. I kinda like the story-board style stuff. Good luck! :)
While the concept of the brand is definitely a reference to Zen Buddhism, the name actually comes from the japanese word "kaizen" -- which is used in lean processes to mean "continuous improvement". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
Found and reported a bug on the work tab. Also, what is the purpose of the sizing field? Can I do anything with that or is it just a generic label for my own uses?
Found and reported a bug on the work tab. Also, what is the purpose of the sizing field? Can I do anything with that or is it just a generic label for my own uses?
Yeah, several people have mentioned the bug. I'm working to fix it now, although I probably won't push again until after EOB today. The size field is free-form... most people use it either with "t-shirt sizing" (small, medium, large) or just put a numeric value in. Eventually it will be used in performance metrics, so you can see your cycle time for "large" stories, for example.
Am I just doing it wrong or is this a bug?
On the landing page the headers don't actually say much – the real lines are underneath, which I didn't read while skimming. Instead of: "Enhances visibility and communication" -> "Make it easy to understand the status of your project at a glance" "Simple and flexible" doesn't really have any meat in it. See Kawasaki's opposite rule – your competition doesn't describe their product as "Complicated and rigid." "Easy t…
Do you have a reference for this? As of this writing, the first Google hit for "Kawasaki's opposite rule" is the parent comment. :-)
A way to get hints back after hiding them would be useful, too. Or some sort of way to summon contextual help. After hiding the hint to get it out of my way, I found I didn’t know what “Size” meant, and wasn’t immediately sure of where to look.
By the way, I’m currently using pivotal tracker (which has the nice advantage of being free, for some reason), so that’s my baseline for comparison.
Minor annoyance: the names next to the « or » should be clickable also, the «» are too small as click targets, so dismissing a sidebar requires more care than it should.
Pivotal gives you an ability to assign FPs to estimate stories, while Zen strongly encourages that you try to make your stories equally sized. I think I like your approach better, since I know I tend to avoid large stories — I need to break it down first before I can work on it without being frightened of it.
There seems to be a bug with trying to edit a story owner while the backlog is open (maybe applies to other sidebars as well, didn’t check). When I click the name, it disappears, then if I close the sidebar, the form shows up. If I click on multiple stories while the bar is open, I only get the form on one of them, and have to refresh the page to see the owners again. This is in Safari 4, didn’t check other browsers.
It would be nice if stories could be left unassigned in the backlog (perhaps this is meant to be possible, but is buggy? I can’t tell due to bug in above paragraph). Actually, I’d be happiest if stories added to the backlog defaulted to unassigned.
It took me too long to figure out how to reach the focus view, since you have to hover over the # (which I didn’t realize was clickable), and it is small. Feels like there should be an easier way, though I don’t have a suggestion at the moment.
Focus view of a story seems less-nice than the rest of the app. Too cluttered. Oh wait, if I hide the hint, it looks much nicer. I want to be able to widen the sidebar in focus view to have the values line up with the headings, making it shorter to get rid of the scrollbar I have there at my current window height (just a little bit too short).
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Above was comments while I was playing with the app, hopefully it’s organized enough, because I’m too lazy to go back and review.
I think I like your approach more than Pivotal Tracker. Cleaner, and more pleasant, although you need to work really hard to address each and every interface quirk (a couple of which I mentioned above), since the primary appeal of your app is that it has a clean and fluid interface.
Customizable process (without a cluttered interface to manage it!) is a win. The way it is setup should help discourage people from having too many steps in the process, as well, since then the board would become unusable.
My 2 main sticking points:
1. Pivotal is free (again, I have no idea why. They should be taking my money right now)
2. I am unsure about the lack of time estimation (Pivotal provides, I think, the best method I’ve seen of time estimates, if you’re going to have them). Maybe it’s better to not have? I’m not sure.
Anyway, I have a project I’m just starting, with 1 other person. Will have to see if Zen tempts me enough to pay the $9 I’d need ;)
Some closing random thoughts:
1. Put a mini version of your logo to the left of Features (without moving Features to the right) in the nav bar, on every page except the home page. Or something along those lines. We really do look in the top-left to get back to the home page.
2. … just the 1 thought I guess. I had another, but I lost it.
This page could work for a team of 4 or 5 people with impressive backgrounds and interchangable skills, but it just shows your underwear. What if something happens to him? What if something happens to her? What if something happens to "them"?
In a strange way, the Company page is a lot like a butcher shop. We all know that, on the internet, a small company can look like a big company, but we really don't want to see what goes on behind the scenes.
Is there some way you can display your strengths on this page without revealing your weaknesses?