RELATED IDEAS
Simplify UX for To-Do's and Comments
Our engineers use Trello which is incredibly easy for them to use, though nowhere near as powerful as Aha. However, like Piovtal, Trello makes it incredibly easy to add comments. You just tap or click into the comment entry input box, just like using facebook, and start typing. On Aha, the commenting UX is very heavyweight by comparison. First, you have to click to show the Rich Text editor, rather than just seeing a comment field ... it's less inviting and feels like more work. Second, the rich text editor itself is pretty heavy weight -- and does not feel necessary for commenting in a circa-2015 SaaS application. The standard followed by folks like Trello, Slack, Pivotal and others is to have a very lightweight UX for adding a comment, which encourages participation. The trade-off is that they rely on using markdown and things like :smile: to add emojis. I wish adding a comment on a feature were as easy in Aha.io as it is to comment in Trello, Slack, Pivotal, Facebook, etc.
Second, and related, the To-Do's interface needs to be as simple as the "Checklist" interface on Trello. Your UX designer should take a look at Trello because it is incredibly easy to add a checklist, re-order checklist items, etc. Unlike Aha, Trello allows multiple named checklists (To-Do's). Further, creating a new checklist item (To-Do) in Aha is a massive undertaking, displaying a heavyweight modal that takes over the entire screen, and it has 4 fields (title, description, assigned to, due date) ... it would be so much easier if you could just create this stuff inline without such a heavyweight UX.
The context on both of these two ideas is that if you want organizations to move to an All-AHA world rather than an Aha+Pivotal or Aha+Trello world, you need to make the "Reviewer" functionality be as low or lower friction in Aha as that equivalent functionality was in Trello/Pivotal/etc. Today, it's not. And that's why today, my engineers are going to stay in Trello and I have to manage the pain of an Aha-Trello integration. If your To-do's and commenting UX were as easy and intuitive and simple as Trello, we might be in an all-Aha world and dropping Trello altogether.
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ADMIN RESPONSEMar 20, 2019
Since this idea was originally submitted we have made several improvements to to-dos, including:
The ability to create to-dos inline. This makes the process of creating to-dos more streamlined that the older way of opening a modal to add a to-do.
Press enter to add another to-do. You can now quickly add multiple to-dos one after another.
Checklists in the text editor. For lighter weight lists, you can now simply add checkboxes within the description field of any record (as well as comments.)
I agree with the need to improve the To-Do list. I have a new client where we are only using Aha for a new product development project. It's as blank a slate as you can possibly get, so no reason to use any other tools. Yet the team is already complaining they can't find their to-dos, the leadership can't easily see any all up list.
Some of the things they want are in the product so we can train people to use them, but as Angus points out the UX needs to be super easy to jump in to. Along with Trello take a look at Wunderlist. Even finding a way to integrate with Outlook task would be good.
Critical. It is ridiculous how many screens I need to move through. From my perspective the following are the key features required:
- Ability to add, delete and modify the title of any todo
- Ability to order the todo as required
- Ability to strike through a todo as unnecessary (given record of the fact that we did not do it, and why)
All of the above are available via Pivotal today.
Further but unrelated to this request: The above approach should be applied to Requirements.