Google Tasks on iOS

I've just got to weigh in here. I don't think Gee Tasks looks ugly at all — that's just baloney. It's an elegant app, well laid out. I especially like that you can "squeeze" the lists to really fit a lot of items on one page.

And I actually like the fact that the completed tasks are "greyed out" rather than being "crossed out." In fact, I hope that even if Apple enables "crossed out" text in the future, Gee Tasks will continue to use "greyed out" text — to me it actually gives a cleaner look and is easier on the eyes. It's still very obvious which items are completed — nice big red check mark and light grey text — the visual clues are there and the look is clean.

The most impressive thing about Gee Tasks to me is that it syncs your lists locally so you can work offline — I don't believe that any other app (mobile or desktop) will do that. I know that doesn't have to do with "looks" - but the app is just so darn useful that even if it did look ugly (which it doesn't), I wouldn't whine about it. I'd just be thankful somebody like Denis took the initiative to create such a userful and powerful mobile tool.

Thanks for the kind words Doug. :)

I still offer my icons for free!

*cough*

You can use my icons too!

dl: http://d01.megashares.com/dl/a83578f/rgecheck.psd

Also, I find it sort of self-satisfying that GeeTasks is slowly (ever so slowly) starting to look like what I proposed in November.

*cough*

Actually, I will use those.

A lot of my indecision was around not being able to measure the quality of the change. I always wonder if I am changing things for the better. Clearly I can not trust my own taste, and suggestions from one user are as good as suggestion from the other and not necessarily representative of the market as a whole. Please don't take offense, guys. :-)

However, I recently devised a way to test the relative graphics quality on large groups of live human subjects so as soon as I implement it I will be changing the graphics and testing it. Derek and neFAST, do I have your email address? Please send me a note to support address, I might ask you for a bit of help with this :) Thanks.

Mail sent.

I just started to become a big fan of GeeTasks. It is just so incredibly useful if you're using google tasks. And the functionality is much more fine tuned than the look made me expect.
But the look - well, if you asked me: Yes, indeed, GeeTasks (Pro, if that makes any difference) does look ugly. Really.

Maybe "ugly" is not the approriate term to use in such a discussion. You'll never get it right for everyone anyway. But in such a case there is one approach you can always use with confidence: Just do it like the other preinstalled apps from Apple do it. Some will love it just because it's Apple style, others won't think about it and even others will think it's boring. But the third group will soon forget about that after a while, because it just doesn't look any different from the rest and they are getting used to it.

And of course it makes the program easier to get started for new users. You are the one how wrote it. You know every detail. But for others certain behaviours might be a little unexpected.

With this in mind, let me add my suggestions how to change the look for the better (in average ;) :

• Use a Reload icon as in the mockup above, just like the mail app does
• Use a Plus-Icon to add new Tasks, like in the Calendar app
• Use the Check Icons as in the screenshot above - again the mail app (after pressing Edit for multi selection) uses the same style
• Change the sort mode toggle-pushbutton to a popup dialog like the reply-Button in mail or the add-bookmark-button in safari. There are no buttons that that toggle between multiple options in the standard apps AFAIK. The toggle button also required heavy abbreviation, at least in the german translation (Like "Grupprn:Dat", which would "translate" to something like "Grp:Dte" instead of "Group by date")
• Move the Last updated-message to the bottom as in the screenshot above and just like the Mail app does.

What I like a lot is the compact calendar that shows up on adding a new Task. This is much more efficient to use than the regular date picker, which is only necessary as a fallback. In cases where I need this fallback, it would be more efficient, if I could go to the date picker from the calendar with a single click (Button "Other date" below the calendar for instance). And again it would be good if you could make it look a little more familiar, even though there is no such calendar control on other apps. How about a light gray background with embossed lines and non-rounded corners just like the regular calendar view?

In the List of Lists, I would place the account settings item separate from the list of task lists. I guess the proposed place would be outside of the actual program in the settings app.

The Splash also deserves a little love. At the very least please remove the "…" by either nothing or something similar to the regular header. And while it is nice to ask users if they "Need help?", it sounds a bit … hmm, maybe inconfident? … in a greeting screen ;)

That's all for now regarding design criticism from my side. I know that the 5,xx€ I paid for it don't buy a single wish from this list, but I'm quite sure that it would really improve you sales. But you certainly don't need to hire a designer for that *g*

All good points, not all agreeable. :) Let me elaborate:

The "account settings" is glued to the lists for a good reason - I plan to add multiple account support and when I do there will be multiple such sections. That's when it will become very important to see which group of lists belongs to which account. Now you might say this could be accomplished with an embossed section header (similar to how task details have embossed names for each part of the task), but then a user who wishes to change things wouldn't know where to look. The "settings app" is not really an option for both technical and usability reasons. Email/password needs to be validated when entered, which can not be done from the Settings app - it's a different app after all. Then, most people are not aware of the Settings App and will not think to look there. The bravest ones will send email to support causing me a lot of work and the rest will just be quietly upset (most people never contact tech support having encountered a problem). I have visually de-emphasized it by making the text and icon pale gray, hopefully it helps to ignore it. The nest I could do is hide it unless "edit" button is pressed, but even that will cause support questions. So this is not changing any time soon. Sorry.

The sort button looked really cool when I wrote it. :) The reason why it shows current sort order on the button itself is that many, many, many people contact support complaining about tasks not being indented (because they set a sort order and forgot about it). The button title reminds at least some of them about what's going on. If the button did not indicate the sort order that would be even more confused people. However after localization it became obvious that was the wrong choice (both German and French were hard to do) and I will have to replace it with something else. Ideally that would be a button that looks significantly different when non-default sort order is used (so that people can guess something's up why they can't see indentation), but the most obvious way to do that (with color) is a real pain to implement. Any other ideas on how to make people aware about this are welcome. Maybe I could add text at the top of the list that says "sorted by Title"? Dunno.

I do plan to add a plus button and a circular arrow sync button as per above screenshot. Though I must add that in my previous app there were many people complaining about not being able to find the circular arrow button located exactly as described. However the "add new task" area will stay at the top: for one it mimicks Google's web site, but another thing is that is allows someone to start typing text in the same place the tapped their finger - this reduces the number of "find that thing on the screen" events. Compare two cases: "move eyes off the scree to find the plus sign, push plus sign, locate the text entry area and move eyes there, start typing", or "locate the text area and push it, start typing". The second case involves less wandering around the screen looking for things. The plus button will actually allow inserting tasks anywhere in the list (first, touch "+", then tap a task in the list to create a subtask right under it, or tap plus again to create a task at the top of the list).

The "last synced at" text at the top is also there to make sure people don't forget about syncing - it's close to the clock to it's easy to see. I promised to remove it from there for people who use "online" mode. Frankly this does not cease to amaze me - does the text at the top really make such a big difference in aesthetics? I can't understand, yet this topic comes up again and again.

The checkboxes will get replaced, I just didn't want to replace them with something equally bad. I think I just found a way to experiment and measure the user perception of the graphics so it should be relatively easy now.

In cases where I need this fallback, it would be more efficient, if I could go to the date picker from the calendar with a single click (Button "Other date" below the calendar for instance)
That's an extra button, one that's only needed in a tiny fraction of cases. There is only so much space on the screen and only so much attention in users head, I don't want to add a rarely used button to clutter both. As it is it's two taps away, right?

The reason why the calendar background is translucent is to have underlying tasks shine through. I feel that if underlying tasks are still visible then transitions to/from this state are not as startling to the user, whereas if you can't see them it's perceived as a new screen. Transitions to new screens are jarring so I tried to minimize them here. The other reason for it to look that way is so that people who don't use due dates do not have to see it. Let me elaborate - if you use tasks without due dates you can concentrate on "black text over white background" field where you enter the task title, and the fact that calendar is thinly white on dark background makes it easy to mentally filter out. On the other hand if you do need the calendar it's still there, just takes some effort to focus on it due to different colors scheme. I think of it as a zero-tap switch, because alternative would be a one-tap switch the shows/hides the calendar. Does it make sense? I'm not much of a designer but it did make sense to me when I wrote it.

Now to the splash screen. The abundance of stuff makes your eyes wander around the screen and that makes the time fly. You probably think that GeeTasks loads very fast (a lot of people think that), and a part of it is this kind of trickery. An empty screen would have nothing to draw attention and time would go by slowly. The screen is static, I can add animations to it. Also, three dots were added so that they can "morph" into white text after the app loads - I tired without it and the white text would pop at you rather suddenly. Although now that I think of it, I have added a fade-in affect after that, so the three dots wouldn't be needed anymore… I guess I will try without it.

The support email is there so that people at least think about contacting support before writing a bad review. Most bad reviews come from people who didn't figure something out and didn't think to contact support, so I'm doing all I can to remedy this.

Thanks for the detailed feedback, I much appreciate the opportunity to talk through some of my design decisions, and revisit some of them.